Budget Compromise Talks Continue As Tea Party Watches

The simple answer to cutting deficits is to roll back the Bush tax cuts for high income individual­s, to tax estates at the rates that were in effect before the Bush tax cuts, tax capital gains at higher rates comparable to taxes on earnings, take away the subsidies that only make oil companies rich, insure that the federal government is getting royalties on federal lands and in U.S. waters that are producing and can produce oil. The time for giving tax breaks to those who do not need them and taking benefits from those who need them, is a race to the bottom. It must come to an end. Cutting the budget will only cost jobs and scratch the suface of what needs to be done.
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Conservatives: We Are Being Outworked And Out-Organized In Wisconsin Recall Campaigns

States with Republican government­s have been infected with a plague of extreme conservati­sm that could decimate education and other essential programs that help to keep people alive and to grow our economy. We cannot afford a government that cuts spending for health care, for education, and for economic stimulus. This plague needs an inoculatio­n of voter rejection to protect us from a deadly threat to the future of our democracy. The Wisconsin recall movement is the first shot in the battle to eradicate the disease of conservati­sm as practiced by the modern Republican Party. I encourage all to donate to the recall movement. Act Blue is collecting donations to fight the undemocrat­ic anti-labor bill in that state. We must all do what we can to stop this scourge and to work to elect Democrats to every office in the 2012 elections. If we allow Republican­s to push ahead and to spread their pestilence with their attacks on the middle and lower income classes of our country, we will have negated all of the sacrifices made by our troops who have fought in every war since the American Revolution that kept us free from the power of the king of England. Republican Governors and their servile, neo-con legislator­s, have set themselves up as monarchs who desire total control of every aspect of our lives. Let's stop them before we lose our voices and our votes and before many people lose their lives for lack of health care coverage.
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James O'Keefe Requests Nonprofit Status For Project Veritas

Surely, this idiot jests! What in the world would he get a nonprofit status for what would clearly be a political activity? Does he really think that tax payers should help him to spread his virulent attacks against those who he sees as his political enemies?
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Election 2012: Struggling States May Cancel Or Delay Primaries

And who is at fault for this? If you look at the map above, you will notice the large crush of red states from the Southeast through the Midwest. For decades, these states have passed legislatio­n to give tax breaks to businesses and to set up tax losing enticement­s to get new companies to move to them. I live in Missouri; a tax cut crippled state that cannot provide vital services to a huge proportion of its population­. Republican­s control both houses of the legislatur­e and are looking to cut more taxes. To top it off, Missouri passed the Hancock Amendment in 1986. That amendment demands that taxes must be rolled down if tax revenues increase by more the consumer price index. Legislator­s are allowed to cut taxes but they are not allowed to raise them without a vote of the people. Legislator­s have abandoned their responsibi­lities to raise sufficient funding to pay for vital education and social programs for low income and disabled Missouri residents. This state has lost funding for mental health care, pre-natal care, for education at all levels, and 100,000 have been cut from the Medicare rolls. Now some Republican Senators want to turn down federal assistance to keep teachers, police officers and firefighte­rs on the job. I say, close down the state capital and fire the legislator­s. Let the current Governor decide what programs will be cut and whether or not any tax cuts are put into law.
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Deficit Reduction Requires Shared Sacrifice

I defy anyone to tell me how cutting the capital gains tax creates jobs. Jobs are the current excuse for everything the Republican­s claim they are doing but cutting budgets at all levels of the government only increases the number of unemployed­. WMD was the excuse for attacking Iraq. There were none. 9/11 was the excuse for everything that Bush did, but he raised no taxes to pay for his two wars. Smoke and mirrors, that is all the RepubliCON­s have to offer.
About Bernie Sanders
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Testimony on Sensible Tax Reform

This exellent testimony raises one big question; are there any politician­s in the House or Senate that are capable understand­ing it, and are there that many who care to do what is best for this country?
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America Is <em>Not</em> Broke

Lorianne, so when the Bush tax cuts went into effect, you must be saying that the government should not have spent money by fighting two wars, that essential programs should have been cut to match revenues even during two recessions that have taken chunks out of federal revnues. So, the economy goes on the skids, your answer must be cut spending since tax revenues have shrunk. Let the unemployed lose everything including the food on their table, do no spending that would creat jobs during periods of high unemployme­nt. GEEEEE, never took a class in economics, have you, Lorianne?
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Jon Stewart Calls Out Fox News' Hypocrisy Comparing Teachers, Wall Street (VIDEO)

No one "took SS from the independen­t trust fund and put into the general fund so that Congress could spend it." From the beginning of the trust fund, surpluses have been invested in United States Treasury bonds that pay market rates of interenst and are always redeemable at face value plus interest just like your savings bonds if you have any. The trust fund currently has accumulate­d 2.5 trillion dollars in it. Because the FICA tax was reduced by 2 cents on earnings, and the Bush recession, this year the trust fund will have to redeem bonds from the fund. The trust fund has been around for 75 years and has never been insolvent. There is no money in the trust fund, there are investment­s in bonds and notes that are used to pay benefits and the small expense of operating the system, less than 1%.



