Thursday, November 20, 2014
Sorry, liberals: Reagan and Bush 41 did not defy Congress with executive amnesty!
Cain TV.com ^ | November 19, 2014 | Dan Calabrese
Nice try.
Every time President Obama does something, or is about to do something, that has conservatives up in arms - especially if the protest is based on abuse of his constitutional authority - you can count on the left doing one thing: Finding a supposed example of a past Republican president or presidents doing the exact same thing.
Oh, I guess it was OK when a Republican did it!
They've been all over that argument the last couple of days with Obama's soon-to-be-announced executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, claiming that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the exact same thing. This argument is just clever enough that people who don't really understand the issue or don't really know the history might buy it.
But when you really look into it, as Hans von Spakovsky did today for the Daily Signal, you'll find that the liberals' claim here is a complete load of crap:
What Obama is proposing to do here is to act action on his own specifically because Congress has not given him authorization to act. That is about as unconstitutional as a thing can be, and it bears no similarity to the examples liberals are trying to put forward as its equivalent.
Nice job on von Spakovsky's part doing the work to expose the fraud that is this argument.
Of course, the most galling thing about all this is that, if Obama really wants immigration reform, he could wait until the new Congress is sworn in and then work with them on it. But he doesn't want that because the new Republican Congress is not going to pass a bill that's designed solely to serve the electoral objectives of Democrats. So suddenly, after getting nothing out of Congress on this score for six years, he suddenly has to act nowbecause it's a huge emergency.
Nice try.
Every time President Obama does something, or is about to do something, that has conservatives up in arms - especially if the protest is based on abuse of his constitutional authority - you can count on the left doing one thing: Finding a supposed example of a past Republican president or presidents doing the exact same thing.
Oh, I guess it was OK when a Republican did it!
They've been all over that argument the last couple of days with Obama's soon-to-be-announced executive order granting amnesty to millions of illegal aliens, claiming that both Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush did the exact same thing. This argument is just clever enough that people who don't really understand the issue or don't really know the history might buy it.
But when you really look into it, as Hans von Spakovsky did today for the Daily Signal, you'll find that the liberals' claim here is a complete load of crap:
In 1986, Congress passed the Immigration and Reform Control Act (IRCA), which provided a general amnesty to almost three million illegal immigrants. According to the Associated Press, Reagan acted unilaterally when his Immigration and Naturalization Service commissioner “announced that minor children of parents granted amnesty by [IRCA] would get protection from deportation.” In fact, in 1987 former Attorney General Ed Meese issued a memorandum allowing the INS to defer deportation where “compelling or humanitarian factors existed” for children of illegal immigrants who had been granted amnesty and, in essence, given green cards and put on a path towards being “naturalized” as citizens. In announcing this policy, Reagan was not defying Congress, but rather carrying out the general intent of Congress which had just passed a blanket amnesty for millions of illegal immigrants.What Obama is getting ready to do has nothing at all in common with what Reagan or Bush did. Both of these past Republican presidents made fairly run-of-the-mill administrative decisions on the implementation of bills Congress had passed, and that they had signed. That is entirely uncontroversial, and would be so if Obama did it too.
As the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website itself explains, the children of individuals who become citizens through naturalization have a relatively easy process for also becoming naturalized citizens to avoid breaking up families. And as Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies points out, the INS was, as a practical matter, going to “look the other way under certain circumstances with regard to minor children both of whose parents received amnesty.” This was well within the authority delegated to the executive branch and a “legitimate exercise of prosecutorial discretion.”
The Bush administration relaxed these technical requirements under a “Family Fairness” policy to defer deportation of the spouses and children of illegal immigrants who were allowed to stay in this country and seek naturalization through the IRCA amnesty. Shortly thereafter, Bush worked with Congress to pass the Immigration Act of 1990, which made these protections permanent. Significantly, the Bush policy and the 1990 Act affected only a small number of immigrants–about 180,000 people –in comparison to Obama’s past (his 2012 implementation of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival program) and anticipated unilateral actions that will affect millions of immigrants.
Some supporters of Obama’s unilateral actions on immigration have also pointed to other actions by past presidents that allowed immigrants such as Afghans and Nicaraguans to stay in the U.S. But those limited actions were based on very special circumstances such as the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the Communist-driven civil war in Nicaragua or the Chinese massacre of students in Tiananmen Square that led Bush to granted deferred departure to threatened Chinese nationals.
