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PUBLISHED 2:29 p.m. ET -- President Barack Obama told his House Democratic colleagues that he would continue to challenge Republicans on how to best replace the impending sweeping spending cuts known as the "sequester."
Speaking at the House Democratic Issues Conference in Leesburg, Va., Obama said he wants to create an alternative to the sequester that includes some entitlement reforms but also more revenue through ending loopholes and deductions for the wealthiest earners, a point of disagreement with GOP lawmakers.
“I am prepared, eager and anxious to do a big deal, a big package that ends this governance by crisis,” he told the crowd.
Obama decried Republicans, who, he said, recognize “that the sequester is a bad idea, but what they've suggested is that the only way to replace it now is for us to cut Social Security, cut Medicare and not close a single loophole, not raise any additional revenue from the wealthiest Americans or corporations who have a lot of lawyers and accounts.”
While the president seemed to lament the lack of communication between himself and House Republicans, neither side has indicated that they negotiating in public or private. Earlier Thursday, White House press secretary Jay Carney lambasted House Speaker John Boehner’s reported offer, which includes cuts to Medicare premiums and federal pension programs, as “terrible.”
At the issues conference, Obama said he was steeling himself for another philosophical fight over cuts with the Republicans.
“I have to tell you, if that's an argument that they want to have before the court of public opinion, that is an argument I'm more than willing to engage in,” he said to applause.
But disagreements might not just be limited to the Republican side, the president added, saying he’s prepared to clash with fellow Democrats on key issues like immigration and gun safety.
“There will be times where you guys are mad at me, and I'll occasionally read about it,” he said.
Despite any such intra-party bickering, the president said he still believed Democrats would be in a good position in 2014 to retake the House of Representatives.
“As a by-product of doing that good work and keeping that focus, I would expect that Nancy Pelosi's going to be speaker again pretty soon,” the President concluded his remarks with, as the crowd erupted in cheers for their leader.
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Hope and Peter....it gets worse....check this out....this is the run-up to the great depression....the 20's
- During World War I, federal spending grows three times larger than tax collections. When the government cuts back spending to balance the budget in 1920, a severe recession results. However, the war economy invested heavily in the manufacturing sector, and the next decade will see an explosion of productivity... although only for certain sectors of the economy.
- An average of 600 banks fail each year.
- Organized labor declines throughout the decade. The United Mine Workers Union will see its membership fall from 500,000 in 1920 to 75,000 in 1928. The American Federation of Labor would fall from 5.1 million in 1920 to 3.4 million in 1929.
- Over the decade, about 1,200 mergers will swallow up more than 6,000 previously independent companies; by 1929, only 200 corporations will control over half of all American industry.
- By the end of the decade, the bottom 80 percent of all income-earners will be removed from the tax rolls completely. Taxes on the rich will fall throughout the decade.
- By 1929, the richest 1 percent will own 40 percent of the nation's wealth. The bottom 93 percent will have experienced a 4 percent drop in real disposable per-capita income between 1923 and 1929.
- Individual worker productivity rises an astonishing 43 percent from 1919 to 1929. But the rewards are being funneled to the top: the number of people reporting half-million dollar incomes grows from 156 to 1,489 between 1920 and 1929, a phenomenal rise compared to other decades. But that is still less than 1 percent of all income-earners.
Any of this sound familiar.....?
It turns out that those in the top 1% have consistently had about 1% of the wealth since at least the early 1920s, some 90 years ago. That data comes from the IRS and their analysis of estate tax records. Of course, those who make up that top 1% is constantly changing, but the actual percentage just hasn't changed very much over time.
Peter...do you see the parallels?
BTW - Top Tax rate in 1932 raised to 63%....in 1936 to 79%....
Today?....average about 25%........ouch.
As I posed earlier, it is not what the tax rates are, it is at what income levels that those rates are triggered. The high tax rates of earlier decades were only symbolic. Only a handful of people ever paid them. It turns out that high income folks today pay higher effective tax rates than did high income folks back in the 1950s and 1960s. All the tax shelters used to reduce taxable income for high income earners were removed from the tax code back in the 1986 tax revision that lowered rates in return for eliminating the shelters. That tax revision actually made the tax codes slightly more progressive and brought in about the same amount of tax revenue.
