Every estimate you’ve heard of who is being helped and who is being hurt by the tax cuts proposed by the various Republican presidential campaign is telling you, at best, only half the story. And that’s because these estimates only look at one side of the ledger: who gets the tax cuts. But there’s another side to the ledger: Who pays for them, and how? That side is at least as important as who gets the tax cuts, but it’s almost always ignored. Read full article > >

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What we miss when we talk about tax cuts

House Speaker John Boehner gave a spirited reply when asked recently about whether his party’s resistance to middle-class tax cuts risked making Republicans appear to be lackeys of the rich. “I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, all right?” Boehner said . “My dad owned a bar. I know what’s going on out in America.” Read full article > >

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On tap: Radical Republican Winterfest

House Speaker John Boehner gave a spirited reply when asked recently about whether his party’s resistance to middle-class tax cuts risked making Republicans appear to be lackeys of the rich. “I’ve got 11 brothers and sisters on every rung of the economic ladder, all right?” Boehner said . “My dad owned a bar. I know what’s going on out in America.” Read full article > >

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On tap: Radical Republican Winterfest

The House speaker, John A. Boehner, did an about-face and said he and other House Republicans were opposed to the extension until February of the payroll tax cuts.

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House Republicans Oppose Senate Deal on Payroll Tax Cut, Boehner Says

President Obama questioned why Republicans who opposed paying for tax cuts in the past now won’t support them unless they are offset with other revenues.

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Obama Challenges G.O.P. on Payroll Tax Stance

Almost two weeks ago, 21 Occupy Wall Street protesters decided to take the movement on the road , in a march from New York’s Zuccotti Park to the White House. Their goal: to spread the movement to the 12 cities and small towns they would pass through along the way, and to protest the supercommittee’s likely decision to retain Bush tax cuts “for the rich,” or “one percent.” Read full article > >

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Occupy Wall Street protesters finish journey from Zuccotti Park to D.C.

President Obama is preparing to roll out a jobs program Thursday that could cost as much as $300 billion in infrastructure investments and tax cuts, but which aides said will include ways to pay for the programs that the White House hopes will win bipartisan support from skeptical Republicans. Obama, whose approval ratings are at record lows, will present his proposals before a joint session of Congress at 7 p.m. ET Thursday in an address that could mark a critical moment in his presidency. Obama aims to restore public confidence in his administration’s ability to boost the economy and prevent another recession, even as Republican rivals point to a Labor Department report that showed no new jobs created last month as evidence that his policies aren’t working. Read full article > >

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Obama jobs plan could cost $300 billion, include tax cuts, new spending

ROCK ISLAND, Ill. — President Obama plans to make a major speech in early September laying out new proposals for job creation and taming the federal debt, according to the White House. Obama is expected to make fresh proposals, possibly including tax cuts and new infrastructure spending, to spur hiring. The president will also lay out a plan to trim far more from the federal debt than the $1.5 trillion target of a congressional “supercommittee” that is supposed to issue a proposal for Congress by Thanksgiving, the White House said. The plan is likely to include proposals for an overhaul of the tax code and entitlements. Read full article > >

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Obama to issue new proposals on job creation, debt reduction

Will propose tax cuts, infrastructure spending.

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Obama Plans Major Jobs Speech

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last Wednesday caught my eye when he talked about members of Congress, currently vocal about the deficit, who were on Capitol Hill over the past decade and voted for unpaid large tax cuts but “put two wars on the credit card without paying for them.” That last phrase reflected words used in 2007 by several House Democrats who wanted to institute a war surtax to pay for the then-increasing costs of U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. These days, one of them, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), believes such a levy should be on the agenda of the debt-reduction “supercommittee.” Read full article > >

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A war tax? It’s still not a bad idea

Yes, you read that right. The non-partisan Tax Policy Center has done its analysis of the Pawlenty economic plan and concluded that would be the ten-year cost of the Pawlenty tax cuts , as compared to current law. If you assume that all the Bush tax cuts and other policies stay in place, the cost, according to the TPC estimates, would be a mere $7.6 trillion . To think of it another way, Pawlenty is proposing tax cuts that are the equivalent of taking the existing Bush tax cuts and tripling them over the next decade. In 2021 alone, the cuts would exceed $1.6 trillion compared to current law (that is, letting the Bush tax cuts expire), or $1 trillion compared to current policy (extending all the tax cuts and the accompanying patches to the alternative minimum tax.) Read full article > >

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Tim Pawlenty’s $11.6 Trillion Tax Cut

CHICAGO — Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty (R) will present a dramatic alternative to what he calls President Obama’s “big government and heavy handed regulations” in an economic address at the University of Chicago on Tuesday morning. Speaking at one of the world’s foremost centers of free market thought — and just a few miles from the offices of Obama’s reelection campaign — Pawlenty, who kicked off his presidential campaign last month, will try to claim the Republican mantle that Obama’s economic policies have failed the nation. Read full article > >

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Pawlenty to propose tax cuts, smaller government role in economic address

The Republican Party once had a home for the thinking of Tom Coburn, Mike Crapo and Saxby Chambliss. But that party has been gone for more than 20 years. The three U.S. senators banded together a few months ago in support of higher tax revenue as a means of rebalancing the federal budget. Even with drastic spending cuts, they concluded that Washington could not vanquish its soaring $14.3 trillion debt without additional income. Such reasoning was common in the GOP circa 1963, when Republicans denounced tax cuts proposed by President John F. Kennedy as a road to red ink and rampant inflation. But today’s GOP adheres to a “no new taxes” orthodoxy that has proved far more powerful than the desire to balance the budget. As House Speaker John A. Boehner has said: Raising taxes is “unacceptable and a non-starter.” Read full article > >

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Among GOP, anti-tax orthodoxy runs deep

Jon Huntsman Jr. sets off Thursday on his first campaign-style swing through New Hampshire, testing whether his moderate brand of politics can find a place in today’s Republican Party. In a likely presidential bid, he would bring with him a political resume punctuated by his stint as President Obama’s ambassador to China and loaded with centrist positions on immigration, cap-and-trade climate legislation and gay rights. That could be an uneasy fit in a GOP primary season that is already pushing candidates to the right. So much so that Huntsman’s aides reject the suggestion that he is a moderate — one called it the “M word” — and describe the former Utah governor as a mainstream conservative with a solid record of pro-life legislation and tax cuts. Read full article > >

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Moderate Jon Huntsman, possible 2012 candidate, tests the waters in today’s GOP

Congressional Republicans’ 2011 budget would slash funding for government agencies directly responsible for issuing tsunami warnings and severely reduce the government’s capacity to track and respond to these disasters, the president of the union that represents employees of the National Weather Service told ThinkProgress today in the wake of the tragic tsunami in the Pacific. read more

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GOP Budget Cuts Would Lead to Furloughs at Tsunami Warning Centers, Undermining Their "Ability to React"