More Obama Fine Print

how about a $200.00 filing fee on ALL EEOC complaints. its a freebe now, and i know it’s small potatoes, however,i’m sure such a fee would generate millions.

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[...] Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree has been reading the fine-print of Obama’s deficit reduction plan so you don’t have to, all 80 pages of [...]

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[...] Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree has been reading the fine-print of Obama’s deficit reduction plan so you don’t have to, all 80 pages of [...]

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[...] Congressional reporter Jamie Dupree has been reading the fine-print of Obama’s deficit reduction plan so you don’t have to, all 80 pages of [...]

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So I see that Obama wants to hinder coal and gas exploration, which will send energy prices ever higher; cause higher medical deductibles in many areas; lower payments to health care providers; raise taxes (which even if you don’t earn enough to be affected, you’ll be affected by corporations raising prices on their products to recover their increased payments); all continuing his obvious committment to driving the US economy into the ground!

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But…..But…..BHO would NEVER raise taxes on the middle class! These are not taxes….they are FEES…..and we are too DUMB to realize what he is doing.

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Once again, the Obama Administration thinks the American people are so stupid, he called dress a turd in a polo shirt and call it a lawyer.

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He is soooo far over his head I just wish he would PLEASE go away

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Without context or explanation, this is a worthless list. Frankly, you haven’t given us a damn thing except a place to start, and those not inclined to read into the details (clearly not you, as you so smugly point out) won’t go any further than looking at this and simply projecting their feelings about the president, good or bad, onto what they see here.

In short, you did a great job half-assing this. Way to earn your bread, journalist.

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America, I give you a community organizer with no experience in leadership and is a socialist democrat to boot. There is no way this will pass and he knows it. The idiot is playing political games with our money and thinks that the Republicans sayiong no to this bill will hurt them. If more of the media prints what else is in the bill like Jamie did, the support will dwindle. Great job Jamie!

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L. Brown

September 20th, 2011
9:35 am
Without context or explanation, this is a worthless list. Frankly, you haven’t given us a damn thing except a place to start, and those not inclined to read into the details (clearly not you, as you so smugly point out) won’t go any further than looking at this and simply projecting their feelings about the president, good or bad, onto what they see here.

In short, you did a great job half-assing this. Way to earn your bread, journalist.

Yeah L Brown, these were just little insignificant facts that Jamie gave us. Keep glossing over the facts like most liberals. Bottomline your tax increase is coming but, you are just to blind to see it or you just don’t understand it.

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what would the change in the sale of life insurance accomplish?

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Fix the “Waste, Fraud and Abuse” in Medicaid/Medicare? Waste, Fraud and Abuse is what the Obama administration is all about.
Plus incompetence.
This country really needs a leader.

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There is no republican plan to create jobs. Can anyone prove that the Senate has a bill from the republican house to create jobs? Kramer?

Wake up people!!!

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What about the amendment to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act included in the fine print? This will allow mortgage companies and private debt collectors collecting student loans, mortgages, and any other government backed debt to harass people on their cellular telephones with several automated calls a day without repercussion. This is despite the fact that debt collection, especially abusive telephone calls to nondebtors (wrong number calls to people who don’t owe any money), results in the vast majority of consumer complaints to the FTC.

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Until you realize… gov’t doesn’t create jobs…. private enetrprise does…. Gov’t Can Get Out of the WAY !!!

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Kramer

What is the Republican plan other that get rid of government?

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“Reduce waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid ($110 million) ” That’s all? They are not trying very hard. See: “Sens. Carper and Coburn Lead Bipartisan Legislation to Combat Billions of Dollars in Waste, Fraud and Abuse in Medicare and Medicaid :

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@concerned for the military, All B.S. aside. The 20 and out in the military will be a thing of the past.
Retention will be a problem A lot of the early retirement programs will be impacted. There are only so many dollars available and long term pension plans are on the table. Print more money? it just devalues the currency.

