Six Months to Go Until the Largest Tax Hikes in History

http://www.atr.org/six-months-untilbr-largest-tax-hikes-a5171

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care and adoption tax credits will be cut.

The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.

Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The dividends tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.

Second Wave: Obamacare

There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).

The “Special Needs Kids Tax” This provision of Obamacare imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts (FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be particularly cruel and onerous: parents of special needs children. There are thousands of families with special needs children in the United States, and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education. Tuition rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in Washington, D.C. (National Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year. Under tax rules, FSA dollars can be used to pay for this type of special needs education.

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.

Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes

When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:

The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.

Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”

Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.

Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.

Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Under current law, a retired person with an IRA can contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Obama, who 'Excluded Lobbyists', has Appointed 50

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama_-who-_excluded-lobbyists__-has-appointed-50-89531802.html

The appointment of the 50th lobbyist to a policymaking job by a president who claims he's "excluded" them.

It's important here to set the record straight about what a senator's "hold" is. A "hold" cannot prevent confirmation or even block a vote on confirmation -- that requires a 41-vote filibuster to block cloture or one-man filibuster right out of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington." A "hold" is an objection to the unanimous-consent decree that would allow confirmation without debate.

So, most of Obama's recess nominations were not about circumventing a filibuster -- labor lawyer Craig Becker was the only one of the 15 who was being filibustered. The other 14 recess appointments were efforts to avoid debate and discussion. Obama says he just wants to get down to business. But given Obama's clear desire to portray his administration as lobbyist-free, it's also good politics to skip a public floor debate over four lobbyist appointees.

Obama Administration Awarded Hundreds of Thousands in Airport Grants to Stupak’s District 2 Days Before Vote

http://www.nrcc.org/codered/dealwatch/?p=52

Was this Yet Another Backroom Deal to Force Obama’s Bill Down the American People’s Throats?

Three airports in the district of infamous fence-sitting and ultimately kowtowing Democrat Bart Stupak were awarded $726,409 in grants by the Obama Administration just two days before a vote on Obama and Pelosi’s government takeover of healthcare.

Did Stupak compromise his supposed principled stand against taxpayer funding of abortion in exchange for taxpayer dollars for pet projects?

Backdoor Taxes to Hit Middle Class

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/100201/us/usreport_us_budget_backdoortaxes

The Obama administration's plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year -- effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.
The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration's Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 -- though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a "patch" that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year's levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy -- the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

• Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;
• The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;
• The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;
• Individuals who don't itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;
• The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.
  

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky on Organizing for America's Recommended Reading List

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2010/01/atlas-exclusive-obama-organizing-for-communism-and-youth-corps-in-the-public-school-1.html

Her government class passed out this propaganda recruiting paper so students could sign up as interns for Obama's Organizing for America (OFA is the former mybarackobama.com site.)
Obama is using our public school system to recruit for his Alinsky-inspired private army. Organizing for America is (and I quote) recruiting in our high schools to "build on the movement that elected President Obama by empowering students across the country to help us bring about our agenda" ............of national socialism.

Check out the recommended reading list page 4:

• Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky
• The New Organizers, Zack Exley
• Stir It Up: Lessons from Community Organizing and Advocacy, Rinku Sen
• Obama Field Organizers Plot a Miracle, Zack Exley, Huffington Post
• Dreams of My Father Chicago Chapters, Barack Hussein Obama

State Department Admits No-Bid Contract 'Violates' Obama Campaign Pledges

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/01/31/state-department-admits-bid-contract-violates-obama-campaign-pledges/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+foxnews%2Flatest+%28Text+-+Latest+Headlines%29

The recent awarding of a lucrative federal contract to a company owned by a financial contributor to the Obama presidential campaign -- without competitive bidding -- "violated" President Obama's many campaign pledges to crack down on the practice, a top State Department official told Fox News.

The contract in question, worth more than $24.6 million, was awarded on Jan. 4 by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to Checchi and Company Consulting, a Washington, D.C.-based firm owned by economist and Democratic Party donor Vincent Checchi. The deal called for Checchi's firm to train lawyers and judges in Afghanistan and thereby strengthen the "rule of law" in the war-torn country.

Crowley confirmed that the contract has been "terminated" because the circumstances under which it was awarded “violated the Competition in Contracting Act." Crowley said the contract was actually a renewal of a $44 million contract first awarded to Checchi and Company in October 2004 by the Bush administration -- after a competitive bidding process -- and will now be put out for competitive bids.

