Whom It Really Targets The Hit List: H.R. 1586 retroactively taxes AIG employees who are due deferred compensation and would tax that compensation at a 90% rate. A Much Broader Sweep: Going forward, the bill also imposes a 90% federal tax rate on anyone employed by a company receiving $5 billion in TARP funds who has a family income over $250,000, individual income over $125,000 (if single or married but filing separately), or performance pay larger than adjusted gross income. What Defines a Bonus? Under H.R. 1586, a “bonus” is …
Hitting the Federal ATM, Again Apparently, It Does Grow on Trees: After an $800 billion stimulus bill, the President’s budget increases spending by $1 trillion over 10 years, includes an additional $250 billion placeholder for another bailout, and calls for a pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) law while astonishingly violating that rule by $3.4 trillion. More Deficits and More Debt: The President’s budget leaves permanent deficits averaging $600 billion even after the economy recovers and doubles the publicly held national debt to over $15 trillion ($12.5 trillion after inflation). To Pay for Historic …
Unions Rally against Democratic Elections Card Check: The Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) would replace secret ballot organizing elections with publicly signed union cards, allowing union organizers to deceive, harass, and threaten workers into signing these cards and thereby unionizing. Stripping Away Privacy and Freedom: A worker may vote “no” against a union behind a curtain but may be less courageous if pressured in public. This is why most union organizers currently don’t call for elections until between 60% and 75% of a shop notes interest, knowing that there will …
A Down Payment on Nationalization Trillion Dollars Down: In less than two months, the President has already budgeted nearly $1 TRILLION on his health care proposals—SCHIP, the stimulus, and now the budget. A Bottomless Well: President Obama’s FY 10 budget proposal offers a $634 billion “down payment” on health care reform. The only truth to this number is that it will continue to grow, and they openly admit it in the President’s budget proposal: “The budget calls for an effort beyond this down payment, to put the nation on a …
Senate Rejected an Economic Disaster Bleak Cap and Trade Future: EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said she planned to move the country toward a “carbon constrained future.” Any scheme, whether cap-and-trade or a carbon tax, that raises the price on carbon dioxide will raise energy costs while generating enormous sums of tax revenue for the government that American families and workers will ultimately pay for. They will be left with high energy costs, high prices, and low incomes. Lieberman-Warner: Last year, the Senate rejected cap-and-tax legislation that would have capped CO2 emissions …
Classic Tax and Spend Budget Increase, Raise and Hike: The President’s budget proposal increases taxes by $1.3 trillion; raises entitlement spending by $700 billion (including the health care fund), and hikes discretionary spending by a steep 12%. Creating Deficits, Not Eliminating Them: Given the budget deficit has already quadrupled in one year, the President’s pledge to halve it by 2013 is hardly ambitious. Even with the assumption of peace and prosperity, the 2013 budget deficit target of $533 billion would exceed any under President Bush. Taxes Spent: Before the recession, …
Blocking Children’s Path to a Better Future Omnibus Spending Bill Eliminates Opportunity: As it stands now, the House omnibus bill will eliminate the DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (DCOSP). Since the program’s inception in 2004, the DCOSP has given thousands of low-income students in the District of Columbia access to a better education. For Children in Need: About 1,700 children currently attend private school using opportunity scholarships. The average household income of a DCOSP family is $23,000. Safe and Effective Learning Environments: DCOSP has yielded positive results for its participants. Studies …
“Helping Families Save Their Homes Act”? Or Neighborhood Destabilization Act: Allows bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal owed on a mortgage, a practice often referred to as a “cramdown.” Judges would be able to reduce interest rates or lengthen the term of the mortgage. H.R. 1106: It actually achieves opposite results by putting millions of homeowners or potential buyers at greater risk of an unstable credit and housing market and creating high interest rates in the future. Temporary? No. Weak? Yes: The simple rule on Capitol Hill when a bill …
The Constitution of the United States of America Congress Doesn’t Have the Authority: Congress lacks the constitutional authority to simply grant the District a voting representative, as the Constitution explicitly limits such representation to states alone. Members of Congress are bound by their oath to reject proposals that violate the Constitution. Article I, Section 2: “Representatives…shall be apportioned among the several States.” The District, as courts and Congress have long agreed, is not a state. Article I, Section 8: “The Congress shall have power … To exercise exclusive legislation in …
The United States Congress is about to pass the largest single-year increase in domestic federal spending since World War II. Despite the fact that neither the Republicans in Congress, the media, nor the American people have been allowed to read the bill, the House plans to vote on the plan today. The Senate will quickly follow suit so that the bill will hit President Barack Obama’s desk by Monday. Even without the full benefit of digesting what is in this trillion dollar debt bill, over 200 economists have expressed their …
