Tag Archives: Wealthiest Americans (1957)

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Weekly Address: Congress Must Compromise to Stop the Impact of the Sequester.


President Obama urges Congress to stop the sequester — the harmful automatic cuts that threaten thousands of jobs and affect our national security from taking effect on March 1.

Watch this week’s Weekly Address.

In Case You Missed It

Here’s a quick glimpse at what happened this week on WhiteHouse.gov:

Call to Governors: On Monday, President Obama and Vice President Biden delivered remarks to the National Governor Association. The President drew attention to the importance of infrastructure and education, while praising the group for their great work and accomplishments across America. The President also urged the governors to push Congress to end the harmful and automatic budget cuts known as the sequester, set to take effect March 1.

“As governors, you’re the ones who are on the ground, seeing firsthand every single day what works, what doesn’t work, and that’s what makes you so indispensable,” he said. “Whatever your party, you ran for office to do everything that you could to make our folks’ lives better.”

The First Lady and Dr. Biden also spoke and covered the importance of committing to our veterans in their transition to civilian life. Both highlighted states that have made progress in changing laws to make it easier for military spouses to attain new credentials when they move to a new state, and challenged all 50 states to follow through.

Rosa Parks Statue: On Wednesday, leaders gathered at Capitol Hill to honor civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks with the unveiling of her statue. The piece marks the first full-bodied statue of an African-American woman inside the Capitol’s Statuary Hall.

Over half a century ago, Parks courageously refused to give up her seat on a bus and became a catalyst for the civil rights movement. President Obama acknowledged she opened doors for millions by noting, “It is because of these men and women that I stand here today.”

Defense Threats from Sequester: On Tuesday, President Obama traveled to Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia to warn of the sequester and promote his solutions for deficit reduction. Watch the full speech here.

“So these cuts are wrong. They’re not smart. They’re not fair,” said President Obama. “They’re a self-inflicted wound that doesn’t have to happen.”

Let’s Move! Tour: This week, the First Lady launched the start of her Let’s Move! tour to celebrate the third anniversary of the initiative that is challenging childhood obesity. On Tuesday, the First Lady appeared on “Good Morning America” to discuss childhood obesity and introduce a new partnership that highlights healthier recipes through MyPlate, a way to learn about healthy eating.

Taking Action: On Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano hosted over 100 leaders to discuss making our schools and houses of worship safer through high-quality emergency management plans. In January, the President signed 23 Executive Actions to protect our communities and high-quality emergency management was a piece of this framework.

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Are you on the Sequester cut list ?


ThinkProgress War Room

Cuts Across America: The Impact of the Sequester on Communities Across America

Budgets are statements of values and priorities. What the GOP is preparing to do in less than a week says a lot about their priorities. Instead of closing tax loopholes and making smart spending cuts, the GOP is going to let damaging across the board spending cuts kick in next Friday. These cuts will not only damage the economy, they’ll hurt individual families and communities across the country.

Check out what eliminating just two giveaways to the wealthy and corporation could pay for. For example, we could avoid painful cuts to investments in jobs and education just by ending a giveaway to corporate jet owners”

And we could stop harmful cuts to children and families with disabilities if we just stopped letting the wealthiest Americans get tax breaks for the vacation homes and yachts:

Instead of asking the wealthiest Americans and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street to pay their fair share, Republicans are insisting that families, including the most vulnerable among us, shoulder the burden of reducing our deficit and debt.

BOTTOM LINE: There’s still a week left to avert the damaging and painful sequester cuts. All Republicans have to do is agree to a balanced approach that replaces the indiscriminate cuts with both new revenues and smarter, targeted spending cuts.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Flying will be even more unpleasant thanks to the sequester (if you’re local airport isn’t simply closed).

House Republicans quietly introduce watered-down Violence Against Women Act.

Ted Cruz goes full Joe McCarthy.

5 important stories in Africa that don’t involve Oscar Pistorious.

Maryland is on the verge of repealing the death penalty.

Here’s 5 ways the sequester might make you sick.

New abortion bill in Indiana mandates two transvaginal probes.

Why taxes must go up.

How Republican activists are trying to use the courts to dismantle decades of progressive victories.

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From the Middle Class Out


ThinkProgress War Room

Creating an Economy That Works for Everyone

For the last thirty years, we’ve been experiencing one long, failed experiment in so-called trickle-down economics. In practice, this means that the rich have gotten richer (exponentially so) while the middle class has fallen further and further behind. Trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, the one goal that binds the GOP together, utterly failed to trickle down, stifled economic growth, and contributed to the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

We need a different model — an economy that grows from the middle class out. What does this mean? How does that work? One of our colleagues, Senior Economist Heather Boushey, lays it all out in a new video:

BOTTOM LINE: The wealthy and corporations simply aren’t paying their fair share so in order to reduce our deficit in a smart way and still make investments in the middle class, we need to get rid of hundreds of billions of dollars in wasteful loopholes and giveaways in our tax code.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

57 terrible consequences of the sequester cuts that the GOP is allowing to kick in next week.

