Obama Takes the Pledge: I Will Cut Taxes on Families Making Less Than $250K
And he also notes that John McCain will raise everyone’s taxes via a new tax on your health care benefits.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aa4ipe4fhU[/youtube]
More like this please!
Tags: 2008 Presidential, Barack Obama
Serious (not snarky) question: will he also couple this with a promise to cut the deficit and work towards a balanced budget?
That’s the primary problem I have with his tax plan: he cuts revenue by 3.3 trillion over ten years with current baseline spending and promises billions of new spending.
How are we going to pay for that?
First the Democrats have to clean up the huge pile of poop left by eight years of Bush. After that’s cleaned up, the Democrats will AGAIN balance the budget.
Democrats, America’s Mom.
The sad thing is that y’all actually believe Senator Obama. The man is lying to you; I know it, and, deep down, you know it, too.
“Democrats, America’s Mom.”
Got that right. Nanny state.
You must mean America’s nanny…the one that raids the liquor cabinet :
http://www.nysun.com/editorials/a-democratic-deficit/82808/
Gosh, how many years (decades) and how lopsided a majority do you need before the Democrat congress starts taking responsibility? 100% control? 40 years (like your last run)? That enough for you?
Newt and the 104th GOP Congress took control in 1/95 inheriting the Democrats’ $281B deficit.
By FY’ 98 the Republican Congress had reduced it to $113B, a 77% reduction after just two years at the helm, and balanced it by 2000.
What’s your excuse now? Why are deficits exploding with Democrats in power?
Don’t tell me…these things take time, right? Oh and I almost forgot…the budget balancing was all Bill Clinton’s doing. We all know that was always his agenda…
Reality check : Clinton and the 103rd (Democrat) Congress created the $281B deficit the 104th Congress inherited. But hey it was less than their $347B deficit for FY ’93.
I am not absolving Republicans of their woeful big government deficit ways under the reckless Bush administration.
But the Democrats are equally blameworthy for our national debt and the massive deficits they have written since taking Congress, as well as their guiding hand in them over decades past.
You guys remind me of the center fielder Smith sent in to replace Jones, who was screwing up. Then Smith starts making errors, comes back and says “Geez, coach, Smith has center field so screwed up, no one can play it!”
“Smith has center field so screwed up, no one can play it!””
Correction : “Jones has center field so screwed up, no one can play it!”
Which gov’t has been more intrusive in our lives, the Democrats or the Republicans?
“Which gov’t has been more intrusive in our lives, the Democrats or the Republicans?”
Take Bush out of the equation, the Democrats by a mile.
Include him, and they are about even.
“Which gov’t has been more intrusive in our lives, the Democrats or the Republicans?”
Democrats. Then again a slide towards socialism always involves more government intrusion into the lives of citizens. There is no other way.
Tyler wants us to make pretend that only the Congress has anything to do with the budget. Most of the folks reding this understand that Presidents submit budgets to Congress.
Most folks know that Congress passing that budget (and making their changes) requires a veto-proof majority. If Republicans in Congress were not hell-bent in just being obstructionist or stamping their feet to get their way, we’d likely have somewhat more responsible budgets. The GOP Congress did get some help via 1) good budgets sent to Congress by Clinton and 2) some Democrats who crossed the fabled aisle to get Clinton’s budgets passed. (We all remember when Newt stamped his feet to get his budget — he shut down the government and still hasn’t quite paid for the overreaching.)
What Tyler really ought to be in here ranting and raving about are the repubs he has been personally lobbying to try to reach across the aisle to get better budgets passed. Or even to stop funding for the war, which would be a start towards getting the budget under some control. Or to roll back tax subsidies. Or, you get the idea.
But make no mistake that most of the readers of this blog don’t know where the obstruction comes from.
Cassandra wrote:
It’s kind of difficult to blame obstruction on the Republicans: they didn’t obstruct President Bush’s budgets when they had control of the Congress, and aren’t in a position to obstruct them now that they are in the minority. And it’s obvious that the Democrats have done nothing to obstruct the president’s budgets; they’ve just modified them at the edges.
Obviously the Republicans aren’t going to try “to stop funding for the war,” and neither were the Democrats. If Senator Obama is elected [heaven forfend!] we still won’t leave Iraq “precipitously.”
Cassandra, you know just as well as I do that Mr Obama is deliberately lying to you.
