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House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) says that President Barack Obama is "diminishing the presidency" by fighting for low student loan rates, a fairer tax structure and regulations on oil speculators.

"The president and I have a very good relationship," Boehner told CNN's Candy Crowley on Sunday. "And as a result, I try to avoid personal attacks on the president."

"The president is getting some very bad advice from his campaign team because he's diminishing the presidency by picking fights, going after straw men every day. You know, we had the Buffet rule. You know, it went on for months. Even the president admitted it was a gimmick. And then we had the Rose Garden ceremony talking about manipulation in the oil markets without one shred of evidence. And he has an entire administration to go after speculation or manipulation in the oil markets. And then they pick this student loan fight where there is no fight."

He added: "The president is bigger than this. The presidency is important. America has big challenges."

While both Republicans and Democrats agree low student loan rates should be extended, the White House said last week that the president would veto a GOP plan to pay for the measure by cutting a health care fund that benefits women.

"Women, in particular, will benefit from this prevention fund, which would provide for hundreds of thousands of screenings for breast and cervical cancer," a White House statement insisted. "This is a politically motivated proposal and not the serious response that the problem facing America's college students deserves."

But on Sunday, Boehner said it was "nonsense" that cutting the fund would diminish breast and cervical cancer screenings.

"There's no women's health issue here," Boehner remarked. "I'll guarantee you that they've not spent a dime out of this fund dealing with anything to do with women's health. What we're trying to do here is to deal with this problem in a responsible way."

Asked about recent attacks where he said Obama had "checked out," made the presidency "smaller" and "lost his courage," Boehner said he was just trying to be helpful.

"The president is getting some bad advice," the Speaker explained. "Somebody needed to help him out. So, I thought I would."

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On the same day that we had Jon Stewart going after Republicans for their hypocrisy on the "Buffett Rule" and what amount of money they pretend they consider is significant, like the government funds they'd like to cut from Planned Parenthood and how much revenue passing that bill would have generated, Joe Scarborough was doing his best to give them some cover, calling the push for the bill nothing but symbolism.

Because, he asserted, we all know Republicans would never vote for something like that. I would have to disagree with Scarborough on that, and on his assertion that raising taxes on the rich would not help job creation or that it would harm our economy right now. The rich are sitting on hoards of cash and not employing anyone with it. The federal government could us the additional tax revenues generated by leveling the percentage of taxes paid by the wealthy with that of the middle class, to create jobs building roads and other badly-needed infrastructure repair and improvements. We could even be saving the jobs of teachers, police officers and firefighters with support to struggling states.

Scarborough tried making the argument that it would be terrible to raise taxes on anyone right now because "tax cuts are Keynesian." I don't understand how that theory proves true if you're talking about raising them for people who can easily afford them and who are not stimulating our economy with more demand because they've already got more money than they can ever possibly spend. And if they're investing it, there's no guarantee they're making those investments in America.

All we need is poster-boy-for-the-rich Mitt Romney, who has put a good deal of his money offshore, as proof of why just putting blind faith into the idea that the wealthy are going to do what is right for the American economy and American workers just because we lower their tax rate and pretend they're "job creators" instead of wealth extractors who are draining the American economy for their own personal gain and enrichment, might be a bad idea.

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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on Thursday blasted President Barack Obama for being "more intent on punishing people" than creating jobs.

Speaking at a closed factory in Lorain, Ohio, Romney told supporters that the empty building was proof that the president's economic plan wasn't working.

"If you want to know where his vision leads, open your eyes," the candidate said. "Lost jobs, lost homes, lost dreams."

"His failures mean that his campaign is not going to be about vision, it's going to be about division. He's going to be focusing on different Americans and trying to scapegoat other people for his own failures. You will see him attack success day in and day out," Romney continued, referring to Obama recently telling a crowd that he "wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth."

"This president seems to think the best way to create jobs is to raise taxes because everywhere you turn he's trying to raise taxes one way or the other," the former Massachusetts governor asserted. "And then the president is going across the country campaign for his 'Buffett rule,' he calls it. Someone calculated that if he were successful in getting his Buffett rule, it would pay for 11 hours of the federal government's budget. This is not reality!"

"This is a president who is more intent on punishing people than he is building our economy and getting people back to work!"

Republicans in the Senate on Monday blocked the Paying a Fair Share Act, which would have enacted the rule named after Warren Buffett after the billionaire revealed that he paid a lower tax rate than his "secretary."

A recent CNN poll found that 72 percent of Americans -- including 70 percent if independents -- favored the "Buffett Rule."

(h/t: Yahoo News)

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Jon Stewart hit the hypocritical Republicans this Tuesday night for their apparent problems with basic math and their opposition to passing the Buffett rule after attacking the money spent on Planned Parenthood:

STEWART: So, let's see if I can get this straight. $47 billion in millionaires’ money is less than $300 million in mammograms and birth control.

