Conservatives play an essential role as gatekeepers. Vetting some of the left's perspectives and ideas, even in this polarized environment, could resonate with their base.
Democrats have owned the debate for two years, while Republicans have had difficulty articulating their side of it.
Plus, will eScooters survive the regulators?
The continuation of tax cuts by other means.
Plus, why dogs and politics are a dumb mix.
As new economic indicators attest to the economy’s strength, Democrats continue to insist that last year’s tax law is a big failure.
Progressives are free to remit their savings to the U.S. Treasury.
A senseless headline shrouds some legitimate news.
Hosted by Charlie Sykes.
The false panacea of taxing online retail sales.
It's been a tumultuous year for the digital currency markets. Now that we're a few weeks away from tax day, a friendly reminder: Don't forget your digital currency trades!
An ex-convict named Abraham Shakespeare thought he had hit the big time in 2006. He won $30 million in the Quick-Pick, one of Florida’s state lottery games. Women flocked to him, including one named Dee Dee Moore, who had a genius for embezzlement. By 2008, Shakespeare was a missing person. Police…
There are many ways Republicans can lose control of the House and Senate in November. But there’s only one way they stand a good chance to hold both chambers. It’s to run on the tax cuts.
Senator Susan Collins is currently championing a bill that will hike the Passenger Facility Charge (PFC) levied by airports on ticket prices. Supposedly the move would fund improvements to their infrastructure.
There's no such thing as a free gift! When I worked in Congress as an aide, I took a meeting with representatives of a foreign government about trade issues. They gave us all little business card holders as de minimis gifts. An older colleague, after the meeting ended, took all of them and threw…
Pave Breezewood. I'm back from my trip to Cleveland (where I covered the Browns #PerfectSeasonParade), and as is tradition, I had to drive through the godforsaken town of Breezewood, Pennsylvania. Over at the Examiner, Salena Zito has an appreciation of the place. One thing's for sure, having…
Paris
Think you have heard the last of the Republican tax plan that now seems certain to become law? Think again.
The Tax Foundation on Monday said the final GOP tax bill would increase the national debt by $448 billion over the next decade, far less than the estimated $1.5 trillion in lost tax revenues under the bill.
One day in October, Arkansas senator Tom Cotton approached Mitch McConnell on the Senate floor to pitch the majority leader an idea: In the tax reform bill, Republicans should repeal Obamacare’s individual mandate, the tax penalty most Americans lacking federally approved health insurance must pay.…
The GOP tax plan cleared its first major hurdle in the Senate Wednesday afternoon, after a motion to proceed to amendments passed on a 52-48 party line vote.
Widespread allegations of sexual harassment have in recent weeks rocked legislatures across Europe and North America. In London, harassment claims have brought down one cabinet minister and are threatening to bring parliamentary business to a standstill. In Brussels, the European parliament has…
If cleverness has often been a sign of decadence throughout history, the attempt to be too clever by half is an even more reliable marker of cultural decline. And a fondness for complicated rationalization, a proclivity for sophisticated excuse-making, and a tendency toward rushed and forced…
House Speaker Paul Ryan on Wednesday pushed back against criticisms of the provision repealing the adoption tax credit in the Republican bill to overhaul the tax code, saying the bill overall would benefit families. "It is a tax credit that goes to higher income individuals. Middle and low income…
What will become of the Packers now that Aaron Rodgers is injured? And why does Congress allow donations to college football programs to be tax deductible? Join Gregg Easterbrook and Stephen F. Hayes, as they discuss these and other questions on the latest episode of the Tuesday Morning Quarterback…
In a speech championing Republican tax reform efforts on Wednesday, President Donald Trump attempted to deflect criticism that the GOP tax plan disproportionately favors the wealthy with a novel argument: The rich don’t even want a tax cut.
Our tax code is screwed up in a thousand ways and there’s scarcely a cohort in America that isn’t hurt by this mess.
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
To understand the pragmatic realities of federal governance in the 21st century, one must recognize the existence of a fourth branch of government: the administrative state. We have some two million federal bureaucrats with extraconstitutional legislative powers. Not only do they write the reams of…
Men's studies actually exists, but not for the reason you think. I was confused at first when I saw that a college actually had a men's studies department. The idea of "men's studies" is usually a trope used to bash the existence of "women's studies" and is (usually) not a serious proposal. Yet,…
Republican tax negotiators believe they are closing in on an agreement to overhaul the U.S. tax code but remain at odds over whether reform would be enshrined permanently or automatically sunset after a period of years.