The sad thing is that y’all actually believe Senator Obama. The man is lying to you; I know it, and, deep down, you know it, too.
Cassandra, you know just as well as I do that Mr Obama is deliberately lying to you.
Dana, we all know that Republicans repeat and repeat their lie until it becomes a truth. That might work elsewhere, but it is not going to work here.
So because Republican’s do it that means Obama cannot? You folks have your heads in the sand if you believe he’s not going to raise your taxes.
Have any of you read his blueprint for change? How is he going to pay for the innumerable new government programs he’s proposing? (I lost count of how many there were) How is he going to pay for universal health care? Balance the budget? Save social security?
Reality just doesn’t line up with what he’s saying. If he won’t raise taxes on 95% of Americans where’s the money coming from to fund what would be the biggest expansion of the federal government since FDR?
It’s kind of difficult to blame obstruction on the Republicans: they didn’t obstruct President Bush’s budgets when they had control of the Congress, and aren’t in a position to obstruct them now that they are in the minority.
Jesus, Dana — this is the kind of thing that you repubs do to each other. No one here (other than your ideological compatriots) actually buys this.
Folks on your blog would, tho.
The repub record: Torture. Warrantless spying. Endless war. Hundreds of thousands dead. Failure to defend the country on 9/11. Imprisonment without charges, trial, or representation. Massive socialism for the rich. Trillion dollar bailouts of failing businesses with tax money. Huge government deficits. Stolen elections and voter suppression. Government control of women’s bodies. Discrimination. Political prosecutions by the Justice Department. Perjury. Constant lies and always blaming somebody else.
This is who you are, Mike W., Chris, Dana, TPN and all the other right wing nuts who blather in here. The past 8 years have been nothing but the above, and yet you ALWAYS defend your party in spite of what you have done to our country. You and your repub brethren have destroyed the moral authority of the U.S. and the freedom that made it great. You have failed to defend both the Constitution and the country. Hopefully, there will come a day soon when you and your totalitarian ilk will no longer be welcome in polite society.
Ignoring the innumerable inaccuracies of the above statement, what does it have to do with Obama or taxes?
Damn nice comment anonone.
Which statements are inaccurate mike w.? Point them out and then we can dissect them one by one.
Can’t balance the budget until we are out of the recession. It might be years. Think about it.
TPN, How many repubs voted for Clinton’s first economic plan, the plan that actually brought the economic prosperity that we had in the 90s?
Hint: You don’t need your fingers to count.
Attack me all you like, Cass and whoever. I am not taking the bait. I believe Congress writes the budgets and is the primary responsible branch of government for surpluses and/or deficit. Show me otherwise in the constitution, by statute, or by a couple centuries of governing practice. You can split all the hairs you want and come up with all the pointy little retorts your hearts desire. It doesn’t change the reality that you and your party are as much to blame for the fiscal insanity in Washington as your fellow big government travelers in the Bush administration. Now you are more to blame, because your do-nothing Congress you screamed to get control into your hands is even worse than the Republicans you replaced.
I simply don’t share the view of many here that the presidency should be so exalted as to be the answer to all your hopes and dreams, etc etc ad nauseam. The presidency should be subordinate to our Congress, end of story. You all here at DL and DU and wherever are not helping empower the people’s body by giving your Democratic Congress a free pass while worshipping at the altar of a would-be political chieftain-savior.
I’ll say it again : the Republican electeds of the last 7 years are culpable for this fiscal mess. And so are the Democrats.
Here now you try it….”The Democrats are equally to blame, and have no excuse for the last 2 years of hand-sitting while deficits skyrocket…..”
Oh, who am I kidding. I am trying to speak logic and reality to blind partisans.
You can’t have it both ways people.
DPN wrote:
Well, we’ll see, won’t we. I followed the embedded link, and see that you have a WordPress-based blog of your own. There is a post scheduled to appear on my humble site on September 30, 2009, at 6:30 AM, entitled “Did President Obama propose the tax relief on which he campaigned?” I’ve said, flat out, that he is lying. WordPress enables you to write today, and schedule the post to appear in the future. Write one, set it for an hour later than mine, just to remind your readers, and perhaps the readers of this fine site, to see whether I was right or not.
Naturally, if Senator McCain wins, I’ll delete the post. But here you have it, my word, that if Senator Obama wins, the post will remain up and ready to go — unless I die before then — and you can check on who was telling the truth.