They might care about the public noticing their blatant hypocrisy if they were capable of feeling shame, but they've made it obvious over the years that they are not.

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Cenk Uygur did a nice analysis which showed the difference between the amount of government spending which was wasted in the recent General Services Administration scandal that has the right wing and a good deal of our corporate media, freaking out over the amount of money wasted during that debacle, and what they're routinely dismissing as just a "tiny portion of the budget" which would be gained if Congress actually passed the "Buffett Rule."

Most of his ire was reserved for CNN host Erin Burnett, who is one of the millionaires herself that would be affected if that rule ever passed and her penchant for quoting sources like the Tax Foundation and bringing on billionaires like John Paul DeJoria to discuss why the rich should not have to pay more in taxes.

As Cenk also noted, Burnett was repeating the exact same lines as Republicans like Mitt Romney out on the campaign trail, who claimed the Buffett rule passing would be meaningless because the amount of the deficit it would reduce was, in his estimate, only eleven hours of government spending. That waste they were freaking out about and having hearings over for the last couple of days that we just can't allow to go on or the world is going to come to an end...seven seconds.

It's always good to know that Republicans have their priorities in line with their latest feigned outrage of the week.

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During another typically intelligent panel discussion on Chris Hayes' show on MSNBC this Sunday on the Republicans and Mitt Romney out there demagoguing President Obama asking Congress to pass the "Buffett Rule" so that millionaires and billionaires are not exploiting tax loopholes that allow them to pay far less of a percentage of their income in taxes compared to average working class citizens out there, David Cay Johnston brought up something I apparently missed earlier this year that he had reported on in January -- the fact that Mitt Romney was allowed to give his sons $100 million as a gift tax free, thanks to a tax loophole on "carried interest."

Romney’s gift from Congress:

When the Romney campaign disclosed in December that the couple’s five sons had a $100 million trust fund, I suspected that, in setting up the fund, the Romneys used a tax strategy that allows some very rich people to avoid paying gift taxes. But it was impossible to know if this was the case without seeing their tax returns going back years.

So when Mitt Romney released the family’s 2010 tax return last week, I went looking. I found a hint on pages 132 and 134 of the return. It showed that the value of property placed that year into another family trust, the Ann D. Romney Blind Trust, was, for tax purposes, zero. The Ann Romney trust is not the same trust as the one that holds the Romney sons’ $100 million, but I wondered if the Romneys used the same approach in prior years when it came to valuing property placed into the sons’ trust.

Reuters emailed the Romney campaign spokeswoman to ask how much the Romneys paid in gift taxes on assets put into the sons’ trust over the last 17 years. The spokeswoman, citing Brad Malt, the Romney family tax lawyer, answered: none.

The idea that someone could pay zero gift taxes on contributions to a $100 million trust fund may surprise people who have heard arguments that the wealthy are overburdened by gift and estate taxes. But the Romneys’ gift-tax avoidance strategy is perfectly legal. Read on...

Johnston posted a video explaining the loophole in his post at Reuters which you can watch below the fold.

Continue reading »

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Although a majority of Americans support a rule that would tax millionaires as much the middle class, the chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) said on Sunday that his party was not wrong for opposing the policy.

In an interview on CNN, host Candy Crowley pointed to a recent Gallup poll that found that 60 percent of Americans -- including 63 percent of independent voters -- backed the so-called "Buffett Rule," which was named after billionaire Warren Buffett because his "secretary" pays a higher tax rate than he does.

"Politically, it appears you are on the wrong side of this," Crowley told RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

"I don't think so," Priebus replied. "I think that people, once they see what this is all about, once they see what this strategy of Barack Obama is all about -- it's all about dividing and conquering."

"I mean, let's face it -- and we all know what this is. This is a shiny object that Barack Obama wants the country to look at, which as you know, if you added up every dollar of revenue that this little rule would put into place, if you took every dollar over a year, it would add up to paying for 11 hours of the federal government."

"My point is that, politically, you all seem to be losing this argument," Crowley pressed. "There is a fairness issue here that people look back and say, why shouldn't millionaires pay more in taxes?"

"Part of the problem here, Candy, is we're not just talking about millionaires," Priebus insisted. "We're talking about small businesses, pass-through S corporations. We're talking about a president who promised he would get the economy back on track, that he would lower unemployment below 8 percent. ... The point of this is here we are talking about one single, tiny alteration of the tax code -- which he said that he would reform completely -- that amounts to 11 hours."

"This is Obama's strategy: 'Look over here at the shiny object here -- don't look at the big picture, an economy on the brink that I didn't do a thing about and made things worse.' That's what this is about."