What Obama is proposing to do here is to act action on his own specifically because Congress has not given him authorization to act. That is about as unconstitutional as a thing can be, and it bears no similarity to the examples liberals are trying to put forward as its equivalent.
Nice job on von Spakovsky's part doing the work to expose the fraud that is this argument.
Of course, the most galling thing about all this is that, if Obama really wants immigration reform, he could wait until the new Congress is sworn in and then work with them on it. But he doesn't want that because the new Republican Congress is not going to pass a bill that's designed solely to serve the electoral objectives of Democrats. So suddenly, after getting nothing out of Congress on this score for six years, he suddenly has to act nowbecause it's a huge emergency.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Is Obama daring Republicans to impeach him?
World Net Daily ^ | 11-18-14 | Morgan Brittany
Well, the short-lived honeymoon is over. What did it last … all of a week? It seems as though we didn’t even have an election the way Obama and his party are acting. The voice of the American people has fallen on deaf ears evidently, because nothing has changed on the Democratic side in Washington. The massive takeover by the GOP just seems to be a minor annoyance, and Obama is just going to push through his agenda as though the election were a mere speed bump.
The move Obama is making in this political chess game just shows his utter contempt for the American people, Congress and our Constitution. Even liberal scholar Jonathan Turley believes we are at a tipping point and heading toward a constitutional crisis. He believes that if Obama signs an executive order granting amnesty to illegals, he definitely will have overstepped his bounds and trampled on the three-branch system of government.
Unfortunately, it looks as though that is exactly what he will do, and he doesn’t seem to be worried about any consequences. On the contrary, he is actually inviting Congress to do something about it. It seems he is daring the Republicans to make a move.
Well, the short-lived honeymoon is over. What did it last … all of a week? It seems as though we didn’t even have an election the way Obama and his party are acting. The voice of the American people has fallen on deaf ears evidently, because nothing has changed on the Democratic side in Washington. The massive takeover by the GOP just seems to be a minor annoyance, and Obama is just going to push through his agenda as though the election were a mere speed bump.
The move Obama is making in this political chess game just shows his utter contempt for the American people, Congress and our Constitution. Even liberal scholar Jonathan Turley believes we are at a tipping point and heading toward a constitutional crisis. He believes that if Obama signs an executive order granting amnesty to illegals, he definitely will have overstepped his bounds and trampled on the three-branch system of government.
Unfortunately, it looks as though that is exactly what he will do, and he doesn’t seem to be worried about any consequences. On the contrary, he is actually inviting Congress to do something about it. It seems he is daring the Republicans to make a move.
(Excerpt) Read more at wnd.com ...
Obama’s Amnesty Will Loot Social Security To Give Your Money To Illegal Aliens!
conservative hq ^ | Nov 18, 2014 | George Rasley,
One of the issues that killed the Senate’s hated “Gang of Eight” amnesty for illegal aliens bill was that it allowed the amnestied illegal aliens to immediately access public benefits reserved for citizens and legal immigrants.
House conservatives correctly argued that the “Gang of Eight” bill and its various House companion bills would allow illegal aliens immediate access to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and various other welfare programs, such as food stamps.
While the proponents of the “Gang of Eight” bill tried to finesse the issue the bottom line was and is that once the government gives a Social Security number and card to an illegal alien that opens up a whole smorgasbord of federal, state and local benefits – and it also opens up the possibility of registering to vote.
Now the Federation of American Immigration Reform has produced a stunning report that details how Obama’s planned illegal “executive amnesty” will provide the same free ride that the “Gang of Eight” bill did.
“Obama’s executive amnesty isn’t only unconstitutional but costly; from day one it opens up federal and state benefits to individuals who are still illegal aliens, regardless of the label the President puts on them,” FAIR executive director Julie Kirchner told Matt Boyle of Breitbart News in an exclusive interview in advance of the report’s public release.
The seven-page report from FAIR details how either of the two major mechanisms through which Obama would grant the executive amnesty to millions of illegal aliens would ultimately end up with those millions of illegal aliens taking U.S. taxpayer benefits away from struggling Americans almost immediately.
Obama could give the millions of illegal aliens “humanitarian parole,” something the FAIR report notes is included in statute as a power of the executive branch under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) for “temporary” protections for people from outside the United States. But the Bill Clinton administration in 1998, via a Department of Justice (DOJ) memo, expanded the meaning of “humanitarian parole” to illegal aliens inside the U.S. That memo did not have any “statutory or regulatory basis,” FAIR wrote, but Obama has used it to grant “parole in place to illegal aliens and is expected to expand this practice.”