By the way, even if you postdate something, WordPress sends out pings as soon as you hit the publish button, so you might want to save references in another format, and then edit them to ping once your post appears.
What Tyler really ought to be in here ranting and raving about are the repubs he has been personally lobbying to try to reach across the aisle to get better budgets passed. Or even to stop funding for the war, which would be a start towards getting the budget under some control. Or to roll back tax subsidies. Or, you get the idea.
*
TPN has been a BIG disappointment of late.
Is is that hard to get elected without reaching for the hovering teat? (well, yup).
That’s funny.
Tyler, you come over here demanding that we all stand and deliver on whatever ideological narrative you are peddling today and then back off when you are reminded of its details. It doesn’t matter, though and even casual readers of this thread will know that there is no one here who is exalting the Presidency. Casual readers here will note that you need to retreat by accusing us of some libertarian delusion.
And, Dana — so you aren’t saying that Obama is not lying about his plan, now? You are preplacing the lie to a year from now? This is serious?
Have you spent as much time talking about the McCain lies? Or, the flip flops?
You got nothing but lies going on in your guy’s campaign and you are really here preplacing a lie bet?
Dude — work this mess over at Red State — you’ll be a star, I’m promising.
Attack, attack, attack away. It sucks to be exposed for the partisans you are, no? Get over it. You don’t walk on water, and the Republicans certainly don’t breathe fire.
As for me personally, since Cass wants to sting me personally…just because we may agree on certain principles doesn’t mean I am going to be another echo around here.
Cass, take a lude baby. Convince yourself of whatever you like. You haven’t really answered any of my points, and your pissy response is….well, just pissy.
And honestly, Nancy, why do you pick fights with everyone? Do I have to agree with you all the time, or I disappoint?
A little intellectual honesty and ideological diversity would serve you all well here. Hell, how about any ideology. “Democrat good, Republican evil…kill kill kill” is not ideology. It’s more like neurosis.
The incessant partisanship that has pretty much taken over this blog really belies some good thinkers here.
Why should we believe anything Obama says about taxes? He’s had at least three different tax plans since the start of the year. Each one gets progressively better for the middle class as Obama tries harder and harder to get more votes.
No one asks you to be an echo, Tyler, just have some honesty. If you don’t want a tough response that don’t come over here striking a tough pose.
And ideological diversity is just fine as long as it doesn’t mean accepting the RNC talking points as gospel. Which you already know.
Amen, Cassandra. Thankfully we can agree on something. Ditto DNC talking points.
I am not looking to strike any pose, tough or otherwise. I am curious though where I have not been honest, since you implied otherwise. Please cite where. Or do you mean intellectual honesty?
I can’t fathom you might actually believe that anyone who makes statements counter to your world view is therefore dishonest. That’s just plain twisted.
Sincerely, why do you all feel the need to personally attack and crudely malign the writer of any dissenting opinion or statement? Is it to drive them away? Believe me, it works. Having my honesty called into question so someone can score some cheap points is not worth the visit.
Look, you gotta understand where Tyler is coming from. His political mentor and former boss is Newt Gingrich, one of the most corrupt Speakers of the House in history. Also, he helped install the Bush-Cheney regime (and war criminal Donald Rumsfeld, in particular) after the stolen election of 2000 as a member of the Presidential Transition Team. So if you like the ethics and policies of repubs like Gingrich, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld than support Tyler. Yes, he’ll protest that he doesn’t support B/C, but actions always speak louder than words.
To wit…
Rather than re-hash the hysterics of this particularly nasty anon and her circular nonsense, you can see it all here at kavips :
http://kavips.wordpress.com/2008/07/30/priorities-november-4th/
I’m sorry. Did I miss the post on this blog defending the Dem Congress?
They have been spineless, imo, but spineless Dems are not the only, or the main, reason our country is in its sad state. They were elected to get us out of the disaster we call Iraq, and they have failed. And even if they didn’t have the votes they should have flooded the floor with bill after bill after bill.
Is that enough honesty? Now, let’s see if the other side can return the favor.
Cassandra asking Tyler for “honesty” and “ideological diversity?”
Wow! Now that’s laughable. I haven’t seen much of either from Cassandra, particularly the latter.
Amen, Pandora!! Thank you.
