http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2012/10/obama-bin-laden-moderator-bob-schieffers-presidential-debate-highs-and-lows.html
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Monday, October 1, 2012
Sunday, September 30, 2012
Paul Ryan Explains Miit Romney Budget Program
Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Sunday insisted that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney had provided specifics for his tax plan, but refused to say which deductions would need to be eliminated or provide any math to prove that the scheme works.
During an interview on Fox News, host Chris Wallace noted that a recent study showed that the Romney-Ryan plan would cost nearly $5 trillion over 10 years.
“Not in the least bit true,” Ryan insisted. “That study has been so thoroughly discredited.”
“It’s revenue neutral… Lower all Americans’ tax rates by 20 percent,” Ryan replied.
“Right, how much will it cost?” Wallace pressed. “It’s not revenue neutral unless you take away the deductions.”
“I won’t get into a baseline argument with you because that’s what a lot of this is about,” Ryan explained. “We’re saying, limited deductions so you can lower tax rates for everybody. Start with people at the higher end. … And every time we’ve done this — whether it was Ronald Reagan working with Tip O’Neil, the idea from the Bowles-Simpson commission on how to do this — there’s been a traditional Democrat and Republican consensus: lowering tax rates, broadening the tax base works.”
“But you haven’t given me the math,” the Fox News host pressed.
“I don’t have the time,” Ryan laughed. “It would take me too long to go through all the math. But let me say it this way, you can lower tax rates by 20 percent across the board by closing loopholes and still have preferences for the middle class for things like charitable deductions, for home purchases, for health care. So what we’re saying is, people are going to get lower tax rates.”
“No,” Ryan said.
“Would he scale back and say, ‘OK, we’re going to have to raise taxes for the middle class?’” Wallace continued. “What’s most important to him in his tax reform plan?”
“Keeping tax rates down,” the vice presidential candidate remarked. “That’s more important than anything.”
During an event in Ohio last week, President Barack Obama said that Romney and Ryan had refused to provide details because it was impossible for them to reduce the deficit and cut taxes for the wealthy without also raising taxes on the middle class.
“No matter how many times they try to reboot their campaign, no matter how many times they try to tell you they’re going to start talking specifics really soon, they don’t do it, and the reason is because the math doesn’t work,” Obama asserted.
Watch this video from Fox News’ Fox News Sunday, broadcast Sept. 30, 2012.
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Wednesday, September 26, 2012
Mitt Romney Flip Flops on Emergency Rooms
http://news.yahoo.com/mitt-romneys-mind-bending-flip-flop-emergency-rooms-112431074--politics.html
Pop quiz: The following two statements both argue that mandatory health insurance is important to avoid "free riders" getting care on the public dime at the emergency room. Match the statement with the 2012 presidential candidate who delivered it.
"When uninsured people who can afford coverage get sick, and show up at the emergency room for care, the rest of us end up paying for their care in the form of higher premiums."
"If somebody could afford insurance, they should either buy the insurance or pay their own way. They shouldn't be allowed to just show up at the hospital and say, somebody else should pay for me."
Stumped? Don't feel bad: They're basically indistinguishable. (Although if you must know, the first is Barack Obama and the second is Mitt Romney.)
The free-rider problem is pretty straightforward. Because we as a society have decided that it's inhumane to let sick people die on the steps of our hospitals, we require those hospitals to care for those who show up, whether they can pay or not. But someone has to pay for their care, and when hospitals don't get government reimbursement for indigent patients, they have to absorb the costs themselves, which they manage by raising prices for everyone else. The solution devised by Romney, as Massachusetts governor, and the U.S. Congress, in "Obamacare," was to require anyone who could pay for insurance to buy it up front or pay a fine, and to provide a government subsidy for insurance to those who can't afford it. Even when the public pays for the subsidy, it turns out to cost less than having people to use emergency rooms as their primary-care facilities. Romney made the same point in his book No Apology and a half dozen other venues.
Now, here's Romney on 60 Minutes on Sunday night:
PELLEY: Does the government have a responsibility to provide health care to the 50 million Americans who don't have it today?
ROMNEY: Well, we do provide care for people who don't have insurance, people--we--if someone has a heart attack, they don't sit in their apartment and--and die. We--we pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care. And different states have different ways of providing for that care.
PELLEY: That's the most expensive way to do it.
ROMNEY: Well, the...
PELLEY: In the emergency room.
ROMNEY: Diff--different, again, different states have different ways of doing that. Some--some provide that care through clinics. Some provide the care through emergency rooms. In my state, we found a solution that worked for my state. But I wouldn't take what we did in Massachusetts and say to Texas, "You've got to take the Massachusetts model."
Wrenchingly, this stance is turned 180 degrees from his earlier position. To please conservatives wary of his record, Romney has said for some time that other states need not imitate Massachusetts' system--though that was also a reversal from 2009, when he wrote in USA Today that the Bay State should be a model for reforming the national system. That may have been a flip-flop, but it was in response to actual concerns about the authority of the federal government.
His more recent comments appear to be something different: Romney is basically saying that the cost savings don't matter. And that's a strange perspective, as both the pragmatic technocrat and the disciplined fiscal conservative he insists he is. Candidate Romney doesn't provide an alternative explanation for how he'd keep the public from paying for free riders (you can read a brief summary of his plan here), and that's a huge chunk of taxpayer dollars: a 2004 Kaiser Family Foundation survey calculated that free riders cost the federal and state governments almost $35 billion per year.