The Illinois legislature responded to the state’s ongoing fiscal crisis by—what else?—voting to hike the state income tax by a third, from over 3-and-a-half percent to nearly 5 percent. Republican governor Bruce Rauner fought against the budget, denouncing what he accurately described as a 32…
Special advisers to political leaders need to get out more. Prime Minister Theresa May's decision to sneak what was quickly labeled a "dementia tax" into the Conservative party's general election manifesto (the British general election will be held on June 8) was reportedly heavily influenced by…
Nothing erodes the power of a bully as much as a victory by those he threatens. Nothing erodes the reputation of a negotiator as much as a failure to succeed in cutting a deal he dearly wants to complete. Which is why President Trump enters negotiations over tax reform in a seriously weakened…
Sometimes, if you are quiet enough in Washington, D.C., you can hear the distinct sound of supple Gucci leather creaking its way around town. And with the Trump administration now in office, and tax reform again on the horizon, the quiet sound has become a roar. The shoe polish smell alone can be…
Most presidential honeymoons are characterized by congressional and presidential vows of everlasting cooperation, but the policy cohabitations are soon torn asunder by the healthy re-emergence of political differences. President Trump's honeymoon period was different. He chose to abuse his…
There's an old saying that "personnel is policy" in filling the top positions in an administration. More precisely, if you want a policy to be pursued and protected, hire those most committed to it.
Portland, Oregon, will penalize companies whose pay schemes its city council disapproves of. From the New York Times:
Lost in the momentous events of the recent election was the news that the citizens of the District of Columbia overwhelmingly approved a "state constitution" for the proposed state of New Columbia. This presages a renewed public campaign for D.C. statehood. One can easily imagine how much the…
Now that Donald Trump has won the presidency, one of his transition team's top priorities should be ensuring that the candidate who came to power on a pledge to drain the federal swamp of corruption and self-dealing is not pulled into the mire upon his inauguration. The problem is not Trump's…
Daycare used to be downright quaint: When I was a kid, my "daycare center" was Mr. and Mrs. Cummings' front yard across the street from my house. I walked there after school and under their careful watch I played every dangerous game that existed until my parents got home from work. The cost of…
Republicans may have an opportunity to salvage the election on the congressional level by making an explicit pitch to voters that they can stop Hillary Clinton on Obamacare and taxes. Online editor Michael Warren joined MSNBC's Morning Joe on Wednesday to discuss the lessons of 1996, as well as why…
Third presidential debates usually don't matter. And there's a reason. The candidate who's behind tries to avoid mistakes made in the earlier debates and sound more clear-minded and knowledgeable. The candidate who's ahead simply plays it safe.
Republican Abraham Lincoln waged his Civil War with malice towards none. Republican Donald Trump is waging his intra-party civil war with malice towards just about everyone. Bodies will be strewn across the political landscape, and the projected body-count is rising.
The New York Times's report on Donald Trump's tax records from 1995 suggests the Republican nominee may have avoided paying federal income taxes for up to nearly two decades afterward. That's because Trump declared a loss of almost $1 billion from his business dealings, and U.S. tax law allows…
Trump surrogates Chris Christie and Rudy Giuliani offered a similar defense of their candidate Sunday, calling him a "genius" and emphasizing that his not paying taxes was lawful, in the wake of a New York Times report that said the businessman could have avoided paying income taxes for years.
On CNN's State of the Union Sunday, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani had difficulty defending Donald Trump not paying income taxes.
Writing at City Journal, Clifford Asness notes that neither candidate on the debate stage Monday night seemed willing or able to defend free enterprise or conservative economic ideas. "There were many frustrating examples in the first debate of Donald Trump failing even to challenge Hillary…
Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.
Donald Trump outlined his tax and economic plan in Detroit on August 8. He returned to it last week for the first time in five weeks. In between, he mentioned bits of it. But concentrate on it? Nope.