I believe the Republicans deserved to lose Congress and I had high hopes the Dems would act swiftly and surely on their promises to bring a tight rein upon the Bush administration. I share your disappointment.
However, after this last dismal Congress, and with more Dem pickups likely this year, I believe we need a countervailing force in the White House. I used to think otherwise about this arrangement, but now I believe divided government works best if only because it forces the parties to get down to brass tacks consensus rather than one party going berserk with power.
The most prosperous and productive periods in the last 30 years have come out of divided gov’t (Reagan and the Dems / Clinton and the GOP). Some of the worst periods have come with multi-branch control of the government by one party (Carter , Bush II).
One party rule is dangerous, no matter the party. 2001-2006 are sad testament to this and my party bears the most blame.
If Barack Obama really believes what he says, he should be ready to fight for his agenda with as much gusto in the Senate, over the next 4 years, as he has given to promoting himself for president. It may not be as glamorous and dizzying but it will surely show his true mettle.
If instead he just continues his campaign, a shallow absentee Senator looking for the spotlight rather than hunkering down as a policy workhorse in the Senate, we will know what he is really all about.
Here’s the problem. For some reason Americans don’t understand balance of power. Seriously, I believe if you took a poll asking people to rate the three branches of government in order of “power” most Americans would assign numbers – with Pres. being #1. Balance and equal are words you wouldn’t hear. Sad, but true.
If Obama wins he will have no choice but to fight for his agenda. All eyes will be on him, which I think is a good thing. Eyes on McCain? Not so much. After all we know what we will be getting, or rather not getting. (healthcare, etc.)
Oops! I’m late for a dinner engagement! I’ll finish my thoughts later.
Glad to see you’re supporting the top of your ticket again this year, Tyler. Nothing like another 4 years of murderous dishonest repub leadership to continue to destroy our country. BTW, speaking of “shallow absentee senators”, check Obama’s record versus Mcsame’s in the last year. McCain has missed 63.8 percent of the votes in the 110th Congress; Obama has missed 45.5 percent. Now I know that you are challenged by actual facts and real numbers, so to explain this to you, Mcsame has the been the MOST absent member of the 110th Senate. Not that it has mattered – he has rubberstamped B/C more than 90% of the time.
I am curious though where I have not been honest, since you implied otherwise.
1. You weren’t attacked in Post 11 and if pointed questions in response to your own pointed questions qualifies as an attack, then so be it. But I find it hard to believe that asking what you are doing to encourage the obstructionist repubs to join in a solution is either personal or an attack.
2. I believe Congress writes the budgets and is the primary responsible branch of government for surpluses and/or deficit. Show me otherwise in the constitution, by statute, or by a couple centuries of governing practice. What you believe doesn’t have alot to do with what I actually said here. Or perhaps you would like to explain why any President submitting a budget to Congress is a waste of time. Or, even better — why the repubs in this Congress feel the need to defend every bit of GWBs budgets?
3. The GOP mythology that they were the only ones responsible for the Clinton-era balanced budgets. I already noted the history is abit more complex than this and you know it. Between Clinton getting all in Newt’s base and stealing his agenda, and Robert Rubin insisting that the government get out of the competition for available credit AND Democrats who would vote for those budgets, the GOP had a decent climate to get some of that done. The GOP alone would have never gotten there (and your evidence is in the Gingrich shutdown).
4. I simply don’t share the view of many here that the presidency should be so exalted as to be the answer to all your hopes and dreams But this answers the questions I posed, how?
5. You haven’t really answered any of my points, and your pissy response is….well, just pissy. And you have answered mine — where?
I’m sorry that you feel that people asking you questions –pointed ones even– after you’ve asked some pointed ones makes you feel attacked. But I am not responsible for that. Nowhere in any of my responses did I let Dems off of the hook, but certainly did point out that repubs have a decent share of the responsibility since they defend every bit of BushCo madness there is. Why is that?
I am on record — in this very forum — as being critical of spying ventures (the FISA thing, esp. Obama voted for); certain major portions of Obama energy policy/subsidies; running the government on credit (the Obama plan creates a smaller deficit that the McCain one does and does some handwaving on payfors). I am on record on all of these because these are my own bête noires and I know enough on them to critique them. I am a river of letters and emails and phone calls to Congresspeople on these subjects — enough so that I am stunned I am not on a No Fly list. If you read this blog regularly, you also know that.