If that’s how Obama grants executive amnesty to the millions of illegal aliens he plans to, they’ll get near-immediate access to welfare and other public benefits.
“Aliens with parole generally receive work authorization and are eligible for most benefits under federal law,” FAIR wrote. “This is true regardless of whether they have humanitarian parole or parole in place because the eligibility rules for benefits programs make no distinction between the two. Indeed, the longer an alien’s parole, the more benefits he is eligible to receive.”
As for unemployment benefits, aliens with parole for less than a year are also eligible for those despite the fact that states administer unemployment benefits. That’s because state unemployment benefits are “based upon the Federal Unemployment Tax Act (FUTA), which specifically says that aliens paroled into the U.S. for less than one year are eligible for unemployment benefits provided they otherwise meet the program’s other requirements.”
Such aliens who would get parole would also get immediate access to Social Security and Medicare benefits—meaning they could take Social Security or Medicare away from Americans—FAIR wrote, “so long as they meet other eligibility requirements.”
“By statute, Congress exempted retirement benefits under Social Security from the list of federal public benefits for which an alien must be a ‘qualified alien’ and wait five years for eligibility pursuant to PRWORA,” FAIR wrote. “Instead the Social Security Act only requires that aliens be ‘lawfully present.’ The regulation that defines ‘lawfully present’ for retirement benefits includes aliens paroled into the U.S. for less than one year.”
As for Medicare, the laws and regulations are similar to Social Security—meaning illegal aliens who would get parole status under an Obama amnesty would have almost immediate access to Medicare.
Now here’s what no one on Capitol Hill is talking about, but every Republican and those few Democrats who still actually care about working Americans instead of ethic power politics should care about – adding that many recipients will break Social Security, and the federal budget, almost immediately.
Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 41 percent of Federal expenditures in fiscal year 2013.
According to the Social Security Trustees’ 2014 Annual Report, Social Security’s total expenditures have exceeded non-interest income of its combined trust funds since 2010 and the Trustees estimate that Social Security cost will exceed non-interest income throughout the 75-year projection period.
The federal deficit for Fiscal Year 2014 is $483.35 billion.
Now here’s the kicker: The Trustees project that this annual cash-flow deficit will average about $77 billion between 2014 and 2018 before rising steeply as income growth slows to its sustainable trend rate after the economic recovery is complete while the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers.
What that means is that the United States is borrowing $77 billion, mostly from the Chinese, to pay benefits to its citizens.
Last year, The Heritage Foundation issued a report estimating the combined 75-year unfunded obligation of the Social Security and Disability trust funds (referred to as the OASDI trust fund) is $12.3 trillion. This is a $1 trillion increase from the previous year’s unfunded obligation of $11.3 trillion.
The combined Social Security and Disability programs are projected to remain solvent—that is, they are expected to have enough revenue from payroll taxes, interest on the trust fund balance, and repayment of borrowed trust fund dollars to pay out scheduled benefits—through 2033.
Heritage noted that if no action is taken to improve the program’s solvency before 2033, benefits will be reduced across the board by 23 percent.
In 2033, the Social Security trust fund will be exhausted, and the program will be able to pay only three-fourths of scheduled benefits.
While the Social Security system is considered solvent until that year, what is the effect of adding as many as 11 million illegal aliens to the Social Security beneficiary pool?
Economics 101 tells us the first illegal aliens to seek amnesty will be the illegal aliens who seek benefits, not the illegal aliens who could conceivably be added to the taxpaying pool that supports those benefits.
This means that the United States will be borrowing billions more from the Chinese to pay benefits to illegal aliens who, by their Obama-granted claim on Social Security and Medicare, will also rapidly advance the bankruptcy of the two programs.
Gruber: Seniors Should Be Limited to Three Lowest Cost Medicare Part D Plans!
PJ Tatler ^ | November 18, 2014 | Paula Bolyard
They'd be better off with "less scope for choosing the wrong plan."
In a 2009 paper, “Choice Inconsistencies Among the Elderly: Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program,” Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber argued that there were too many Medicare Part D plans for seniors to choose from, which led them to make bad decisions when enrolling in a plan.