First, the soda tax hit Berkeley; then, it hit Philly. Now, supporters seek to expand to four other cities, with both sides facing the largest spending to date before voters head to the polls in November.
Powell's Books, which bills itself as the world's largest independent bookstore, is a Portland, Oregon, institution. (Though I've always been more partial to nearby Cameron's.) Its popularity among Portlanders ranks up there with bikes and beer. But now Powell's finds itself in direct conflict with…
The problem with Democrats' approach to tax reform is that they want to increase taxes, and their plans would generally stymie growth. The problem with Republicans' approach to tax reform is that their plans, while pro-growth, too often neglect Main Street Americans and too often aren't fiscally…
Mexico has a serious obesity problem, with seventy percent of adults and thirty percent of children overweight or obese. Indeed, Mexico recently surpassed the United States to become the fattest major country in the world. We don't win anymore!
Donald Trump's speech on the economy Monday puts him in a strong position on the issue on which Hillary Clinton is weakest and politically vulnerable.
A group of Republican activists from Vermont and Virginia have written a letter to the delegates attending the Republican National Convention, urging those delegates to withhold their vote for Donald Trump unless and until the New York businessman releases his tax returns.
Representatives of both political parties agree that the current tax laws inadvertently create an incentive for multinational corporations to invest abroad. The high domestic tax rate on corporate income, combined with our worldwide tax system that double-taxes profits made overseas and then…
"This is the death of fractional gifts," Manhattan art assets advisor Ralph E. Lerner told the New York Times in 2006, just a few weeks after Congress enacted the Pension Protection Act, which (among other provisions) placed certain limits on the length of time that collectors may take deductions…
While for most people, thoughts of Ireland are limited to wearing green and drinking too much beer on St. Patrick's Day, for those of us who think about tax policy, the country and its successes are worth pondering more than once a year.
Donald Trump gets audited every year by the IRS. The Republican frontrunner made the revelation in an interview today with radio host Hugh Hewitt.
It's been news in recent days at left-leaning organs like The Nation that in the waning days of the Obama administration, there are still dark, cobwebbed sections of public law that need to be cleansed of their misogyny.
Do we really need new vehicles for retirement savings, especially ones that give new powers to state governments to coerce workers to save? Several states—most notably Illinois—are creating their own state-sponsored savings plans. The idea is to make retirement saving "easy" for workers (perhaps…
A new group called the Energy Equality Coalition launched on Thursday. The group's goal is to "end taxpayer subsidies and ensure a level playing field for middle-class American energy consumers."
After retaking the House of Representatives, Congressional GOP leaders beat a consistent drum for fundamentally reforming our tax system, an elusive goal since the historic 1986 tax reforms.
With a deadline looming, congressional leaders unveiled "sweeping" tax and spending legislation late last night. The result makes one wonder whether congressional Republicans negotiate directly with President Obama on these deals, or whether they just send corporate lobbyists to do so, thereby…
In the near future, 18-year-olds in Cleveland, Ohio, will be able to vote and enlist in the military. But they won't be old enough to buy a pack of smokes.
There are lots of good reasons for conservatives to cheer when various Republican candidates propose a consumption tax, or a tax on spending as some call it, or, in one of its most used forms, a value-added tax (VAT).
Back in October, the Council of the District of Columbia made news when a majority of its members pushed for the most generous paid-family-leave program in the country: a whopping 16 weeks. And we do mean whopping. Sixteen weeks is longer than the 12 weeks supported by Hillary Clinton and the 14…
All roads lead to Moscow. That's the message being given by hundreds of truck drivers across Russia who are staging massive protests against a new transport tax, called the platon. The platon took effect on November 15 and charges drivers a fee of 1.53 rubles (about $0.02) for each kilometer they…
Donald Trump has joined forces with Hillary Clinton and other presidential candidates to condemn the recent announcement that Pfizer, known for its erectile dysfunction drugs, is inverting in a merger with Allergan PLC to become an Irish company.
It will come as no surprise to readers who are also sports fans that Cleveland has lost again—this time, at the Supreme Court.
Were you thinking that corporate tax reform seemed like a potentially bipartisan issue that could actually get accomplished in the last year of the Obama administration? Elizabeth Warren is here to scuttle that dream.