There is nothing that I’ve written in this thread that could be possibly construed as a personal attack on you and certainly have not disrespected you like this –“Cass, take a lude baby”. You haven’t gotten the mike w treatment (which he has earned and is on purpose) by me. I have read every word you’ve written to respond in kind. I haven’t reminded you that you hijacked this thread. But at the end of the day, I still asked a bunch of questions to your post that you still haven’t engaged with.
What’s hilarious is that we are faced with John McCain, who has told so many lies in the past month that even his buddies in the AP are calling him out on it – but the right wing dopes somehow want to convince us that Obama is lying because he might not do what he’s promised to.
Let me state this simply – would you take stock advice from someone who told you to invest in subprime mortgages a year and a half ago? Would you take heath advice from a tobacco executive? This is like a used car salesman telling you Consumer Reports is a scam.
I’ll use bold print for you dopes. I don’t take advice about what to believe from people who believe in lies. If you’re totally behind the liar, I don’t care what you believe about my guy, because you are not credible.
“You haven’t gotten the mike w treatment (which he has earned and is on purpose) by me.”
So I’ve earned your disrespect? That’s pretty damn sad on your part.
Tyler – Comment #35 is 100% pure excellence! Bravo.
Is there anyone whose disrespect you haven’t earned, Mike?
Oh it was never “earned.” I got it from the 1st time I dared take an opposing viewpoint to the DE Liberal klan. I don’t think I was commenting here a day before the merits of my arguments were dismissed out of hand and my age (or something else) were attacked instead.
I suppose maybe I should take it as a good thing that the liberals on this site disrespect me.
Cassandra wrote:
Yes, of course. Mr Obama is making a promise about what he will do, in the future, if he is elected. I believe that he is deliberately lying, right now, in the present, and has no intention whatsoever of keeping his promise in any form similar to how it has been stated, but such cannot be proven unless he is actually elected [Heaven forfend!] and has a chance to either keep or break his promise.
That he might propose a tax cut for a far smaller group of tax payers I do see as possible. When the 2001-2003 tax cuts expire in 2010, there will be a significant tax increase on the lowest income groups, and he might propose a tax cut for them; if that is all of the tax cuts he proposes, I hope that the Republicans have the nerve to filibuster it.
Pandora wrote:
But they did have the votes; all they had to do was nothing, to not pass any funding for the war other than that to bring the troops home. President Bush could not have vetoed a spending bill that was never passed. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stacked the Rules Committee with people who would refuse to report out any spending bill for a vote in the House, and Majority Leader Harry Reid could have refused to schedule an appropriation bill for a vote, and there’s not one thing the Republicans could have done about it.
But, they lacked the testosterone to do what they said they’d do. They didn’t want to:
1 – Be accused of cutting and running; and
2 – Lose the war as a 2008 election issue.
Well, #2 didn’t work out for them anyway, since the war has dropped off the front pages for the most part, since the “surge,” championed by John McCain, has worked.
X Stryker wrote:
Yeah, mine. Rather, he has earned a great deal of respect from me!
When the 2001-2003 tax cuts expire in 2010, there will be a significant tax increase on the lowest income groups, and he might propose a tax cut for them; if that is all of the tax cuts he proposes, I hope that the Republicans have the nerve to filibuster it.
1. Obama is already proposing to let the 2000, 2003 tax cuts expire.
2. Expiration of those cuts won’t affect low income taxpayers much since they weren’t the major beneficiaries of those cuts.
3. The plan that Obama proposes does intend to replace the 2000, 2003 tax cuts by reordering the distribution of those cuts so that the richest 1% don’t reap the major benefits.
4. Graphic analysis of how income brackets are effected by both plans.
5. And so, if Obama introduced his plan to Congress and the repubs filibuster — that makes all of the happy talk about working across the aisle a lie by your guys, yes?
Mike W called DE Liberal folks a klan. How cute.
I don’t believe Obama for a second when he says he won’t raise taxes. He was asked in one of the debates about Capital Gains and wouldn’t commit to not raising capital gains tax. He also refused to believe that raising the tax would decreases overall gov. tax revenue. Now he’s saying he won’t raise capital gains taxes. Which one is it? Will he or won’t he?
This is much like his words in PA recently saying to gun owners “you have nothing to fear from an Obama administration.” As with taxes, his past record, rhetoric, and basic common sense tell you his statement is a load of shit.