Obama: “Sometimes I Forget” about the Recession (Video)

NEW SLOGAN: “Sometimes I Forget about You” During a campaign event yesterday in Seattle, Obama said he sometimes forgets the magnitude of the recession. (Hat tip: Townhall)

The GOP quickly responded with this video:

VP Joe Biden: Millions of Americans are still in a Recession (Video)

AMERICANS STILL SUFFERING

Democrat Vice President Joe Biden says that the recession is still ongoing for millions of Americans. (NBC’s “Meet The Press” – May 6, 2012): NBC’S DAVID GREGORY: “And the discouragement is real. Recent polling showing three-fourths, 76% of Americans still believe the country is in recession.” VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: “Well you know, for the people who are unemployed, they are still in recession. For the people whose wages are stagnant, it feels like a recession. I come from a household where whenever there was a massive recession, someone around that table was going to lose their job.”

MORE: JOE BIDEN - Biden: “I Promise You Obama Has a Big Stick” (Video) - Joe Biden Calls Tea Partiers ‘Barbarians’ (2011 Flashback) - Joe Biden proud of “his slave state” (video)

Tricks of Democrat Mayor to Boost his Lifetime Pension to $184,000 a year…over 10 Times his Salary

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES RETIRING IN LUXURY ON THE BACK OF TAX PAYERS Democrat Richard M. Daley, former Chicago Mayor, weaseled his way to receive lifetime pension benefits that far exceed his contributions. Summary of the tricks: Daley stands to collect $184,000 annual pension for the rest of his life, because he was allowed to receive a pension based on his $216,210 salary as city mayor while making payments to the state pension system (GARS) based on his $17,500 starting salary as a state senator. He boosted his pension by rejoining the legislative pension plan for just one month to qualify to receive 85% of his mayoral salary. Daley was also allowed to pay $6,000 to purchase pension credits worth 10 years of service to cover his unfinished term at the state legislature or General Assembly. Richard M. Daily’s political work: ● 1972–1980: Illinois State Senator ● 1981–1989: Cook County State’s Attorney ● 1989–2011: Mayor of Chicago

Report via Sweetness & Light:

Two years into his reign as Chicago’s longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley took advantage of the state’s convoluted pension system to significantly increase his potential payout while saving $400,000 in contributions, a Tribune/WGN-TV investigation has found. Daley, a former state senator, made it happen by briefly rejoining the legislative pension plan in 1991. He stayed there just one month before returning to Chicago’s municipal pension fund, but the switches made him eligible for benefits worth 85 percent of his mayoral salary — a better rate than all other city employees receive. He was just 49 years old at the time. Even if Daley had never won another election, he could have started collecting a public pension at age 55 of $97,750 a year. Without the steps he took, his public pension benefits at that age would have been worth just $20,686. …When he retired last May, his pension benefits had grown to $183,778 a year — about $50,000 more than he would have otherwise received.  [...] His own public pension, meanwhile, will end up costing taxpayers all over the state. Records show that his contributions to the statewide General Assembly pension fund weren’t nearly enough to cover the benefits he receives. [...] Daley spent less than eight years in the state Legislature, having left office with more than two years remaining on his term to run for Cook County state’s attorney in 1980. But that same year, he asked to purchase pension credits covering his unfinished term for about $6,000 in extra contributions, as allowed under Illinois’ generous pension laws. The move gave him a total of 10 years of service. [...] Yet under another obscure state law, Daley was able to transfer his years of service with Cook County and the city of Chicago to the state legislative pension fund without making additional contributions. That’s because the transfer was based on his decade-old legislative salary of $17,500 — even though his pension would be calculated using his mayoral salary, then $115,000. Had the costs of the transfer been based on Daley’s actual pay, he would have been required to pay in about $540,000, according to a Tribune/WGN-TV analysis based on the state’s formula for pension credit transfers. Instead, he simply transferred the $128,000 he had accumulated in the city and county funds, saving more than $400,000 in contributions. Daley eventually retired with a state pension based on his final mayoral salary of $216,210 — 12 times his old legislative pay. The $183,778 in public pension benefits that Daley now receives is divided up between GARS [General Assembly Retirement System] and the municipal pension fund. Under the state’s convoluted reciprocal system, the GARS plan pays the former mayor $117,629 a year, while the municipal pension plan pays him $66,149. Yet Daley paid far more in pension contributions to the municipal pension plan than he did to the GARS plan. More tricks: Under Daley’s watch, former Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon was given a one-day city job that allowed him to collect a public pension based on his $200,000 private union salary. In 1995, when Daley wanted to fund his school reform package, his administration pushed legislation that allowed it to divert $1.5 billion from the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund over a 15-year period. All the while, Daley blessed benefit increases for city workers without ensuring that payments into the funds would cover the costs, a problem worsened by the economic downturn. Today, the combined unfunded liabilities of Chicago’s four pension funds have grown to nearly $20 billion, which doesn’t include the $6.8 billion shortfall at the teachers fund. The city’s pension debt is not only damaging Chicago’s financial stability, but also breeding cynicism about government’s ability to provide modest pensions to the people who teach the city’s children, collect the garbage, run into burning buildings and keep the peace.