In the paper, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gruber wrote with Jason T. Abaluck that the privatization of the public Medicare program had resulted in dozens of private insurers offering a wide variety of insurance products for seniors to choose from. The result of so many choices, Gruber wrote, is that seniors are not making decisions that are in their best interest. ”First, elders place much more weight on plan premiums than they do on the expected out of pocket costs that they will incur under the plan. Second, they substantially under-value variance reducing aspects of alternative plans. Finally, consumers appear to value plan financial characteristics far beyond any impacts on their own financial expenses or risk.”
The paper noted that while standard economic theory would suggest that expanded choice is a beneficial plan feature, “There are reasons to believe that the standard model is insufficient, particularly for a population of elders. There is growing interest in behavioral economics in models where agents are better off with a more restricted choice set,” Gruber wrote.
One of the reasons that choices should be restricted for seniors is their inability to understand the choices available to them. According to Gruber, “These issues may be paramount within the context of the elderly, given that the potential for cognitive failures rises at older ages.” He continued, “There is substantial scope for increases in utility if consumers made better choices, and some of these gains could be realized by restricting to the three lowest cost plans.”
Gruber admits that his models did not distinguish between the case of rational consumers choosing plans they trust and consumers making poor choices due to a lack of cognitive ability. “In either case,” he concluded, “our estimates imply that consumers would be better off if there were less scope for choosing the wrong plan.”
Gruber reiterated his assertion that seniors would be better off with fewer choices in a follow-up paper in 2013, “Evolving Choice Inconsistencies in Choice of Prescription Drug Insurance.”
“The bold experiment with consumer choice across health insurance plans embodied in the Medicare Part D program provides an excellent opportunity to assess how consumers perform in choosing insurance plans,” Gruber wrote. “We find that, using the best available data, consumers are very inconsistent in their choices, overweighting premiums relative to out of pocket costs, weighting plan characteristics above and beyond the effect on that consumer, and ignoring variance in coverage across plans.”
Gruber again acknowledged that standard economic theory would suggest that Medicare beneficiaries are better off choosing from a wide variety of plans that meet their needs, rather than constraining them to a limited set of choices being made by the government. But perhaps giving insight into what Obamacare masterminds envision, not only for the Medicare Part D program, but also for the future of the Obamacare exchanges, Gruber concluded, “There are a large number of behavioral economics models which suggest that in fact agents may be better off with more restrictive choice sets.”
They'd be better off with "less scope for choosing the wrong plan."
In a 2009 paper, “Choice Inconsistencies Among the Elderly: Evidence from Plan Choice in the Medicare Part D Program,” Obamacare advisor Jonathan Gruber argued that there were too many Medicare Part D plans for seniors to choose from, which led them to make bad decisions when enrolling in a plan.
In the paper, written for the National Bureau of Economic Research, Gruber wrote with Jason T. Abaluck that the privatization of the public Medicare program had resulted in dozens of private insurers offering a wide variety of insurance products for seniors to choose from. The result of so many choices, Gruber wrote, is that seniors are not making decisions that are in their best interest. ”First, elders place much more weight on plan premiums than they do on the expected out of pocket costs that they will incur under the plan. Second, they substantially under-value variance reducing aspects of alternative plans. Finally, consumers appear to value plan financial characteristics far beyond any impacts on their own financial expenses or risk.”
The paper noted that while standard economic theory would suggest that expanded choice is a beneficial plan feature, “There are reasons to believe that the standard model is insufficient, particularly for a population of elders. There is growing interest in behavioral economics in models where agents are better off with a more restricted choice set,” Gruber wrote.
One of the reasons that choices should be restricted for seniors is their inability to understand the choices available to them. According to Gruber, “These issues may be paramount within the context of the elderly, given that the potential for cognitive failures rises at older ages.” He continued, “There is substantial scope for increases in utility if consumers made better choices, and some of these gains could be realized by restricting to the three lowest cost plans.”
Gruber admits that his models did not distinguish between the case of rational consumers choosing plans they trust and consumers making poor choices due to a lack of cognitive ability. “In either case,” he concluded, “our estimates imply that consumers would be better off if there were less scope for choosing the wrong plan.”
Gruber reiterated his assertion that seniors would be better off with fewer choices in a follow-up paper in 2013, “Evolving Choice Inconsistencies in Choice of Prescription Drug Insurance.”