Peter...I can show you as a percentage of GDP and as an overall percentage of revenue vs outlays.
You can't spin this.
We are paying historically LOW taxes, especially amongst those making the most. Those in the middle and the poor are actually making LESS than 15years ago.
Im back
In 1925 the top tax rate is lowered to 25 percent - the lowest top rate in the eight decades since World War I.
Then the crash of '29....
In 1932 to offset the depression
- Top tax rate is raised from 25 to 63 percent.
Hmmmmm.....that could help?
Dion
Just what happened after that tax increase? Did the Economy turn around in 1933? Did Unemployment go down? Did the GDP increase to 4 or 5%? Did the Federal Tax Revenues increase? Did the deficits go down?
yes it did when the governmnet took it back from corporations...yes sloden there was a corporation take over just like we have today
Ahhhhh Slodon...you sly one.
In a way, the historians point to the 'too late' and not enough strategy of Hoover and elect FDR.
The next few years are brutal...yet in 1936, as another reaction to the slowly recovering economy, FDR raises Top tax rate to 79 percent....things got better and were getting better.....it did eventually work....along with a lot of other social programs.
:)
When did that 1936 tax increase 'eventually work'?
FDR was bailed out by wwII causing technological innovation and demand. otherwise, there would have been another decade of recession.
Great Depression in the United States
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USA annual real GDP 1910–60, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted.
Unemployment rate in the US 1910–1960, with the years of the Great Depression (1929–1939) highlighted.
The Great Depression began with the Wall Street Crash of October, 1929 and rapidly spread worldwide. The market crash marked the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, low profits, deflation, plunging farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth and personal advancement. Although its causes are still uncertain and controversial, the net effect was a sudden and general loss of confidence in the economic future.[1]
The usual explanations include numerous factors, especially high consumer debt, ill-regulated markets that permitted overoptimistic loans by banks and investors, and the lack of high-growth new industries,[2] all interacting to create a downward economic spiral of reduced spending, falling confidence, and lowered production.[3]
Industries that suffered the most included construction, agriculture as dust-bowl conditions persisted in the agricultural heartland, shipping, mining, and logging as well as durable goods like automobiles and appliances that could be postponed. The economy reached bottom in the winter of 1932–33; then came four years of very rapid growth until 1937, when the Recession of 1937 brought back 1934 levels of unemployment.[4]
The depression caused major political changes in America. Three years into the depression, Herbert Hoover lost the 1932 presidential election to Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a sweeping landslide. Roosevelt's economic recovery plan, the New Deal, instituted unprecedented programs for relief, recovery and reform, and brought about a major realignment of American politics.
The Depression also resulted in an increase of emigration of people to other countries for the first time in American history. For example. some immigrants went back to their native countries, and some native US citizens went to Canada, Australia, and South Africa. Some extreme examples were cases of some Americans emigrating to the Soviet Union (some of whom died during Stalin's Great Purges).[5] It also resulted in the mass migration of people from badly hit areas in the Great Plains and the South to places such as California and the North, respectively (see Okies and the Great Migration of African Americans).[6][7] Racial tensions also increased as well during this time. By the 1940s immigration had returned back to normal, and emigration declined. A well-known example of an emigrant was Frank McCourt, author of Angela's Ashes.
The memory of Depression also shaped modern theories of economics and resulted in many changes in how the government dealt with economic downturns, such as the use of stimulus packages, Keynesian economics, and Social Security. It also shaped modern American literature, resulting in famous novels such as John Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath" and "Of Mice and Men".
1939 slodon..oh and you have the date wrong when it started
That WW2 'Bailed' the US out of the depression is a common misinterpretation.... ( famously, the Grinch Newt )
The US was on a slow but steady recovery from the influx of fed dollars and recovering confidence.
The beginning of WW2 actually put quite a strain on a delicate and still recovering economy.
Dion
Perhaps you should read this article.
Two UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years.
"Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump," said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. "We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies."