MORE - http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-02/news/ct-met-pensions-daley-20120502_1_higher-union-salaries-public-pension-pension-funds - http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/04/29/daley-set-to-collect-nearly-200000-annual-pension/ Videos - Mayor Daley Latest Politician in Long Line of Pension Abusers - Richard Daley the New Face of Pension Abuse - America’s Pension Mess

Americans Earning over $50,000 a Year Paid 93.3% of all Taxes in 2010

Highlights of the CNSNews report:

According to statistics compiled from the IRS by the Tax Foundation, those people making above $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 14.1%, and carried 93.3% of the total tax burden.

In contrast, Americans making less than $50,000 had an effective tax rate of 3.5% and their total share of the tax burden was just 6.7%.

In 2010, only 85 million actually paid taxes.

The Tax Foundation data also shows that people who didn’t pay any income tax received $105 billion in refundable tax credits from the IRS.

Obama’s Buffett Rule 101

BUFFETT RULE WILL ONLY COVER 0.5% OF OBAMA’S NEW SPENDING

Via Heritage: According to a recent analysis by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, the Buffett Rule would raise a mere $47 billion over ten years. Meanwhile, President Obama’s budget calls for adding $6.7 trillion to the national debt. That means that the Buffett Rule will only cover one half of one percent of the President’s new spending. Soaking the rich cannot get deficits down, only spending reductions can do that. When it comes to the biggest problem America is facing — a weak economy and high unemployment — the Buffett Rule would weaken the economy and make matters worse. Heritage’s J.D. Foster and Curtis Dubay write that the tax would fall most heavily on job creators (who pay taxes at the individual rate) and confiscate their resources that would otherwise be used to start new businesses, grow existing businesses, and hire more workers. As a result, economic growth will slow down right along with job creation. [...] So how can President Obama get away with saying that Warren Buffett pays lower tax rates than his secretary? Many wealthy Americans who have done well like Buffett receive dividends and capital gains — a form of investment income that is subject to multiple levels of tax. First, the investment income results from investment. This capital didn’t appear out of thin air. It was earned and taxed previously, often many times over at rates up to 35 percent. Then, once invested, it generates income that is taxed at the corporate level at a 35 percent rate, and then it’s taxed again at the individual level at a 15 percent rate on dividends and capital gains. The combined rate on corporate earnings alone is over 45 percent, and this is all after the first layer of tax. One way to think about this is to imagine you’re driving down a toll road, and you pay three separate tolls. The first toll of $3.50 is when you get on the highway. Then after a few miles you pay another $3.50 toll, and when you exit there’s a final toll of $1.50. A reporter asks you as you leave the last tollbooth how much toll you paid. What’s the most accurate answer — what you paid at the last tollbooth or what you paid altogether? Obviously, feeling some $8.50 lighter in the wallet, the correct answer is to respond with the total. Conveniently for him, President Obama only talks about the last level of tax, the 15 percent portion, leaving out the rest. He only wants to talk about the last toll paid, not the total, and that’s how he makes his disingenuous argument… Read more here.

ObamaCare Will Add $527 Billion to Deficit – Medicare Trustee Study

MORE NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF OBAMACARE ObamaCare will add as much as $527 billion to federal deficits while adding $1.2 trillion to federal spending between 2012 and 2021 according to the new study ‘The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act’ by Charles Blahous, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and Public Trustee for Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds.

STUDY’S ABSTRACT: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) enacted in 2010 will significantly worsen the federal government’s fiscal position relative to previous law. Over the years 2012–21, the ACA is expected to add at least $340 billion and as much as $530 billion to federal deficits while increasing federal spending by more than $1.15 trillion over the same period and by increasing amounts thereafter. These adverse fiscal effects are not everywhere understood because of widely circulated analyses referencing scoring conventions of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Medicare Trustees, which compare the health care reform legislation to a baseline scenario that differs from actual law. Moreover, there is substantial risk that the ACA’s costsaving provisions will not be enforced as currently specified. To avoid worsening the federal fiscal outlook, legislative corrections are required before the ACA’s provisions become fully effective in 2014. Roughly two-thirds of the law’s subsidies for health insurance exchanges must be eliminated to avoid worsening federal deficits and the entirety of their costs eliminated to avoid further increasing federal health care financing commitments.

NET BUDGETARY EFFECTS OF OBAMACARE ($ Billions): The table and figure below show projected net budgetary effects of the ACA (Affordable Care Act or Obamacare) under pessimistic (and probably most realistic) scenario. The study on page 41 explains that the “net worsening of the federal fiscal outlook under the ACA is substantial. Under the pessimistic scenario (which is, as previously noted, by no means a worst-case scenario), it exceeds $100 billion annually by 2021. This is especially sobering in view of the high hopes placed in the ACA, as it indicates a significant risk that in the ACA’s second decade alone it would worsen the federal fiscal outlook by over $1 trillion.”