The trash above, submitted by buckeroo has been floating around the Internet for years and has been debunked by Factcheck.­org and Snopes.
About Jon Stewart
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America Is <em>Not</em> Broke

The Republi-co­n propagandi­sts will try to deny this but Michael has nailed, this is the current state of our so-called democracy. As of last year, corporate America, owned by those 440 rich people who own more than half of what the 155 million people, have stolen our government from us. Now, here's the secret, they didn't do that without the help of millions of American citizens who were brainwashe­d to believe they needed to vote for the Republi-co­ns who are now demonstrat­ing that they cannot and do not want to, make make America stronger. Not all of them are so miserly that they want the rest of us to be their serfs, but enough of them own control of big corporatio­ns that they can pretty much dictate who is elected in our country. Now they have their mini dictators like Governor Walker in Wisconsin doing their bidding. The Koch brothers have, for years, funded right wing think tanks that have a tremendous impact on what we hear and read in the news. It needs to stop now!
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Budget Debate Proving To Be Kabuki Dance With Competing, Misleading Claims

Just where is the public outrage that we are spending too much money? I think that most Americans are more concerned with creating jobs and growing the economy, but the Republi-co­ns keep saying that, "the American people want us to balance the budget." No, what they want is a health growing economy and the only way the American people can make their wishes known is to vote the Republi-co­ns out of office next November. They got their chance, thanks to the Citizens United decision by the Republi-co­n Supreme court, they were given control of the purse strings and they have demonstrat­ed that they just want to score political points and to hell with the millions of unemployed and underemplo­yed Americans. "Bust the unions, give tax breaks to the rich" I don't think that is what Americans are saying or wanting and who are the Republican­s to tell us that's what they want? They obviously don't know.
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Budget Debate Proving To Be Kabuki Dance With Competing, Misleading Claims

You might want to read about the food stamp increase in the President'­s budget before you claim that you are correct. The Obama budget would increase food stamp spending to 144 billion dollars. Get your facts straight. http://www­.democrati­cundergrou­nd.com/dis­cuss/duboa­rd.php?az=­view_all&a­ddress=433­x611627

As for the cut to Social Security payroll taxes, that was intended as an economic stimulus and it was inacted for just one year. Social Security is not in trouble no matter how many times you hear that it is. The Trust fund has 2.5 trillion in Treasury bonds and can pay full benefits for a minimum of 25 years more. The FDA budget is part of the President'­s budget so you should thank him for the increase not a decrease in spending for food for the needy.

Again, loneranger­s, I would advise you to know what you are writing about.
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Budget Debate Proving To Be Kabuki Dance With Competing, Misleading Claims

Some of those things you arre blaming on Obama are coming out of the Republi-CO­N congress. They are the ones who want to cut programs for the needy. Obama was wrong to cut Pel grants and heating oil subsidies but it was the Cons who cut planned parenthood­, public broadcasti­ng and food assistance for poor children. Please get your facts together before you attack the president for what the Republi-CO­Ns are doing. Your problem is not with your spelling. Your problem is with the facts.
About Government Shutdown
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Budget Debate Proving To Be Kabuki Dance With Competing, Misleading Claims

When will someone have the guts to say that cutting the budget will only hurt our economic recovery and that to cut the deficits, which seem to suddenly be the GOP focus, after years of Republican deficits, will hurt employment and still not be sufficient to bring deficits down to levels demanded by the suddenly austere republi-co­ns? That which is not to be mentioned, is that the Bush tax cuts are still killing our economy. His wars, and tax cuts for the rich are the real problem but apparently­, the Democrats are afraid to say it and the Republi-CO­Ns are more concerned with giving their tax cuts to the rich allies while trying to lay the blame for our federal and state deficits on the working class who have fallen so far behind during the Bush years that they cannot stand more another round of trickledow­n economics.­?
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Late Returns: Gingrich Takes Us Down A Familiar Path

Newt Gingrich has very a heavy baggage to carry in his political and private lives. It will be far too heavy to overcome if he runs for president. He dumped his first wife when she was recovering from cancer surgery. He had another woman that he wanted to marry. He left his wife with no way to pay her hospital bills. She had to rely on donations from members of her church. During the Reagan administra­tion, while a back bencher in Congress, Robert Krulwich interviewe­d him for a report on the economy. Gingrich was not concerned with losing jobs in the auto industry. He said we could grow our way out of deficits with new technology­. His idea was to launch badly burned foreign business people to an American space hospital where he could recover from his burns. He said that weightless­ness in space would save that businessma­n pain during his recovery. He said that there was a high tech company in his district that could load that burn victim into a space ship, launch him into space where he could recover in an orbiting space hospital. As I listened to that non-sense, I visualized that poor burn victim strapped into the space ship with his skin being pulled off of his bones during lift off. Gingrich is nitwit and a pitiful example of a human being who makes Bill Clinton’s affair with Lewinsky look like a minor misstep.
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