How lucky is Hillary Clinton that her sole (credible) competitor for the Democratic nomination for president is a dyspeptic, self-described socialist who doesn’t appear to actually wish to be president? So lucky that nearly a year out from the 2016 election, she’s already running her general…
Two hundred and fifty years ago, the French and Indian War had just ended, and Britain’s Parliament was determined to find some way to maintain a standing army, to avoid putting 1,500 socially well-connected officers out of work. Their solution was to keep the Army in North America stationed as a…
The only word to describe Friday’s job report is ugly. The private sector created only 118,000 new jobs in September, early estimates of job creation in July and August were lowered, average hourly earnings dropped a tiny bit, the labor force participation rate dropped to its lowest level since…
Former Ronald Reagan speechwriter Jeff Bell found a lot to like in Donald Trump's tax plan.
Some Republican presidential candidate was sure to come along with a credible tax reform plan to erase tax loopholes, preferences, and special breaks, broaden the tax base, and lower rates. Now Jeb Bush has done it. This marks a departure point in the GOP race.
On Tuesday, the Washington Post published the cease and decist letter that Donald Trump's lawyer reportedly sent Club for Growth president David M. McIntosh, along with the promise of a multi-million dollar lawsuit if the group doesn't comply.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush laid out details of his economic plan in North Carolina Wednesday, focusing primarily on how he would reform the tax code as president. The proposal, Bush said, would help achieve his stated goal of four-percent annual economic growth.
Former Florida governor Jeb Bush has announced the outline of his tax proposal in a new Wall Street Journal op-ed published Tuesday evening. Among Bush's proposals are three income-tax brackets (28 percent, 25 percent, and 10 percent), cutting the corporate tax rate to 20 percent, and eliminating…
The Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) is replete with bad policies. The so-called Cadillac tax is not one of them.
Hillary Clinton has unveiled a "profit sharing" tax plan. The details of the plan have been published on her website.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, while dictating one of the most sweeping social changes in history in his opinion in the Obergefell v. Hodges case that legalized same-sex marriage across America, waxes magnanimous towards foes of the expansion of the millennia-old definition of marriage. He said those who…
Republican House majority leader Kevin McCarthy is dubbing the third week of June “health care week.” It is then the House of Representatives will bring up a series of health care-related bills as the Supreme Court prepares to issue its ruling on a major provision of the Affordable Care Act at the…
They are a lousy team with perhaps the worst owner in all of professional sports, but the Imperial City wants the Redskins nonetheless. As Alex Gold and Ted Gayer of the Brookings Institute write:
Bill Clinton is blaming the Clinton Foundation's accountants for not disclosing the acceptance of foreign donations on tax documents filed with the I.R.S. The former president made the comments in an interview with NBC:
The Clinton Foundation is now admitting that mistakes were made. "[Y]es, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do, but we are acting quickly to remedy them, and have taken steps to ensure they don't happen in the future. We are committed to operating the Foundation responsibly and…
Every year since 2011, the White House has used tax time to post a "Federal Taxpayer Receipt" showing taxpayers how their federal tax dollars are being spent. President Obama introduced the concept in his 2011 State of the Union address, and Wednesday the White House posted the fifth installment so…
The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky is celebrating this April 15 by declaring that America is “the most undertaxed advanced country in the world.” He claims that this chart offers proof of his assertion.
In response to this post, several readers have accurately pointed out that a page of the IRS website, posted on March 25, clearly states that, “If you are not required to file a tax return and don’t want to file a return, you do not need to file a return solely to claim this exemption.”
UPDATE: Several readers have accurately pointed out that a page of the IRS website posted on March 25 clearly states that “If you are not required to file a tax return and don’t want to file a return, you do not need to file a return solely to claim this exemption.”
Given that Obamacare’s supporters like to take the Congressional Budget Office’s overly optimistic scoring of the president’s signature legislation as gospel, it’s fun to look at how poorly Obamacare is actually doing in relation to earlier CBO projections. When the Democrats rammed Obamacare…
Senator Ben Sasse has introduced a law to eliminate the amnesty tax bonuses, according to a press release from his office.
When is a tax break really just government spending? When it's a "refundable tax credit."
On its much maligned Twitter feed, Think AgainTurn Away, the State Department is denouncing higher taxes -- and even asserting they're evidence a utopian society is a pipe dream.