Obama Plan Has $79 Billion From Cap-and-Trade in 2012

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=aAO_KEIgeOOc

President Barack Obama’s budget plan assumes $78.7 billion in revenue in 2012 from the sale of greenhouse-gas emission permits to polluters, putting pressure on Congress to pass legislation by early next year.

A “cap-and-trade” program would generate a total of $645.7 billion by 2019, according to the budget blueprint Obama sent to Congress today. Initial funds would be used to invest in “clean” energy, help finance Obama’s tax credit for workers as well as offset higher energy costs for low- and middle-income people and clean up costs for small businesses.

The budget calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to get $19 million to begin setting up an inventory of greenhouse- gas emissions that most scientists say are causing rising temperatures and sea levels. Obama has asked Congress to send him a bill that would create an emissions trading system, putting a mandatory cap on carbon-dioxide pollution nationwide for the first time in the U.S.

Alito Winces as Obama Slams Supreme Court Ruling

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2010/01/28/crossroads/entry6149295.shtml

Obama's frontal assault on the Supreme Court in a State of the Union is almost unheard of for a President. Typically, Presidents who get bad Supreme Court rulings (and they've all gotten their share) grimace and bear it, taking the position that the "court has spoken." I don't ever remember a Democratic president, in a State of the Union address, take on the Supreme Court for a recent decision and dare Congress to overturn it.

Heritage Responds To The State Of The Union

http://blog.heritage.org/2010/01/27/reaction-roundup-heritage-responds-to-the-state-of-the-union/

The President's Bank Reforms Don't Add Up

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704509704575019333516533828.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

First, Mr. Obama has proposed to limit the size of banks or their holding companies, or both. The trouble with limiting the size of these institutions is that no one has the faintest idea what the right size is.


The Glass-Steagall Act, despite what we constantly hear in the media and from people who should know better, still applies to banks; it forbids them from engaging in underwriting or dealing in securities. This should prohibit them from engaging in proprietary trading to the extent that this is dealing in securities. Bank holding companies, however, because they are not banks and not government-backed, can engage in any financial activity, including securities dealing. Why would we prohibit them from doing so when they are using their own funds?

Real-estate loans rose to 55% of all bank loans in 2008 from less than 25% in 1965. These loans will continue to rise in the future, because only real-estate, small business and consumer lending are now accessible activities for banks.

This is not a good trend, because the real-estate sector is highly cyclical and volatile. It was, indeed, the vast number of subprime and other risky mortgages in our financial system that caused the weakness of the banks and the financial crisis. Requiring banks to continue to lend to real estate, because they have few other alternatives, virtually guarantees another banking crisis in the future.

Obama Said "Big Difference" Between '10 and '94 is "Me"

http://www.politico.com/blogs/glennthrush/0110/Berry_Obama_said_big_difference_between_10_and_94_is_me.html
Berry recounted meetings with White House officials, reminiscent of some during the Clinton days, where he and others urged them not to force Blue Dogs “off into that swamp” of supporting bills that would be unpopular with voters back home.

“I’ve been doing that with this White House, and they just don’t seem to give it any credibility at all,” Berry said. “They just kept telling us how good it was going to be. The president himself, when that was brought up in one group, said, ‘Well, the big difference here and in ’94 was you’ve got me.’ We’re going to see how much difference that makes now.”

The Backlash Is Coming!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704586504574654602781512842.html

That election, which will be held on Tuesday, was widely seen as a formality. Ms. Coakley coasted through the holiday season while the GOP challenger, little-known state Sen. Scott Brown, scrambled for traction.

Those extremes are cropping up as issues in this race. One is giving civilian legal rights to terror suspects, which Ms. Coakley supports.

Another issue is taxes. Mr. Brown has scolded Ms. Coakley for supporting a repeal of the Bush tax cuts, for entertaining the idea of passing a "war tax," and for proclaiming in a recent debate that "we need to get taxes up." Ms. Coakley says she meant that tax revenues, not rates, need to rebound. Nonetheless, Mr. Brown's critique resonates with voters who are smarting from a 25% hike in sales tax last year.

Support for the state's universal health-care law, close to 70% in 2008, is also in free fall; only 32% of state residents told Rasmussen earlier this month that they'd call it a success, with 36% labeling it a failure. The rest were unsure. Massachusetts families pay the country's highest health insurance premiums, with costs soaring at a rate 7% ahead of the national average, according to a recent report by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Fund.

Reid Apologizes for 'no Negro dialect' Comment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100109/ap_on_el_se/us_obama_reid

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada described in private then-Sen. Barack Obama as "light skinned" and "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Obama is the nation's first African-American president.