“The bold experiment with consumer choice across health insurance plans embodied in the Medicare Part D program provides an excellent opportunity to assess how consumers perform in choosing insurance plans,” Gruber wrote. “We find that, using the best available data, consumers are very inconsistent in their choices, overweighting premiums relative to out of pocket costs, weighting plan characteristics above and beyond the effect on that consumer, and ignoring variance in coverage across plans.”
Gruber again acknowledged that standard economic theory would suggest that Medicare beneficiaries are better off choosing from a wide variety of plans that meet their needs, rather than constraining them to a limited set of choices being made by the government. But perhaps giving insight into what Obamacare masterminds envision, not only for the Medicare Part D program, but also for the future of the Obamacare exchanges, Gruber concluded, “There are a large number of behavioral economics models which suggest that in fact agents may be better off with more restrictive choice sets.”
What did the press know about Gruber and when did they know it?
TheVirginian ^ | 11/18/2014 | Moneyrunner
The reaction of the MSM to the Gruber tapes is revealing. Today’s article by Chris Cillizza tries to misdirect the issue into a personality conflict between Gruber and Conservatives who he thinks are the object of Gruber’s charge that the American people are stupid. His article, about Gruber as catnip for conservatives tries to make the story about Conservative pique, not the fact that Gruber did something that you are never supposed to do when you pull a sting: expose the sting. A good sting never ends, but Gruber ended the ObamaCare sting. So the press, after hoping it would simply die because of lack of oxygen, is desperately trying to change the subject.
But Cilliza is wrong, not just on the focus, but also on the issue of who Gruber classified as stupid. Conservatives were always oppose to ObamaCare. And not just conservatives. ObamaCare passed without a single Republican vote. The lies and deception described by Gruber fooled only Liberals. Liberals who were fed the story the Obama administration was feeding to its media accomplices. No tax, lower cost, better coverage, no changes if you were happy.
But were Liberals in the media really fooled, or were they simply promoting the Obama/Gruber/Democrat lies because they were being Good Germans? I mean, really. What non-comatose human being believes that you can insure 30 million more people, provide more services, cover pre-existing conditions, and reduce the cost to the average family by $2500? Melissa Francis tells of being called on the carpetat CNBC for her criticism of ObamaCare’s math and told that she was “disrespecting the office of the President.”
I believe that the average reporter and editor is functionally innumerate, but that doesn’t pass the smell test. Like Good Germans, the press corps knew, but didn’t want to know.
So now one of the architects of the conspiracy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And the lies and deception has been uncovered, not by the complicit press that does not want to know what was really going on, but by a guy who lost his health insurance policy thanks to ObamaCare and spent hours searching the internet. Because everything that you say in public gets recorded. And citizen journalist are looking where the Good Germans of the press don’t want you to go.
The reaction of the MSM to the Gruber tapes is revealing. Today’s article by Chris Cillizza tries to misdirect the issue into a personality conflict between Gruber and Conservatives who he thinks are the object of Gruber’s charge that the American people are stupid. His article, about Gruber as catnip for conservatives tries to make the story about Conservative pique, not the fact that Gruber did something that you are never supposed to do when you pull a sting: expose the sting. A good sting never ends, but Gruber ended the ObamaCare sting. So the press, after hoping it would simply die because of lack of oxygen, is desperately trying to change the subject.
But Cilliza is wrong, not just on the focus, but also on the issue of who Gruber classified as stupid. Conservatives were always oppose to ObamaCare. And not just conservatives. ObamaCare passed without a single Republican vote. The lies and deception described by Gruber fooled only Liberals. Liberals who were fed the story the Obama administration was feeding to its media accomplices. No tax, lower cost, better coverage, no changes if you were happy.
But were Liberals in the media really fooled, or were they simply promoting the Obama/Gruber/Democrat lies because they were being Good Germans? I mean, really. What non-comatose human being believes that you can insure 30 million more people, provide more services, cover pre-existing conditions, and reduce the cost to the average family by $2500? Melissa Francis tells of being called on the carpetat CNBC for her criticism of ObamaCare’s math and told that she was “disrespecting the office of the President.”
I believe that the average reporter and editor is functionally innumerate, but that doesn’t pass the smell test. Like Good Germans, the press corps knew, but didn’t want to know.
So now one of the architects of the conspiracy couldn’t keep his mouth shut. And the lies and deception has been uncovered, not by the complicit press that does not want to know what was really going on, but by a guy who lost his health insurance policy thanks to ObamaCare and spent hours searching the internet. Because everything that you say in public gets recorded. And citizen journalist are looking where the Good Germans of the press don’t want you to go.