Senator Jeff Sessions, the former ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, says President Obama's proposed budget "raises taxes by $2.1 trillion."
Bernie Becker of the The Hill writes that:
Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, is stepping up his criticism of President Obama’s plan to regulate the internet, warning that new rules will lead to the types of taxes and fees slapped on telephones and cable service.
In spite of his own mostly impressive educational pedigree, President Obama has always harbored an anti-intellectual (or, to be generous, anti-academic) streak. Whether insulting art history in a failed appeal to "Real 'Muricans," or developing a philistine "College Scorecard," which reduces the…
Republicans have been tripping over one another to slag President Obama’s tax proposal, made in his State of the Union address, to repeal the step-up in basis on inherited wealth and use the revenue it would generate to increase the child tax credit and pay for free community college. While it’s…
Reuters is reporting that
Few people are happy with the limbo in which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently dwell. The Treasury placed the two government-sponsored entities that buy and guarantee the bulk of all mortgages issued in the United States into a conservatorship in 2008 after the collapse of the housing market,…
James Pethokoukis notes that according to a new study by the Tax Foundation, the United States:
When he’s in trouble, President Obama changes the subject to the economy. And in speech after speech, he utters some version of this line: “We know from our history, our economy does not grow from the top down, it grows from the middle up.”
Casual dining establishment TGI Fridays, you may have heard, is advertising what it bills as “endless” appetizers for a mere $10. Yet if you dine at Fridays here in the District of Columbia, you can expect to spend $11, not $10, on the “endless apps,” once DC’s 10 percent dining tax is included.…
A wizened soul who worked in the bowels of the United States Treasury in the Eisenhower administration once explained to me all that is wrong with the U.S. tax code.
There was a time when stock car racing was an outlaw sport. Some of the greatest of the early drivers learned their skills hauling moonshine. Most conspicuously, Junior Johnson who did a stretch in the federal crossbar hotel. But the days of Junior, Richard, Dale, and the rest of them are long…
Representative Peter Welch (Democrat, Vermont and, by the way, my representative) has announced that he is in favor of raising the tax on gasoline. He has a safe seat and, anyway, in Vermont it isn’t politically dangerous to propose a tax increase, especially if it can be somehow made into a…
Washington needs more money and if it doesn’t get it, your morning commute will become:
To meteorologists, an inversion is a deviation from the normal change of an atmospheric property. It can lead to pollution and adverse health effects. To Wall Street dealmakers, and now to most boards of directors, an inversion is a cross-border merger that allows the buyer to reincorporate in a…
The 620,000 residents of Washington, D.C., are not exactly partisans of supply-side capitalism: In most elections the nominees of the various green/workers/socialist parties usually come close to the vote totals of whatever Republican sacrificial lamb the local party convinced to run.
The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has written that Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Thomas Piketty’s new book on inequality and wealth, “will change both the way we think about society and the way we do economics.” Clive Crook describes the raptures with which intellectuals have greeted…
With just days before Georgia's May 20 primary election, the leading Republican candidate has suggested he would support raising taxes as a way to fix the economy. Speaking to editorial board of the Macon Telegraph, businessman David Perdue said he supports "both" curbing government spending and…
Charles Thomas of ABC’s WLS in Chicago reports:
When the Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010, one provision was a new 3.8 percent Net Investment Tax effective in 2013. Although the tax will generally hit high-end taxpayers (threshold is $250,000 for married and $200,000 for single), because of the way many parents choose to report their…
In Wisconsin, as Jason Stein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports:
When you spend in the trillions and run deficits in the (many) billions, then you look for the millions where you can find them.
Some three hundred years ago Sir Walter Scott asked, “Breathes there a man with soul so dead who never to himself hath said, This is my own, my native land.” Well, in America corporations are legally deemed “persons,” so the answer to Scott’s question is “Yes,” at least when it comes to tax…
The movies folks responsible for the making of House of Cards seem to have been reading their own reviews or taking a page out of their own (ludicrous) scripts. Or something. As Jenna Johnson of the Washington Post reports:
President Obama's budget marks the end of "austerity," reports the Washington Post.