Net Budgetary Effects of ObamaCare ($ Billions) SCENARIO 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2012-21 Pessimistic Scenario Relative to Prior Law 18 37 9 –23 –59 –106 –95 –92 –101 –116 –527

(Graph by Inventors Business Daily)

STUDY’S KEY FINDINGS: Over the coming decade (2012-2021), the ACA is expected to increase net federal spending by more than $1.15 trillion, and to add more than $340 billion and as much as $530 billion to federal deficits over the same period, and increasing amounts thereafter. The ACA’s fiscal effects are often misunderstood because government scorekeeping conventions contrast with enacted law. The ACA relies upon substantial savings already required under previous law to maintain the solvency of the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) Trust Fund. These do not represent new net savings, available to be spent without widening the deficit, but substitutions for spending reductions that would have occurred by law in the absence of the ACA. These cost-savings provisions have the effect of extending and expanding Medicare’s future spending authority. The ACA also uses the same cost-savings to finance new health entitlement spending. The ACA’s total new spending thus well exceeds its cost-savings provisions. This is not a mere matter of presentational “double-counting” but of evaluating the actual change in law upon the ACA’s enactment. By law, as distinct from prevailing scoring conventions, the ACA has unambiguously worsened the federal government’s fiscal position. Moreover, several of the ACA’s provisions may not be enforced as currently specified. Among these, the costs of new health exchanges may be significantly higher than projected; the rising projected revenues of provisions such as the “Cadillac-plan” tax and the new 3.8-percent surcharge on incomes over $200,000/$250,000 may not fully materialize; the cost-saving recommendations of IPAB might be legislatively overridden; and the CLASS program—previously scored as saving $70-$86 billion over its first 10 years—is no longer expected to be implemented. [...]

OBAMACARE’S DOUBLE COUNTING GAME: “The health care bill of 2010 was said to provide two major benefits. First, the bill promised to find savings in the government’s biggest health insurance program, Medicare, and use those savings to reduce the deficit. Second, the bill promised to expand health care coverage to uninsured Americans. Sounds pretty good, right? But how does the government propose to pay for both? Here’s where the math becomes fuzzy. Research from “The Fiscal Consequences of the Affordable Care Act” shows how this just doesn’t add up.”

MORE Links to the study: Full research paper, brief summary, chart, and video.

IRS: Paying Taxes Is Pathway to Citizenship for Illegal Aliens

GOVERNMENT INCENTIVIZING MORE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION? We now know illegal aliens have been filing tax returns to get tax credits from the IRS. Many times, these tax credits exceed what little taxes they had paid. Illegal aliens do not file tax returns because they suddenly care about the U.S. laws…laws they broke when they entered this country illegally and when they decided to work without proper authorization, etc., etc. Now, government officials want to give them citizenship for “paying taxes”? Stupid is as stupid does. (Click image for video)

CNSNews reported: Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said Thursday that paying taxes is a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. At the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., 12 days  before this year’s tax-filing deadline (Apr. 17), Shulman was asked about what his  agency is doing to collect taxes from illegal aliens. “You know, it’s a great question,” he said. “One of the pathways to  citizenship that people believe is a good one is–even if you’re not  in this country legally–to pay taxes.”

Illegal aliens file tax returns to get tax credits from IRS: According to a Treasury Inspector General audit, Individuals Who Are Not Authorized to Work in the United States Were Paid $4.2 Billion in Refundable Credits. [...] Although the law prohibits aliens residing without authorization in the United States from receiving most Federal public benefits, an increasing number of these individuals are filing tax returns claiming the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), a refundable tax credit intended for working families. The payment of Federal funds through this tax benefit appears to provide an additional incentive for aliens to enter, reside, and work in the United States without authorization, which contradicts Federal law and policy to remove such incentives. This is how we are losing our country.

Obama Regulations Four Times more than Bush

Obama Tops Bush With More, Costlier Major Regulations: In his first three years of presidency, President George W. Bush imposed 28 major regulations at a cost of $8.1 billion. Obama imposed 106 major regulations at a cost of $46 billion. “This is almost four times the number—and more than five times the cost—of the major regulations issued by George W. Bush during his first three years,” according to the report.
Red Tape Rising: During the three years of the Obama Administration, a total of 106 new major regulations have been imposed at a cost of more than $46 billion annually, and nearly $11 billion in one-time implementation costs. This amount is about five times the cost imposed by the prior Administration of George W. Bush. This regulatory tide is not expected to ebb anytime soon. Hundreds of new regulations are winding through the rulemaking pipeline as a consequence of the vast Dodd–Frank financial-regulation law (the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act), Obamacare, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s global warming crusade, threatening to further weaken an anemic economy and job creation. * Major regulations, as defined by the government, are regulations that cost up to $100 million or more each year. Read the full report here.