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that is not change
this is speaking with forked tongue
http://www.nypost.com/seven/11242008...sh__140527.htm
By DAPHNE RETTER IN WASHINGTON, DC, and DAN MANGAN IN NY
POWER FORWARD: President-elect Barack Obama takes a time out from transition planning yesterday and arrives at the University of Chicago to enjoy a basketball break.Last updated: 6:59 am
November 24, 2008
Posted: 3:03 am
November 24, 2008
He doesn't take office for another two months, but President-elect Barack Obama is already indicating he'll renege on a key campaign promise.
Obama's top advisers said yesterday he's "likely" to back off from his vow to speed up the elimination of a tax break for the wealthy.
The about-face on the issue comes as the US careens toward recession, and as Obama says he wants Congress to approve huge new spending and new tax cuts to stimulate the economy.
Currently, single and married-filing-jointly taxpayers who earn more than $357,700 annually pay a top tax rate of 35 percent, a level Congress set at the behest of President Bush in 2001. That rate is set to revert to the prior rate of 39.6 percent at the end of 2010.
Obama campaigned on the vow to eliminate the "Bush tax cut" before it was due to expire, arguing that the wealthy needed the tax break less than the middle class did.
But yesterday, Bill Daley, one of Obama's advisers and a former commerce secretary, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that it looks "more likely than not" that Obama will not end the tax break early, but instead will allow it to expire as originally planned in 2010.
Asked about that prospect on "Fox News Sunday," Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod said, "Those considerations will be made."
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) was not happy about the idea of maintaining the tax breaks for another two years.
"I think we've got to drop those tax cuts for a number of reasons. We just cannot afford to continue them," Levin told CNN's "Late Edition."
Also yesterday, top congressional Democrats supported Obama's proposal for "a big-number" spending-and-tax-cut plan that would greatly exceed the $175 billion recovery package he called for last month. Obama on Saturday said he wants to create or save 2.5 million jobs with that plan.
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) told ABC's "This Week" that he believes the new plan needs to be funded to the tune of between $500 billion and $700 billion - and predicted Congress would have a stimulus package ready for Obama to sign by Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
"And that's because our economy's in serious, serious trouble," said Schumer (D-NY). "So a strong shot in the arm, just the way Barack Obama has conceived it . . . is what we need. And most economists say, to make this work, you need about 5 percent of [gross domestic product], which would be $700 billion. I think we need a large one."
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that is not change
this is speaking with forked tongue
The cut in estate taxes will cost the Treasury $800B - $1T over the expiring lifetime of the cuts.
I don't agree with Obama on this point. The tax cuts for the rich do not trickle down, as has been demonstrated repeatedly.
It could be pragmatism. Conventional wisdom is that you don't raise taxes in the teeth of a recession.
At the opportune moment -- supposing that will be one in Obama's first term -- you can be sure he will raise taxes. He'll have to, to help pay for bailout, stimulus, infrastructure and health care.
If Obama were to keep his promise to "spread the wealth around" now, with foreseeably detrimental results for the broader economy, he'd not be doing us or himself any favors.
On the whole, I rather have him be a "hypocrite" and put if off for awhile.
I guess the question is, then, why make the promise in the first place? It's not like things are much different now than they were when he was campaigning.
it's complicated......trying to clean up this mess that dip created.
i guess the best thing to do is about a guy thats not even the president, yet.
I disagree. Things are way different. Obama's the president-elect now. Campaign's over. Time to turn around and piss on the party base. It's a time-honored Democratic party pastime.
The credit crunch may be a little over a year old, but it didn't become a systemic crisis until Lehman was permitted to go s up in mid-September.
Not even Bernanke and Paulson understood the problem to begin with, and even now they don't seem too sure what to do, besides continuing to save the whales who got wiped out at the casino. Besides backstopping the whole effing banking and finance sector, we can expect Keynesian megastimulus.$500-$700 billion for starters.
All of the options are potentially disastrous at this point. Nobody knows the correct policy. I'm not religiously inclined, but I might find time to pray the Deity wisdom and and luck for our president.
"not like things are much different now"
false, since Paulsen killed his/Goldman rival Lehman, world-wide banking system has effectively collapsed.
just don't call him a reneger to his face...
What about "renega"?just don't call him a reneger to his face...
that's acceptable...
What we see now is not something that happened between 11/4 and today. It was in motion long before the election and during the campaign process. If eliminating the tax-break is a bad idea now, it was a bad idea then and he should have been willing to say so. Instead (LIKE EVERY POLITICIAN OUT THERE), Obama said what he needed to in order to get the votes he needed to get.
I think it would be interesting to list a series of issues facing America, with several possible policies for the Obama Administration to consider. I would take this list, post it at Huffington (and ST), and ask Obama supporters to go on the record stating which policies they support. I would also ask them to comment on the policies they dislike.
I would do all this to force them to be honest when Obama inevitably does something they do not like. It seems to me, sometimes, that he can say and do whatever he wants, and a large number of people will support him just because they like his personality or what he supposedly represents. Change and hope.
Which dubya supporters have attempted to force dubya, head, Rummy, neo-c*nts to be be honest about their pre-2000, hidden agenda to invade Iraq, no matter what?
Even coroporate MSM called out McNasty and pitbull on their outright lies and egregious distortions, but the right-wing is OK with that.
Do we really have right-winger ing about Obama letting the wealthy keep their tax cuts?
Accountability is an orphan.
Remember how tiresome the cries of "it's Bill Clinton's fault" became?
"It's all Bush's fault" is going to put it in the shade. He's the new Herbert Hoover.
I'm completely on board with this. I think I said said he should have changed the tax position even before the election. Spend now, tax later.
Oh, and
He broke his promise to spread the wealth around? Joe the Plumber will be crestfallen.
Nobody's ing, and no one is shifting blame. My only statement is, he obviously knew eliminating the tax break was undoable...but touted it as a campaign platform anyway. I guess I just want people who are all over his nuts to realize that he was saying things just to get votes...in other words, he's not all change and hope, but will turn out to be politics as usual.
I'm not sure that saying he would make some tax breaks for the well-off expire sooner really got him that many votes, aside from making his spending numbers look like they weren't going to add as much to the deficit. The tax cuts for everyone else? Definitely.Of course you are.
I couldn't disagree more.The extraordinary economic challenge we face will require extraordinary countermeasures, for good and for ill.
The next four years will be anything but politics as usual and could be an epochal realignment like the New Deal, with all that would mean for hopes and fears.
The hope and change are still there-- problem is, he inherited a house and had certain plans for additions and repairs, but before being able to do those things the house caught fire. The main objective now is to put out the fire, which makes a change of priorities completely sensible.
I was hoping Obama would change his stance on these tax cuts.
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