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
Their study can be found here.
http://hlcole.bol.ucla.edu/NewDealucla.pdf
I think that every liberal should explain to their children or grand children why they believe it is fair to make them pay for you......
I think that every conservative should explain to their children why they refused to pay their own bills and debts, creating economic crisis and default.....deadbeat if you will.
hope tell me how you are paying for me...????do you have my bank account..no...do you pay for my health care..no...my bills no..so tell me how??
@elvis...I don't know....I don't know you....do you pay for own healthcare? Do you pay all your own bills? ....If so, I don't pay for you. However, if you are collecting government checks, food stamps, etc., then my tax dollars helped fund this I do work to partially pay to support you......
I do not get those things..but there could be a day when i need it.....thanks for good republicans and Democrats from the past who thought of the poor...but you tea Christians are full of sh-it about help..money is your God
You tell them Elvis!!!!
The sequestrian is the law that everybody agreed to. Bring it on. Time to reign in the irresponsible government spending. It is not that big of a cut and all this sky is falling stuff is crap. Time for the govt to begin to get their fiscal house in order.
The leadup to this began over fifteen years ago but clearly Obama excellerated the irresponsibility by a factor of X. What a joke of a leader.
The middle class is getting crushed by his policies!
Let me see this is really a tough one, hum....... How does this one sound, you would not be here without us. Life sucks and then you find out you are a product of your insane parents sex act. How bad is that and worse they are the only ones who love you unconditionally.
He is setting the stage just like the so called cliff last month. For those with short term memory it was both parties walking out with the same tag line "that is not as bad as it could have been" and anyone that pays taxes took a pay cut. The 1% did not do this it was those you elected from both parties that gave you the shaft in order to keeping wasting our tax dollars after they lied to you about not raising taxes.
Advice stop bending over to get the soap and hold them accountable as a whole not as a party.
Jeff....so true....funny how the middle-class got a tax increase just 15 days after Obama said he would never raise taxes on the middle class....very funny!!
hope your next..you rich greedy so called christian tea party
Riddle me this -- Why do both parties keep looking to produce a 1.2 trillion 10 YEAR PLAN to save. We are adding 1.2 trillion a year to our debt their plan is to only add 1 trillion to the debt for the next 10 years?? Must be all that higher education that I must have missed if you can that call it saving anything.
Again stop bending over and hold them accountable. As long as the clock is increasing they are not doing their job.
Time to whack away at the spending. We need the sequester and then another 10% cut. The middle class already got their taxes raised and are continuing to get crushed by Obama.
Wait until the full force of Obamacare starts to hit your wallet. The pain is just beginning all because Obama has no clue what he is doing in regard to the economy. He simply takes advantage of the low information, non-accountable voter. Fools.
No one should take the bait of this guy. Hes just gaming you to call you a bunch of haters. Let him come forward with the full tax proposal and put it in bill form and let americans decide to throw him under the bus. otherwise, just sit on your hands republicans. Next year when another 15 million don't get health coverage due to this atrocity of health care insurance reform that was passed, the whole thing will shift.
15 million Americans without health insurance instead of 50 million? Not so terrible.
Sequester, the kick in the butt Congress needs to FINALLY get stuff done. The President has started with his list of things he wants Congress to accomplish this term. People will be looking at Congress and who in Congress will be filibustering and using other tactics to delay, fool around, supress, and show lack of an ability to compromise. Both sides of the aisle need to get busy. First they can stop the nonsense hearing of Hagel and confirm him. There is a lot more that needs to get done. There isn't time for old buzzards like McCain to grandstand and try to play gotcha.
just put a bill forward ready to be signed. Wait, he never took an official position or proposed a true bill in 4 plus years. Congress never was sent one bill in YEARS! All he ever did is criticize everyone else who put in the work because he didn't get his whiny way. Tough. Let him sit and stew and congress just wait it out and no press releases. LAZY just pure lazy. Sit back and just call others haters. That's all the guy is capable of. Community divider and chief.
Congress is supposed to write the bills, not the President.
The House has passed a number of bills that Reid over in the Senate ignored.