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John@10:36

There is a common meme that corporations pay income taxes. This is simply false. First of all, some 2/3s of US corporations don’t owe any taxes in any given year, since they aren’t profitable enough to have positive tax rate–in much the same way that 40% of personal income tax filers owe zero or negative(!!?? yes, due to EITC and other credits, you can “owe” negative taxes) income taxes. But more importantly, when a corporation does pay taxes those taxes are simply a cost of doing business that is passed on to consumers, workers, and shareholders.

Even the federal government agrees with this concept. The Congressional Budget Office produced a report “THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX” in which it states

A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that consumers pay for the products the company produces.

That report goes on to say:

Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO’s review of the studies yields the following conclusions:

* The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
* The long-term burden of corporate or dividend taxation is unlikely to rest fully on corporate equity, because it will remain there only if marginal investment is not affected by those taxes. Most economists believe that the corporate tax system has some effect on investment decisions.
* Most evidence from closed-economy, general-equilibrium models suggests that given reasonable parameters, the long-term incidence of the corporate tax falls on capital in general.
* In the context of international capital mobility, the burden of the corporate tax may be shifted onto immobile factors (such as labor or land), but only to the degree that the capital and outputs of different countries can be substituted.
* In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
* Most attempts to distribute the burden of corporate taxation have neglected the possible importance of effects on the relative prices of products.

Corporate income taxes account for about $250-$300B in annual revenue for the federal government. Compliance costs for business to determine how much tax they owe is also estimated at about $200-$300B annually. In other words, it costs corporations almost as much slightly more to determine how much they owe as they actually owe. Then there is the inordinate amount of effort that goes into determining how to run the business when various tax considerations come into play instead of simply doing what’s best for the business for business reasons rather than tax reasons. For example, should we buy a new truck this year, or build new factory, or hire a 50th employee. Each action can have tax implications that may have a greater influence on decisions made than does the business implications. And virtually all of these taxes and compliance costs get passed on directly to consumers/labor/shareholders.

The federal corporate statutory tax rate is 35%, one of the highest in the world, and the United States is the only country that seeks to double-tax income of multinationals. The rate and the related policies are often cited by businesses when they defend their decisions to off-shore production and jobs or structure their business to legally avoid US taxes (including keeping some $1T overseas rather than face the US taxes if they repatriated the income).

Almost every bit of “corporate welfare” comes in the form of special tax breaks which allow favored industries or even favored companies to avoid some part of the corporate tax code. Also note that a large portion of the potentially corruptive influence on Congress comes in the form of corporate lobbyists trying to “rent-seek” by getting tax provisions passed which benefit their clients.

Given the above, completely eliminating the federal corporate income tax makes a world of sense.

This accomplishes a number of things in one fell swoop. It ends the vast majority of corporate welfare (which usually takes the form of preferential tax treatment). It unburdens the economy of the US relative to the rest of the world, since 0% is a lot less than 10, 20 or 30, or 35%–certainly some multinationals will rush to move their HQs to the USA? It frees up some $300B/yr (more or less) in compliance costs that US companies spend each year just to figure out how to minimize their taxes. Removing the tax burden and compliance costs would make it more feasible for some, but not all, activities (and the jobs) that had been previously offshored to return here, i.e., those jobs which were *almost* but not quite worth keeping here.

The “cost” for this move would have an initial price tag of $250B/yr (more or less). This is the amount that the IRS collects from corporate taxes each year. However, since a large share of the $250B in corporate taxes no longer to be paid and the $300B (more or less) no longer to be spent in compliance costs will be returned to shareholders, they will pay income taxes on those dividends; and some of that money will also go to workers who might be given raises and will pay taxes on those raises.

In other words, recognizing that corporations pass on the cost of taxes, eliminating the corporate tax would largely just move the corporate profits into individuals pockets, where it would be taxed under the income tax code. Then there’s the positive economic impact of corporations moving their HQs and some production back to this country, those relocated and rehired workers would be paying income taxes, too. Consumers will benefit when the remainder of those savings are passed to them, although this will not necessarily replace revenues (it could, if the economy improves further as a result of lower prices and improved consumer confidence).