Obama 2012 Campaign Press Release: Gruber “Helped Write Obamacare”!
The Federalist ^ | Nov 18, 2014 | Sean Davis
The Obama administration can try to distance itself from Jonathan Gruber all it wants, but a 2012 press release from Obama’s own presidential campaign shows that when it comes to Obamacare, the president and Gruber are joined at the hip.
The Obama administration can try to distance itself from Jonathan Gruber all it wants, but a 2012 press release from Obama’s own presidential campaign shows that when it comes to Obamacare, the president and Gruber are joined at the hip.
(Excerpt) Read more at thefederalist.com ...
Stupid House Dems Again Choose Nancy Pelosi as Leader
LATimes ^ | ALAN FRAM
Rep. Nancy Pelosi overcame gripes about Democrats' losing campaign messages and breezed to re-election Tuesday as House minority leader.
Meeting behind closed doors, Democrats used a voice vote to give Pelosi, D-Calif., her seventh two-year term as their House leader. The rest of the party's top leadership in the chamber, including No. 2 leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was also re-elected.
Pelosi and her lieutenants faced no challengers. But just two weeks after an Election Day that deepened their minority status — they lost at least a dozen House seats — some said their party had done a poor job of persuading middle-class voters that Democrats were on their side.
"We need a full-blown discussion of who we are, where we're going, what are our priorities. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. "It's all of our faults, not just the leadership."
"We should have stayed on message and not walked away from the successes of this president," said Rep. Donald Payne Jr., D-N.J. Many Democratic candidates distanced themselves from President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in some regions.
Pelosi has been House Democratic leader since 2003, including a four-year stint as the first female House speaker. They've not been in the majority since 2010, and Pelosi said it was time for Democrats to focus more sharply on middle-class needs.
"What we want are initiatives that help the American people, that reduce the anxiety because it reduces the income disparity" between lower earners and the wealthy, Pelosi told reporters
Rep. Nancy Pelosi overcame gripes about Democrats' losing campaign messages and breezed to re-election Tuesday as House minority leader.
Meeting behind closed doors, Democrats used a voice vote to give Pelosi, D-Calif., her seventh two-year term as their House leader. The rest of the party's top leadership in the chamber, including No. 2 leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., was also re-elected.
Pelosi and her lieutenants faced no challengers. But just two weeks after an Election Day that deepened their minority status — they lost at least a dozen House seats — some said their party had done a poor job of persuading middle-class voters that Democrats were on their side.
"We need a full-blown discussion of who we are, where we're going, what are our priorities. If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, D-N.J. "It's all of our faults, not just the leadership."
"We should have stayed on message and not walked away from the successes of this president," said Rep. Donald Payne Jr., D-N.J. Many Democratic candidates distanced themselves from President Barack Obama, who is deeply unpopular in some regions.
Pelosi has been House Democratic leader since 2003, including a four-year stint as the first female House speaker. They've not been in the majority since 2010, and Pelosi said it was time for Democrats to focus more sharply on middle-class needs.
"What we want are initiatives that help the American people, that reduce the anxiety because it reduces the income disparity" between lower earners and the wealthy, Pelosi told reporters
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
60% Of Households Get More Benefits Than They Pay In Taxes!
zero hedge ^ | 11-18-2014 | Mark Perry
That’s correct, the CBO study shows that the bottom three income quintiles representing 60% of US households are “net recipients” (they receive more in transfer payments than they pay in federal taxes), the second-highest income quintile pays just slightly more in federal taxes ($14,800) than it receives in government transfer payments ($14,100), while the top 20% of American “net payer” households finance 100% of the transfer payments to the bottom 60%, as well as almost 100% of the tax revenue collected to run the federal government. Here are the details of that analysis.
That’s correct, the CBO study shows that the bottom three income quintiles representing 60% of US households are “net recipients” (they receive more in transfer payments than they pay in federal taxes), the second-highest income quintile pays just slightly more in federal taxes ($14,800) than it receives in government transfer payments ($14,100), while the top 20% of American “net payer” households finance 100% of the transfer payments to the bottom 60%, as well as almost 100% of the tax revenue collected to run the federal government. Here are the details of that analysis.
(Excerpt) Read more at zerohedge.com ...
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