Bitter pill: why medical bills are killing us.

Oops: GOP senator accidentally gets behind Roe v. Wade.

Laura Bush supports marriage equality, she just doesn’t want anyone to know.

One top senator’s latest racist excuse for opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

The public takes President Obama’s side on major issues we need to deal with.

Anti-spending GOP reps wants taxpayer funds to turn George W. Bush’s boyhood home into a national park.

GOP rep won’t support pathway to citizenship because he wants to keep immigrants in “the dirtiest jobs.”

Austerity: still failing.

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Jobs V Loopholes


By ThinkProgress War Room

7 Tax Loopholes the GOP Loves to Love

In less than two weeks the very damaging across the board “sequester” cuts will kick in unless Republicans agree to a replacement that is a balanced compromise including both new revenues from closing tax loopholes and smarter, more targeted spending cuts.

When it was convenient for them to do so, Republicans including Speaker Boehner and Mitt Romney argued vociferously for closing loopholes and ending wasteful giveaways in the tax code. But now that push is coming to shove, these Republicans are refusing to help protect the economy and jobs by replacing the sequester cuts with new revenues from closing loopholes.

This intransigence has real consequences. As the president laid out yesterday, these cuts will cause pain:

So these cuts are not smart. They are not fair. They will hurt our economy. They will add hundreds of thousands of Americans to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction — people will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.

Here’s a look at the top seven loopholes and giveaways that Republicans think are more important than protecting our economy, jobs, the middle class, and the most vulnerable among us:

  1. Extra tax breaks enjoyed by the wealthiest Americans — $520 BILLION
  2. Tax break for companies that ship jobs overseas — $168 BILLION
  3. Special tax breaks for the largest oil companies — $25 BILLION
  4. The loophole that allow people like Mitt Romney to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class workers — $21 BILLION
  5. Tax deductions for vacation homes and yachts — $10 BILLION
  6. The corporate jet loophole — $3 BILLION
  7. Special write-offs for horse breeders (aka the Bluegrass Boondoggle) — $126 MILLION

BOTTOM LINE: The Republicans are choosing to protect millionaires and special interests like Big Oil and Wall Street instead of funding our military and programs vital for the middle class and the health of our economy.

Evening Brief: Important Stories That You Might’ve Missed

Annals right-wing media failure: how a joke became an attack against Chuck Hagel.

Florida’s GOP governor will expand Medicaid under Obamacare.

Marco Rubio is no savior for women.

800.000 defense workers to be furloughed because of the sequester.

Fox News: Al Jazeera America is a plot to activate Muslim sleeper cells in Detroit.

Supporters of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline outspend opponents 35 to 1.

The latest sneak attack on unions.

The science of addictive junk food.

How the sequester cuts hurt the long-term unemployed.

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# FORWARD


Aug 18, 2012 by    

Help build this campaign: http://OFA.BO/nHAK2p
Four years ago as I had the privilege to travel all across this country and meet Americans from all walks of life.
I decided nobody else should have to endure the heartbreak of a broken health care system. No one in the wealthiest nation on earth should go broke because they get sick.
Nobody should have to tell their daughters or sons the decisions they can and cannot make for themselves are constrained because of some politicians in Washington.
And thanks to you we’ve made a difference in people’s lives. Thanks to you there are folks that I meet today who have gotten care and their cancer’s been caught. And they’ve got treatment. And they are living full lives and it happened because of you.
We’ve come too far to turn back now. We’ve got too much work to do to implement health care. We’ve got too much work to do to create good jobs.
We’ve got too many teachers that we’ve got to hire.  We’ve got too many schools that we’ve got to rebuild. We’ve got too many students who still need affordable higher education.
There’s more homegrown energy to generate. There more troops that we’ve got to bring home.
There more doors of opportunity we’ve got to open to anybody who is willing to work hard and walk through those doors.
We’ve got to keep building an economy where no matter what you look like or where you come from, you can make it here if you try.
And you can leave something behind for the next generation, that’s what at stake right now Colorado. That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.
That’s why I’m asking for your vote. I still believe in you. And if you still believe in me, and if you’re willing to stand with me, and knock on some doors with me, and make some phone calls with me, and talk to your neighbor and friends about what’s at stake—we will win this election. We will finish what we started.
And we’ll remind the world why America is the greatest nation on earth.
God bless you and God bless the United States of America.

Aug 18, 2012 by    

Share this: http://OFA.BO/PSR8Rr Tweet this: http://OFA.BO/BdNe3m
President Obama was at a grassroots event in Rochester, NH to discuss middle-class economic security. President Obama has already cut taxes for a typical New Hampshire family by $4,200 over four years, helping families afford to send their children to college, buy their first home, pay for health care and child care.
The centerpiece of the Romney-Ryan economic proposals is a $5 trillion tax cut, with a lot of it going to the wealthiest Americans. In addition, Romney and Ryan put forward a plan that would let Governor Romney pay less than 1% in taxes each year. And this tax plan would actually raise taxes on middle-class families with children by an average of $2,000.