There seems to be no tax the president doesn't like - I also thought sequestor defense cuts were his idea - oh! yes - Carney said the other day "he really didn't mean it". It's only those those rich guys and corporations - take a look at your paycheck or better yet check it frequently as the cost of Obamacare kicks in. These were back loaded so as not to effect the election and obviously a majority bought the story!!!
I heard yesterday that the navy was bringing a carrier home from the persian gulf....couldn't afford it.
Pressure?
You haven't seen pressure.....wait for it....lol
I think that every conservative should explain to their children why they refused to pay their own bills and debts, creating economic crisis and default.....deadbeats if you will.
What a shining example to the next generations to come.....
If you want to increase taxes on the middle class to pay for everything you want, have at it. That is the only place you can go to get any sizable increase in tax revenue for the federal government. My guess is you won't be able to get anyone in EITHER party to propose such legislation - political suicide.
So....raising the top tax rates and closing all loopholes for the weathiest, ridding our government of corporate welfare and subsidies to billion dollar corps won't raise enough....?
Okay...but it IS a good start :)
Dionysus,
Given the globalization in the world today what do you think the top tax rate should be? Right now it is over 43% which I guess you do not think is enough.
On corporate welfare you talk about closing loopholes but again which one. Would you get rid of the accelerated depreciation, or actually would you get rid of depreciation as that can be a loophole to some. What about corporate entertaining, would you get rid of that. etc.
Jerry,
Answer the question....would it help?
Corp rate at 35% btw.
Read....ALL corporate loopholes excepting maybe charitable.
I am actually in favor of lowering the tax rates and closing all loopholes but we have to be competitive in the world market. I would also give companies that have money offshore a one time 5% tax if they bring the money here and invest it in creating jobs. I believe instead of raising rates increase the number of people paying.
It is easy to say close loopholes but the question becomes how. If you have a subsidiary in Ireland, you have that division charge the US main company for services which is legal and not a loophole. This lowers your US income and raises your profits in Ireland where they have a 15% tax rate, again this is not a loophole but what most large US companies do to lower their profits.
Sorry the 43% is top tax rate now on individuals earning over $400,000
"Obama steels House Dems..."
Steels??? Really, Ali Weinberg of NBC News? Our failed education system at work. It should be 'steals'.
Fiction.....context context context.....
Steels...to straighten the back, to give strength, to make unbreakable....
@DO.....you exbitit more stupidty from the left....more donkey crap ....
"Steel: A quality suggestive of this alloy, especially a hard, unflinching character."
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/steel
It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
If the federal government can not make the cuts and produce a balanced budget maybe it should just shut down when it runs out of money until they get next years funds?
Not a bad idea.............we have enought crap out of the federal government to run things for the next twenty years.
Just goes to show you that mein fuhrer Obama and czar Herry Reid could give a dam less about our military.They are willing to push them over the cliff just so they can barrow more money and spend more.
Anyone hear about the big black ex cop shooting people?
The ravens of war come back to roost here at home.
Why do you have to mention black? That would make you a racist.
you libs don't know what racism is....morons
It was a joke, as I know he is not a racist, and I do not think anybody would call me a lib
my bad!!
The only thought about the impending sequester going through Obama's mind is the damage done to his legacy.
Legacy of taking over the title of worse president ever from Jimmy Carter and fooling 53% of voters in giving him 4 more years to waste our dollars.
cut federal spending......and please...someone in congress must have the balls or spine to draw up articles of impeachment on this clown obama.......obama is poison for our nation..
Here's a thought Obama, how about doing your job and put a balance budget together. Something you haven't been able to do since taking office. Your boy's Jack Lew and Bob Woodruff wrote the Sequester, so if it happens, it's yor fault. The House Republicans have passed 2 budgets and submitted but the Senate never put it to a vote. You received 681 Billion in tax hikes already and also us below 250K saw our taxes go up this year, which you lied about. Sure it would be nice to no touch SS or Medicare, but your freebies to welfare, food stamps and gifts to other countries like F16 and Tanks to Egypt must have been more important. We simply cannot spend more than we take in and you are now getting revenue to the tune of 3 Trillion from the tax payers now. So Mr. President, your getting record revenue already, more than anytime in American history, but it isn't enough, give me a break. I say bring on the Sequester and let's force you to cut spending since your not responsable enough to come up with a better plan. Yo great at speeches but a complete failure when action is needed.