New IRS commissioner John Koskinen is beginning his tenure with some blunt words: If you need IRS help on the telephone, be prepared to wait -- a long time. The IRS posted a YouTube video of the commissioner's message to taxpayers as the pace of the 2014 filing season picks up. The commissioner…
President Obama’s State of the Union speech brimmed with ideas to increase upward mobility and spur job creation—most of which have been tried previously, without good results. From calling on Congress to raise the minimum wage to announcing the creation of six new “high-tech manufacturing hubs”…
The boss reported this morning on CBS that Republicans will unveil an alternative to Obamacare tomorrow in the Senate:
Seems that New York is about to be overtaken by Florida as the nation’s third most populous state. As Jesse McKinley of the New York Times reports, this is:
Their betters from both coasts spent big to enlighten the people of Colorado which, east of the Hudson, is considered one of those square states full of primitives who don’t know what is good for them.
A report issued in September and released this week by the IRS's Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found continuing problems with the agency's Volunteer Program, which provides free tax preparation and electronic filing for "low- and moderate-income, elderly, disabled, and…
Senate majority leader Harry Reid says that "Everybody" is "willing to pay more" taxes. He said so in an interview with a Nevada Public Radio host.
For much of the last century the United States was the world’s beacon for capitalism, but these days we’re far from such a lofty perch. Since the end of the Cold War, countries on both sides of the Iron Curtain have moved to reduce the role of government in the economy by changing the tax code as…
A Grand Rapids, Michigan report on a company that had to lay off over 1,000 people due to the Obamacare medical device tax:
Sequestration has been blamed for everything from cancelled White House tours to military cutbacks that threaten national security to government worker furloughs. The latest victim of sequestration, however, might have a more difficult time garnering sympathy: corporate tax credits. The Internal…
When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, one provision that kicked in immediately was a Small Business Health Care Tax Credit. The IRS explains how the fairly generous credit works:
The city of Detroit is unable to light or police its streets but it can provide circuses on ice for its (mostly unemployed) citizens. While the city may have declared bankruptcy just the other day, as Chris Isidore of CNN reports:
If you are a U.S. senator and have a cool idea about taxes but are worried to speak it aloud for fear some of your constituents will peel your hide off in small strips ... well, there is hope. A couple of your colleagues have come up with a plan.
Republicans forged ahead in their effort to transform North Carolina into a reliably red state, with Gov. Pat McCrory and top legislature leaders agreeing Monday on a tax cut plan to boost economic growth and job creation.
There is some movement in Washington toward reforming the tax code which may sound like mere legislation but, as Nancy Cook of the National Journal writes, is being treated more like combat by some interested parties.
New York City
In a mid-year report to Congress, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson weighed in on the controversy surrounding the IRS's review of exempt organization (EO) applications. The Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) "is an independent organization within the IRS and helps taxpayers resolve problems…
The House of Representatives is scheduled Tuesday to consider a bipartisan bill to add new seasonal flu vaccines to the IRS definition of taxable vaccines. The Senate has already reached an agreement to vote on its version of the bill without further debate if the House passes an identical…
The Wall Street Journal reports
Congressman Jim McDermott, a Democrat, said that the groups targeted by the IRS had it coming since they filed paperwork seeking a special tax status with the federal government:
Bernie Becker and Kevin Bogardus write in The Hill that, according to “two top tax writers on Capitol Hill ... the case for tax reform has been strengthened by the recent revelations about Apple’s tax tactics and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups.”