This reversal is awfully reminiscent of the fabled $716 billion Medicare cuts that came as part of Obamacare. Those aren't cuts to service, but rather reductions in the growth of the payments the government gives to providers. In his own budget, Paul Ryan assumed those reductions would stay in place. But Romney quickly disavowed that (and Ryan got in line), saying that he didn't want the federal government instituting the cuts. That means that President Romney would have to reach the same spending levels he pledged before, but do so while cutting nearly a trillion bucks more. As Derek Thompson pointed out, that's simply not going to happen.
On both the free-rider question and the Medicare question, Romney has effectively taken a position that leads to the government spending more money. In the first case, he was unwilling to challenge the notion that Americans shouldn't be allowed to die in the streets. In the second, he was unwilling to challenge the notion that senior citizens ought to receive government care. Both those stances are rational, but they point to a central irony of the tea party era: You can either be for smaller government, or you can be fiscally conservative--but it's nearly impossible to do both
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Paul Ryan get Boo at AARP Meeting
Radical Paul Ryan
Romney/Ryan will destroy America. Can you imagine the day after election night and they win. Sarah Palin the new defense Secretary, Michelle Bachmann as Secretary of State, Rush Limbaugh as head of Homeland Security and maybe Bill O'Reilly as head of the FBI. The American Taliban running America. Be scared be very scared.
Ryan's constant, smirking expression is so condescending it makes me want to wipe it off his face. It doesn't matter what he says, what you know he's thinking is that all those old people are as dumb as a box of rocks. Well, guess what, Paul, not all of us are and quite a few of us know a viper when we see one.
For other people named Paul Ryan, see Paul Ryan (disambiguation).
| Paul Ryan | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Wisconsin's 1st district | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 3, 1999 | |
| Preceded by | Mark Neumann |
| Chairperson of the House Budget Committee | |
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2011 | |
| Preceded by | John Spratt |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Paul Davis Ryan January 29, 1970 Janesville, Wisconsin, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Janna Little |
| Children | Liza Charles Samuel |
| Residence | Janesville, Wisconsin |
| Alma mater | Miami University |
| Religion | Roman Catholicism |
| Website | Congressional website |
| This article is part of a series about Paul Ryan | |
|---|---|---|
Born and raised in Janesville, Wisconsin, Ryan is a graduate of Miami University in Ohio. He worked as an aide to legislators Bob Kasten, Sam Brownback, and Jack Kemp, and as a speechwriter before winning election to the U.S. House in 1998. He is currently the chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Mitt Romney the 47% who BUG him and not pay federaal income taxes
Just which 47 percent of Americans was Mitt Romney talking about? It's hard to say. He lumped together three different ways of sorting people in what he's called less-than-elegant remarks.
Each of those three groups — likely Obama voters, people who get federal benefits and people who don't pay federal income taxes — contains just under half of all Americans, in the neighborhood of 47 percent at a given moment. There's some overlap, but the groups are quite distinct.
Confusingly, Romney spoke as if they're made up of the same batch of Americans.
A look at the three groups:
___OBAMA VOTERS
What Romney said: "There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what."
He's right on the nose, according to the latest Associated Press-GfK poll: Forty-seven percent of likely voters say they support Obama. And 46 percent say they support Romney, essentially a tie. This number fluctuates from poll to poll and week to week and could shift substantially before Election Day.
Who they are:
—Most are employed: Sixty-two percent of the Obama voters work, including the 10 percent working only part time. A fourth are retired. Five percent say they're temporarily unemployed.
—Most earn higher-than-average wages. Fifty-six percent have household incomes above the U.S. median of $50,000. Just 16 percent have incomes below $30,000, and about the same share (20 percent) have incomes of $100,000 or more.
—They're all ages but skew younger than Romney's voters: Twenty percent are senior citizens and 12 percent are under age 30.
—They're more educated than the overall population: Forty-three percent boast four-year college degrees or above; 21 percent topped out with a high school diploma.
___
PEOPLE WHO GET FEDERAL BENEFITS
What Romney said: "There are 47 percent ... who are dependent on government ... who believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you name it."
Whether they are dependent and believe they are entitled to anything is arguable, but Romney's statistic is about right — 49 percent of the U.S. population receive some kind of federal benefit, including Social Security and Medicare, according to the most recent Census Bureau data. Looking only at people who receive benefits that are based on financial need, such as food stamps, the portion is smaller — just over a third of the population. Many people get more than one type of benefit.
The biggest programs and their percentage of the U.S. population:
—Medicaid: 26 percent
—Social Security: 16 percent
—Food stamps: 16 percent
—Medicare: 15 percent
—Women, Infants and Children food program: 8 percent
___
THOSE WHO PAY NO FEDERAL INCOME TAX
What Romney said: "Forty-seven percent of Americans pay no income tax."
Romney's about on target — 46 percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax last year, according to a study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Most do pay other federal taxes, including Medicare and Social Security withholding. And they're not all poor. Some middle-income and wealthy families escape income tax because of deductions, credits and investment tax preferences.
Why they don't pay:
—About half don't earn enough money for a household of their size to owe income tax. For example, a family of four earning less than $26,400 would owe no taxes using the standard exemptions and deductions.
—About 22 percent get tax breaks for senior citizens that offset their income.
—About 15 percent get tax breaks for the working poor or low-income parents.
—Almost 3 percent get tax breaks for college tuition or other education expenses.
Who they are:
—The vast majority have below-average earnings: Among all who don't owe, 9 out of 10 make $50,000 or less.
—But some of the wealthy escape taxes, including about 4,000 households earning more than $1 million a year.
___
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