To further offset the “cost”, we can eliminate the IRS workers, programs, etc. charged with collecting the corporate taxes in the in first place, but a better use would probably be to refocus them on collecting the nearly $300B/yr estimated to exist in the “tax gap” between personal income taxes owed and those actually paid. In other words, if we could simply collect the full amount of personal income taxes owed, it would completely offset the baseline of missing corporate income taxes (not including the offsetting elements I mentioned above).

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@concerned for Military, I believe it will the 20 and out will be done over time. With new recruits being placed on a 401k style, (403-b) program. Most federal and state departments will be using this type of retirement format in the next 10-15 years. (maybe sooner). As far as recruitment and retention, the short timers that are looking for training for 4-6 years will come and go. The career military staff will have less incentive to stay on and will be difficult if not impossible to replace. So, time will tell.

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The U.S. armed forces was considered a safe haven during economic crisis or if poverty was an issue in someone’s life. Now a great many of the new applicants have college degrees. and that is to ENLIST, not to recieve a commission as an officer. It was explained to me by a command master chief in 2001. a small professional active duty force and a huge reservist augment resembling that of the Canadian armed forces.

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Obama used “reduce waste in Medicare” as an offset to the costs of ObamaCare. How many times does he get to pull out these same savings for other programs? Why has he waited almost three years on reducing this waste if he really can do it? Next thing you know, free trips to Disney World for “the less fortunate” by reducing Medicare waste.

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Lest we be led to believe that only Republicans bow to their corporate overlords, consider this NY Times account of how GE secured a significant piece of corporate welfare and the example it make for the concept of corruption of Congress as relates to tax code manipulation:

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“The shelters are so crucial to G.E.’s bottom line that when Congress threatened to let the most lucrative one expire in 2008, the company came out in full force. G.E. officials worked with dozens of financial companies to send letters to Congress and hired a bevy of outside lobbyists.

“The head of its tax team, Mr. Samuels, met with Representative Charles B. Rangel, then chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, which would decide the fate of the tax break. As he sat with the committee’s staff members outside Mr. Rangel’s office, Mr. Samuels dropped to his knee and pretended to beg for the provision to be extended — a flourish made in jest, he said through a spokeswoman.

“That day, Mr. Rangel reversed his opposition to the tax break, according to other Democrats on the committee.

“The following month, Mr. Rangel and Mr. Immelt stood together at St. Nicholas Park in Harlem as G.E. announced that its foundation had awarded $30 million to New York City schools, including $11 million to benefit various schools in Mr. Rangel’s district. Joel I. Klein, then the schools chancellor, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who presided, said it was the largest gift ever to the city’s schools.

“Mr. Rangel, who was censured by Congress last year for soliciting donations from corporations and executives with business before his committee, said this month that the donation was unrelated to his official actions.

————————

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To find a metaphor for the failed Obama presidency, look no further than Solyndra. Before it went bankrupt, the solar panel manufacturer was more than the recipient of a $535 million loan guarantee from the federal government. It was the model for the White House effort to put the American economy on a “new foundation.” Solyndra was environmentally friendly, technologically advanced, and politically correct. It was an exporter, not an importer. Politicians and government were instrumental in the company’s growth. The money disbursed to Solyndra, it was said, would “multiply” throughout the economy, creating jobs and increasing consumer spending. “Keep up the good work!” wrote an administration official to a Solyndra executive last May. “We’re cheering for you.” That was before the bankruptcy filing. Before the 1,100 lost jobs and the empty 650,000-square-foot production facility in Fremont, California. Before the FBI raid of Solyndra headquarters. Before the House Energy Committee released emails suggesting the Solyndra loan was rushed and improperly vetted. These days the White House is tight-lipped. The Solyndra loan was part of a $38.6 billion program to aid green energy that the Washington Post says has created exactly 3,545 jobs. (That’s $10,888,575 in loans per job, for those of you without a calculator.) In today’s economy, risks are socialized while profit is privatized. The government uses deficit spending to shape investment decisions and support markets that otherwise wouldn’t exist. Political connections determine the recipients of government largesse. Rentiers conceal their self-interest behind the organic hemp cloak of environmentalism and global “competitiveness.” The illusion can be maintained for a time, but in the end the bill comes due. There’s no money left. And everything disappears.

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