Since he was a community organizer, he cannot do a job that requires balancing anything.
Liberals in the soup kitchen crying in their soup because they are failures. Too bad
Everyone knows libs are failures but they give away a lot of good free stuff. We know its free because it comes from the government.
Really Common One, well then where the hell is mine. Just got home from work, didn't see anything free in the mail.
J..........sorry to inform you but one man's situation certainly does not speak for the multitudes. As you might guess, I live in California....the home of the liberal movement and I see what has happened almost daily because of liberal policies.
do you see why we have a problem...with the the party watch
http://youtu.be/6CtldHzRQE8
Atta boy, elvis............believe everything you see on the Internet.....your posts shows a real lack of intelligence. However, you will respond to my post by calling me names...you are so typical of the left with their donkey dumps.
Look who is calling names GC..... Typical!!!!
Why not, J.........have you never read any of Elvis's posts.....they are full of much worse than I stated in my post.
With your double ! I must have offended you.......but who cares, I certainly don't.
You people need to get a real life
7.9 PERCENT UNEMPLOYMENT
Mandatory Obamacare to cost family of 5 20 grand
And attacking the second amendment
I'm sure that will garner a huge land slide for you Democrats
Pet your unicorns some more please
Isn't Pelosi from the State that is driving the wealthy people out so that the poor and the middle class have to fork over their life savings to Democrat drug users?
Yes that state with the largest economy in the country. The state with the highest per capita income, the state with the most economic power and a state if it was not carring the poorest states would not have an economic problem.
To all conservatives: Boycott the following and watch most of them rot:
* msnbc (where the butchy women have balls and weak, lispy men are awash in estrogen)...dead last in cable news and gets raked by sponge bob in time slot.
* cbs, abc, nbc - terrible, boring programing and slowly sinking in ratings vs cable. NEVER, EVER WATCH THESE CHANNELS
* CNN -near death as a news station, and relying on human crap like bloated Morgan to survive - constantly reshuffled station is a dead duck...BOYCOT IT AND KILL IT FOR GOOD.
* newsweak - someone bought it for a dollar and way over-paid...will be first major lib toilet paper diguised as a magazine to die, and good riddence.. I will throw a huge party when this trash death-spirals into its coffin of bankrupcy.
time -another crappy publication that pretends to be important..so near death that going to enet wont save it
* NY slimes - once if goes mostly to the net its dead...but it dead already but doesnt t know it yet. Pure biased, opining slop to the point of being unreadable let alone uninformative.
* scientific american - not science anymore, just opining faux-reasearch whores trying to justify their reasearch grants..once great but now PURE GARBAGE.
* entertainment weakly...told my fam that I pay the bills and dont want a political rag disguised as a girly pop magazine in my house,..worse yet its stupid girl politicing.
* Your local newpapaer (if you live on the west coast or northeast...a moderate boycot by just hard right in these states will kill these bird cage liners once and for all. news papers already paper thin and olybulked up wht advertisement for junk you dont wnt to buy.
LET THE OBAMA-LEG-HUMPING, LIBERAL LAMESTREAM MEDIA KNOW THAT CONSERATIVESS PAY A DISPORPORTIONATE AMOUNT FOR THESE SUBSCRIPTIONS...IF YOU BOYCOTT THESE FINANCIAL MESSESS THEY WILL ROT.
IF YOU ARE SICK OF BIASED OPINERS WHO LIE AND CALL THEMSEVES JOURNALIST, THEN PUT THEM OUT OF BUSINESS...THE ABOVE ARE BARELY HANGING ON...SHOW THEM WHERE THE REAL POWER OF H TE RIGHT IS.
LET THE LIBERALS SUBSIDZE THE ABOVE SLOP ON THEIR OWN ...and watch them die for lack of sales
***Copy and past this on 25 blogs as I have done...and watch the butterfly effect that has alredy begun to hit near critical mass***
Why dont we just print the money. That will work.