"I deeply regret using such a poor choice of words. I sincerely apologize for offending any and all Americans, especially African-Americans for my improper comments," Reid said in a statement released after the excerpts were first reported on the Web site of The Atlantic.

Interesting given the fact that Obama was not so quick to forgive racist comments from the other side of the aisle:
http://weeklystandard.com/tws/daily/daily.asp#blog-307820

[Obama] said: "The Republican Party itself has to drive out Trent Lott. If they have to stand for something, they have to stand up and say this is not the person we want representing our party."

Up to 20% of Former Gitmo detainees are Suspected of or Confirmed to have Engaged in terrorist Activity After Their Release

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a7ab2K_0_80Y

As many as one in five former Guantanamo Bay detainees are suspected of or confirmed to have engaged in terrorist activity after their release, U.S. officials said, citing the latest government statistics.

The 20 percent rate is an increase over the 14 percent of former inmates that an April Pentagon report said were thought to have joined terrorist efforts, said the officials, who requested anonymity. The officials didn’t provide the numbers on which the 20 percent is based.

The Obamacare Horror Story You Won’t Hear

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/06/19/the-obamacare-horror-story-you-won’t-hear/

Following the Adams incident, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) blasted Mrs. Obama and Mr. Axelrod’s grand plan. The group released a statement expressing “grave concerns that the University of Chicago’s policy toward emergency patients is dangerously close to ‘patient dumping,’ a practice made illegal by the Emergency Medical Labor and Treatment Act (EMTALA)” – signed by President Reagan, by the way – “and reflected an effort to ‘cherry pick’ wealthy patients over poor.”

Rewarding political cronies at the expense of the poor while posing as guardians of the downtrodden? Welcome to Obamacare.

Spy Chiefs Turn on President Obama

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1239941/Spy-chiefs-turn-President-Obama-seven-CIA-agents-slaughtered-Afghanistan.html

Barack Obama was accused of double standards yesterday in his treatment of the CIA.
The President paid tribute to secret agents after seven of them were killed by a suicide bomber in Afghanistan.

In a statement, he said the CIA had been ‘tested as never before’ and that agents had ‘served on the front lines in directly confronting the dangers of the 21st century’.
He lauded the victims as ‘part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens and for our way of life’.

Yet the previous day he had blasted ‘systemic failures’ in the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies for failing to prevent the Christmas Day syringe bomb attack.

‘One day the President is pointing the finger and blaming the intelligence services, saying there is a systemic failure,’ said one agency official. ‘Now we are heroes. The fact is that we are doing everything humanly possible to stay on top of the security situation. The deaths of our operatives shows just how involved we are on the ground.’

Obama just says whatever is politically correct at the moment, he doesn't mean any of it.

Obama Gives Interpol Free Hand in U.S.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/Obama-gives-Interpol-free-hand-in-U_S_-8697583-80291137.html

There are multiple reasons why this Obama decision is so deeply disturbing. First, the Obama order reverses a 1983 Reagan administration decision in order to grant Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, two key privileges. First, Obama has granted Interpol the ability to operate within the territorial limits of the United States without being subject to the same constitutional restraints that apply to all domestic law enforcement agencies such as the FBI. Second, Obama has exempted Interpol's domestic facilities -- including its office within the U.S. Department of Justice -- from search and seizure by U.S. authorities and from disclosure of archived documents in response to Freedom of Information Act requests filed by U.S. citizens. Think very carefully about what you just read: Obama has given an international law enforcement organization that is accountable to no other national authority the ability to operate as it pleases within our own borders, and he has freed it from the most basic measure of official transparency and accountability, the FOIA.

Our Inept Government's Responds to the Christmas Day Bomber

"System worked?"


"Allegedly? Suspect?"


"Systemic Failure?"


So which is it? The truth is the system failed because our leaders don't view this as a war. They view it as a police action. The see each incident separately. They don't understand that these people want to kill us no matter what. They think that tolerance and kindness will disuade these maniacs from strapping explosives to their crouches. They are so afraid of "offending" someone at airport screening that they put everyone under undue scrutiny. They are so afraid of a racism charge that they pretend to increase security by installing new machines and new policies. In reality though, it is how you train the people who use them. If you are taught not to single out those that are most likely to be terrorists, but rather use random screening, we have failed. If the enemy most of the time fits a neat description, common sense says we single out those people.

Transvestites, Mao ,and Obama Ornaments Decorate White House Christmas Tree

http://biggovernment.com/2009/12/22/transvestites-mao-and-obama-decorate-white-house-christmas-tree/