Will propose tax cuts, infrastructure spending.

The rest is here:
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 > >

More here:
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 > >

Here is the original post:
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 > >

Read more:
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 > >

View post:
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 > >

View original post here:
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

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

“Significant” tax cuts will be ruled out while the government is cutting spending to address its deficit, Prime Minister David Cameron has said.

Link:
Cameron rules out major tax cuts

Sometime this spring, Congress is going to have to raise the debt ceiling or the federal government will face default. Republicans are going to demand many, many pounds of flesh in exchange, ranging from cuts in discretionary spending to rethinking of entitlement programs, which together could undermine the weak stimulative effect of the December tax cuts. read more

Go here to see the original:
James Kwak | Deficit Hawkoprite Watch

Federal agents arrested a California man after he threatened to kill a Washington representative over his stance on the debate last month to extend Bush-era tax cuts. Charles Turner Habermann made a pair of late-night phone calls to the office of Rep….

Original post:
Man Who Threatened Rep. Is Arrested

I am living proof of the way tax codes change behavior. Unavoidably on December 31, I start thinking of all the worthy causes I “should” have been supporting during the year, and rush to mail out checks or send online contributions while they still “count” as deductions for the tax year that’s about to end. Here is a last-minute possibility with interesting implications: a site called ” Give It Back for Jobs ” that lets you calculate how much you, personally, will save on taxes because of the recent extension of the Bush-era tax cuts, and then suggests that as a prod for contributions to organizations that will “promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class.” I won’t get into the details of how the site’s creators estimate each family’s tax savings or how they choose worthy recipients. The interesting aspects are (1) the authors’ awareness that this kind of guilt-trip/ noblesse oblige approach, which they call “political philanthropy,” isn’t really the ideal answer to a society that’s becoming more economically polarized, but (2) their determination nonetheless to make what they can of its possibilities. As they say on the site: > > Americans who have the means should collectively give back our Bush tax cuts…  Such joint action by wealthy visitors to this site will begin to replicate good government policy, outside the government and free from the grip of obstructionists within it. Because contributions to all of the selected charities are tax deductible, donations made through this site draft the government as a partner in funding the projects that they support. > When political institutions use taxes paid by all to bail out institutions that are perceived to benefit only the wealthy few, our sense of shared fate is threatened…. To their credit, many of the most fortunate Americans believe they should contribute more. The Giving Pledge campaign, started by two of the nation’s wealthiest citizens, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, encourages the super-rich to donate half or more of their fortunes to charity. But that does not mean the rest of us have to sit by… Americans who can afford it should contribute the windfall that they receive because of the Republicans’ obstructionist demands to charities that promote the programs — job creation, housing, education and the like — that they believe a just government should pursue.

Read more:
An Interesting Year-End ‘Charitable’ Possibility

Next week starts the new Congress, and with it the Tea Party conservatives. What’s their strategy? What will they rally around? They’ll grouse endlessly about government spending but I don’t think they’ll use any particular spending bill to mobilize and energize their grass roots. The big bucks are in Social Security, Medicare, and defense, which are too popular. And their support for a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts will make a mockery of any argument about taming the deficit. read more

Go here to see the original:
New Year’s Prediction (I): The Tea Party Conservative Strategy for 2011

A look at the GOP’s proposed rules for the House reveals some fine print to their deficit-cutting plan. Back in 2007, Republicans used budget reconciliation, a process immune to filibuster, to pass the Bush tax cuts and raise the deficit, two things…

See the article here:
GOP to Roll Back Reconciliation Rules

We enter 2011 with a few more dollars in our paychecks. For about 98 percent of Americans, the extension of Bush tax cuts and the new payroll tax holiday will make it easier for us to afford a gallon, rather than a quart, of milk for our families each month, and to fill our tanks almost as high as we did with lower gas prices last year. read more

Excerpt from:
Karen Dolan | Not Much to Celebrate with Obama’s Tax Deal

Under the radar screen, the new tax deal is threatening the livelihood of America’s present and future seniors – to line the pockets of millionaires. read more

More here:
Social Security’s Future at Risk With New Tax Deal