Today, President Obama personally became re-involved in his former campaign organization's new incarnation Organizing for Action. On the same day he is scheduled to appear at two DCCC fundraisers in Chicago, the president of the United States sent the following email to OFA's mailing list, signed…
Senators Carl Levin and John McCain have written a letter calling for IRS employee Lois Lerner to be removed from office:
The Internal Revenue Service has come under heavy criticism from both Republicans and Democrats in recent days after an inspector general's report detailed "inappropriate criteria" used to identify certain applications of mainly conservative organizations for special review resulting in long delays…
The Democratic ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Elijah Cummings, said that today's IRS hearing "is more important than one election":
Texas senator John Cornyn asked former IRS chief Douglas Shulman to apologize to his constituents for the IRS's wrongdoings. Shulman refused. Here's the exchange:
The inspector general who filed the report on the IRS targeting conservatives and former IRS commissioner agree: The law is relevant. The statements were made at a hearing today on Capitol Hill:
President Barack Obama's former chief of staff, Jack Lew, the current treasury secretary, said today at a Capitol Hill hearing that he was aware "questions had been raised" about the IRS when he was at the White House:
Testifying today on Capitol Hill, Douglas Shulman, the former IRS commissioner, says he "can't say" how the targeting of conservatives by the agency he once led happened:
Texas senator John Cornyn has released this video, titled "A Culture of Intimidation," about the IRS's targeting of conservatives in his home state and across the nation:
The thoughtful Carl Cannon has written a piece, "Richard Milhous Obama," concluding that our current president has more in common with our 37th than President Obama's partisans would like to acknowledge. The estimable Victor Davis Hanson has weighed in, defending against liberal dissents the…
Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer was asked on TV this morning whether he thinks the IRS actions violated the law:
In his prepared remarks on the IRS’s targeting of his political opponents, President Obama said that “we’re going to hold the responsible parties accountable,” but only once we determine “who is responsible.” In today’s Wall Street Journal, Kim Strassel offers some helpful thoughts on determining…
NBC's Lisa Myers reported this morning that the IRS deliberately chose not to reveal that it had wrongly targeted conservative groups until after the 2012 presidential election:
Treasury secretary Jack Lew asked Steven Miller, the acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to resign his post in response to the reports that the IRS had unfairly singled out conservative non-profit groups for close scrutiny. Miller has resigned, President Barack Obama said in a…
It's a truism that no president makes it through a second term without some scandal. President Obama is no exception.
NBC's David Gregory suggested that the White House is blaming the growing IRS scandal on the Treasury Department for not "deal[ing] with this more quickly":
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with executive editor Fred Barnes on the IRS targeting of tea party groups.
Richard Rubin at Bloomberg poses the following head scratcher:
Seems K Street and Max Baucus were looking forward to a fun year of fixing up the tax code and making it stand up and salute. But now the IRS has gone and muddied the waters. As Erik Wasson and Peter Schroeder write at The Hill:
On that IRS business, Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post insists that President Obama:
Governments everywhere are on the prowl for more revenues. French president François Hollande wants to tax incomes in excess of €1 million at a 75 percent rate. Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, has jacked up VAT. Southern Europe’s finance ministers have come up with the novel…
A lot of Americans are about to get blindsided by the Affordable Care Act. It seems, according to Sarah Kliff, writing in the Washington Post, that:
The mayors of America have blessed the Marketplace Fairness Act, as Tom Cochran, CEO & executive director of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, writes in Real Clear Politics. This, of course, is the legislation that allows states, cities, towns, villages, and wide spots in the road (about 9,600…
Mike Tyson weighed in on taxes and Obamacare this morning on Fox News:
As Pete Kasperowicz reports in The Hill, some Democratic lawmakers have found the solution. Solution to what, you ask. Well, to unfairness, which is big this week, what with the effort to make internet businesses collect sales taxes and deal with the rules and interpretations of some 9,000…
Congress is preparing to take action on a bipartisan proposal to raise taxes on flu vaccines. This is not a tax on the wealthy, but rather on a broad swath of Americans, or at least those who choose to be immunized against the flu.
"The Bidens contributed $7,190 to charity in 2012," the White House revealed today. A look at the Bidens joint filing reveals that $2,000 of that donation was in the form of "donated property" given to Goodwill in Wilmington, Delaware.
This year, Joe and Jill Biden increased their charitable donations from 1.5 percent of their income to 1.87 percent.
Veteran Michigan congressman Dave Camp has all but ruled out running for an open Senate seat next year. The Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means committee told reporters Thursday morning at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor that he is focused on getting Congress to…
Mark Knoller from CBS News reports this morning that President Obama, in a statement in the Rose Garden, “will stress his budget’s top objective is to boost the economy and create jobs.” To do that, he’ll have to contradict what he previously described as “the consensus among people who know the…
For all the talk of "changing the culture in Washington," it appears to be business as usual ... only more so. Things are done – when, and if, they are – by people who play a tough inside game with no spectators. Washington will soon be working on revisions to the tax laws – since, obviously, they…
The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee is breaking down President Obama's budget with this preliminary analysis:
Senator Schumer is playing to his softer, more rural side, again. First, he proposed subsidies to stimulate maple syrup production in upstate New York. Now, he wants to reduce the taxes paid by producers of hard cider. As reported by Ramsey Cox in the Hill, Schumer is arguing:
Walter Russell Mead writes that “Francois Hollande really can’t catch a break. One of the most memorable election promises he made was to raise marginal tax rates on the very rich—those making €1 million or more—to an eye-popping 75%. His government has, alas, finally decided to scrap that…
In a statement released at 5 a.m. today, Senator Jeff Sessions, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, blasts the budget the Senate passed very early this morning. Sessions's main concern is that the budget "has zero real deficit reduction" and "never balances."