(h/t: Talking Points Memo)

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I'm not sure what Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey thought she would be in for before agreeing to appear on Fox News this Tuesday afternoon, but I'm not surprised, sadly to see the way she ended up being treated by host Neil Cavuto. He was downright hostile to her and talked over her repeatedly as she attempted to explain why she agreed with President Obama and his renewed push for Congress to pass the so-called "Buffett rule," so that we don't have millionaires paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Cavuto was of course parroting the right's meme that raising taxes on the rich was going to somehow destroy the economy and harm those "job creators" and that Democrats just want more spending and "bigger government." Woolsey pushed back and tried to explain that there is a budget out there which is fair and doesn't balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the poor and the working class, or destroy our social safety nets so the rich can get more tax cuts, and that's the Congressional Progressive Caucus' The People's Budget.

Cavuto was having none of that though, and after the constant interruptions he wound up the segment by lowering her mic when she was still trying to talk.

For more on what Cavuto did not want to give the Congresswoman a chance to explain, because heaven forbid their viewers ever hear something other than right wing talking points, here's the overview of their budget -- Budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Fiscal Year 2012:

Continue reading »

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Chuck Todd really should have just stuck to being a pollster, because ever since Tim Russert brought him on at MSNBC, he really has gone from someone who used to be pretty good at analysis of voter trends and elections for Roll Call and with his regular appearances on C-SPAN, to pretty much just another Villager hack once MSNBC hired him. I remember actually enjoying him sharing some of his insights on election coverage on Washington Journal, before he decided to join the D.C. cocktail circuit with the rest of the Villagers.

Todd seems to have made the move quite easily and unfortunately from someone who used to be more concerned about reporting facts and statistics and trends to the typical inside the beltway type of "reporting" we see from his colleagues Chris Matthews, David Gregory and Andrea Mitchell, among others.

His interview with Rep. Tom Price from this Wednesday is just the latest example of that. Todd was terribly upset with Stephen Colbert for making a "mockery" of his brand of "journalism" but sadly as Nicole noted, Todd's done a good enough job of that all by himself.

He did it again here by letting Price claim that you're going to kill the Confidence Fairies if you raise the capital gains tax and that will somehow lead to more offshoring of jobs.

That you shouldn't tax capital gains because that money has supposedly already been taxed.

That the Community Reinvestment Act and giving loans to poor people somehow caused the housing crisis.

That Republicans care anything about closing loopholes for businesses or doing anything about offshoring our jobs.

That unions are harming our economy or the working class.

That we need to lower the corporate tax rate.

And that we'd be "punishing businesses" if we dared to tax them if they want to repatriate the money they've been hiding offshore to avoid taxes in the United States.

If Chuck Todd considers himself a "journalist" you'd think he'd have bothered to push back a bit more harshly at any one of these lies, but that's not what we got during this interview. Heaven forbid he might lose some access for the next interview with Price or one of his colleagues to potentially keep the ratings up on his show if he dared to call him out for anything he lied about here.

I'm sure the salary is much better for Todd since he made the move to MSNBC from Roll Call. Sadly what he's contributing to the national political dialog for the most part has gone down the sewer while his salary has gone up for adding to the pollution.

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While discussing President Obama's proposal to make sure that the ultra-rich pay some sort of minimum tax rate or as it's been described, "the Buffett rule", George Will offered up this explanation, which is one I usually hear repeated day in and day out of Fox, as to why it would apparently in Will's world, just be a horrible waste of time to raise taxes on the rich.

AMANPOUR: A centerpiece of the president's new -- new proposals is this so-called Buffett rule. This is what Warren Buffett had to say about it this week.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BUFFETT: Well, it isn't to have the rich pay more taxes. It's to have the ultra-rich, who are paying very low tax rates, pay more taxes. Now, there's all kinds of ultra-rich who pay normal taxes, but there are -- there's a small segment -- but you can find them very easily -- who pay very low taxes, including me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Jake, how's this been received in the White House?

TAPPER: Well, they're pretending that there's no daylight between what Mr. Buffett said and what -- and what they laid out. The truth is that there is. Warren Buffett said that there's about 500,000 ultra-rich who would be hit by his -- what he actually conceived. Now, the White House, when they introduced their Buffett rule a few weeks ago, said the number was closer to 450,000. The idea is the same, that those who are very wealthy and are paying taxes below, say, 20 percent -- because they're paying the capital gains rate or whatever -- they should have -- there should be a minimum requirement that they pay. But there is a big difference there.

WILL: In 1916, before we entered World War I and federal spending exploded, the richest man in America, John D. Rockefeller, could have written a personal check and retired our national debt. Today the richest man in America, Bill Gates, could write a personal check of his entire net worth and pay two months' interest on the national debt.

AMANPOUR: Take this conversation into the green room, it's very important.

Yeah, why raise their taxes? It's not going to make any difference anyway, so just let them keep paying lower rates than those in the middle class. I hate to break it to Will, but saying we need to do more than just raising taxes on the rich to get our economic problems solved doesn't mean he and his ilk shouldn't be paying their fair share. We should still have a progressive rather than a regressive tax code in the United States -- and right now it's anything but that.