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal introduced his plan to eliminate income taxes, his office announced.
The Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee claims the budget released today by Senate Democrats will raise taxes by $1.5 trillion. Before being released today, it had been reported that the Democrats' budget would raise taxes by $1 trillion, but number appears to have been far enough.
Nonprofit organizations (NPO), often referred to as the “independent sector,” are an essential part of America’s vibrant, pluralistic civil society. Their activities span a wide range of public and private purposes—philanthropic, cultural, religious, professional, educational, scientific. The…
Jack Lew, who has been nominated as the next treasury secretary, oversaw up as many as a hundred Cayman Island investments when he worked at Citi Bank as chief operating officer of the alternative investment services unit, SEC disclosures reveal. It has previously been reported that Lew himself had…
Senate minority leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, asks for another tax hike this morning:
In a short web ad released today, ahead of Barack Obama's State of the Union Address, the Republican party mocks the president for always wanting to raise taxes:
In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama called Cayman Island investments "the biggest tax scam on record." Now, in 2013, President Obama has nominated Jack Lew, who had $56,000 in Cayman Island investments, to be the next secretary of Treasury.
Politicians are not known for originality. In their public speech, most cling to the security of clichéd stock phrases the way toddlers hold fast to threadbare blankets. Thus Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney posed before an enormous national debt clock and intoned that the nation’s…
The payroll tax cut has been rolled back so, of course, consumers have less money to spend and that seems to be what they are spending ... less.
Obama for America continued its metamorphosis this week into Organizing for Action (OFA), an independent organization that will advocate for various "progressive" causes, including immigration reform and gun control. The BarackObama.com website, home of the presidential campaign of Barack Obama,…
In a pre-Super Bowl interview on CBS, President Barack Obama made clear that he intends to raise taxes again:
Phil Mickelson had a bad weekend on the golf course and was almost 20 strokes behind the leader, Tiger Woods, when play was suspended Sunday in the Farmers Insurance Open tournament at Torrey Pines. But as poorly as he hit the ball, it was nothing as to how badly Mickelson misplayed public…
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy is moving to London to avoid France's high taxes, according to a report in the British Daily Mail. The move would mean that Sarkozy, along with his wife, Carla Bruni, would avoid France's top tax rate of 75 percent.
While the press was distracted by the misnamed “fiscal cliff,” we began the New Year with a 13-figure deficit and a 14-figure national debt—the result of today’s Americans borrowing vast sums of money and putting it on future Americans’ tab. The two parties offer rather different explanations for…
David Plouffe, a long time advisor to Barack Obama, went on this morning on ABC about the president's focus on raising taxes:
THE WEEKLY STANDARD podcast with Jeffrey Anderson, hosted by Michael Graham:
Tom Cole is the kind of Republican that President Obama will need to help raise the debt ceiling. The Oklahoma congressman is a conservative, but he’s also a pragmatist and a realist who urged Republicans early on to lock in income tax rates for almost all Americans, rather than risk the…
Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, a Republican, wants to reform his state's tax code. Jindal announced today that his "goal is to eliminate all personal income tax and all corporate income tax."
It has been widely reported that the recently passed “fiscal cliff” deal entails a tax hike with no corresponding spending cuts. Other reports claim that the deal imposes a 41-to-1 ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts. But neither of these claims is correct.
Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, explains why he voted in favor of the "fiscal cliff" deal last night in the House of Representatives:
Deal or no deal, taxes are increasing for every single working American. And it appears no "fiscal cliff" proposal or provision being offered by the White House, Democrats, or Republicans will alter this fact.
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