This can’t be re-stated enough: if Romney wins, he’ll pay himself $5 million

One of the perks of being a Republican president: Under his plan, Romney’s tax rate would fall from its current 14.7 percent to 13.1 percent, while under Obama’s tax plan, Romney would pay a 34.3 percent rate. The difference in these rates means about $5 million for Romney’s tax bill. By the way, Romney’s $5 million personal tax cut would add to the deficit. You know, because he’s a fiscal hawk and really, really cares about the deficit and debt. – Bob Cesca

Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.

E. J. Dionne

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)

Romney’s tax plan would save him $5 million next year — To see where the presidential candidates stand on taxing the rich, just look at how they’d tax themselves. Under his own proposal, Mitt Romney would pay half what he would under President Barack Obama’s tax plan. For a man of Romney’s means, that could save almost $5 million a year. For Obama, not so loaded as Romney but still well-off, losing re-election could provide a tax windfall. He’d save as much as $90,000 a year if Romney’s plan were enacted rather than his own tax-the-rich vision. Two nonprofit research groups, the liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice and conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, did the calculations, based on the most recent completed tax returns released by the candidates. Compared with what they owed in April, both men would be dinged in 2013 under Obama’s proposal, along with other wealthy taxpayers. They could expect savings under Romney, depending on which tax breaks the former Massachusetts governor decides to oppose. — NBC Politics / Raw Story

image: MoveOn.Org

WASHINGTON (AP) - A program that puts billions of dollars in the pockets of farmers whether or not they plant a crop may disappear with hardly a protest from farm groups and the politicians who look out for their interests. The Senate is expected to begin debate this week on a five-year farm and food aid bill that would save $9.3 billion by ending direct payments to farmers and replacing them with subsidized insurance programs for when the weather turns bad or prices go south. The details are still to be worked out. But there’s rare agreement that fixed annual subsidies of $5 billion a year for farmers are no longer feasible in this age of tight budgets and when farmers in general are enjoying record prosperity.

AP News: New farm bill would end direct payments to farmers

Click for larger: via Brian McFadden —

RSC to Obama: No debt hike without tax cuts for the wealthy, austerity for everyone else – The lawmakers write in the letter that they want to “underscore our strong support for Speaker Boehner’s recent comments on raising the nation’s debt ceiling … tying a debt limit increase with common-sense reforms is a necessary first step to solving the nation’s fiscal imbalance.” The letter, authored by Rep. Scott Garrett (R-N.J.), also warns that with China holding nearly 23 percent of the nation’s debt, it is time to curb U.S. reliance on “communist creditors.” The RSC boasts 164 members, but it is not yet clear how many will sign the letter. – Roll Call News

Obama’s political advisor David Axelrod dissected Romney’s record in Massachusetts between 2003 and 2007 in a campaign memo…”Mitt Romney applied the economic philosophy he learned in the private sector to disastrous results as governor of Massachusetts,” Axelrod wrote.”It’s the same formula that benefited a few, but crashed our economy in the first place and undermined security for the middle class. Massachusetts couldn’t afford Romney Economics, and neither can the American economy.” Axelrod said that under Romney, Massachusetts plunged from 36th to 47th out of 50 states in job creation, and despite promises to the contrary raised taxes and fees on middle class families and small businesses. “Meanwhile, he cut taxes for millionaires like himself, handing over more than $75 million to just 278 of the wealthiest in Massachusetts.” —FRANCE 24

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Budgeting lies — Romney economics vs. Obama economics and reducing the deficit

“I actually lay out a plan to get us to a balanced budget within eight years.” Mitt Romney to Mark Halperin Uh. No. Greg Sargent: The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has taken a close look at this question. It has determined that relative to current policy — that is, if you keep the Bush tax cuts in place, as Romney wants to do — Romney’s tax cutting plans would increase the deficit by nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s on top of keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Romney has promised to close various loopholes to pay for his tax cuts, but he hasn’t specified which ones. Until he does, the Tax Policy Center concludes, his plan would cost $5 trillion — which would be added, yes, to the deficit. […] Bottom line: relative to current policy, Obama’s plan would reduce the deficit by bringing in $180 billion or more in revenues a year, or approximately $2 trillion over 10 years; Romeny’s plan would increase the deficit by nearly $500 billion a year — $5 trillion over ten years. The Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams summed it up perfectly in a quote to me: “The bottom line is that whatever baseline you use, until Romney makes good on his promise to pay for his tax cuts, he would increase the deficit far more than Obama would.” – Bob Cesca

Top CEO pay would take 3,489 years for a typical worker to earn

David Simon of Simon Property received a pay package worth more than $137 million for last year, and the typical CEO took home $9.6 million, according to an analysis by The Associated Press… HOW LONG IT TAKES OTHERS TO MAKE THAT MUCH: A minimum wage worker – paid $7.25 per hour, as some workers at Simon malls are – would have to work one month shy of 9,096 years to make what Simon made last year. A person making the national median salary, $39,312 by AP calculations, would have to work 3,489 years… – AP News

Note: and as we’ve learned from stories about Bain Capital, the plutocrats idea of job “creation” is laying off long-time workers and hiring some of them back at minimum wage. Vote GOP!

House GOP plans August vote to extend Bush tax cuts – “Knowing that comprehensive reform will take time, we must ensure that while Congress is working to bring about competitive change, government does not increase the cost of business,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor wrote in a note to Republican representatives on Friday. “Before we leave for August, I expect to schedule a vote on legislation preventing the largest tax increase in history.” – Raw Story

The Hill reports that vote will happen in July.

Kansas Gov. approves massive tax cut for the rich that even some Republicans opposed – Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) in January proposed a tax cut he said would give the state a “fairer, flatter, simpler” tax code, even though it raised taxes on the poor to help pay for a massive tax cut for the top one percentof state residents. Tuesday, Brownback signed an even bigger package into law, even as the state Senate’s top Republican and a host of other conservative lawmakers urged him not to. — Think Progress

Morning Bunker Report: Thursday 5.24.2012

Starve the Beast: believe nothing the GOP tells you — Today’s conservatives oppose tax increases so strenuously that many were willing to default on the nation’s debt last summer rather than raise taxes by a single penny. They overwhelmingly believe in a nonsensical theory called “starve the beast,” which asserts that tax cuts automatically reduce spending and tax increases never reduce the deficit because they invariably lead to spending increases. The Clinton and Bush 43 administrations are almost perfect tests of starve-the-beast theory; the former raised taxes in 1993, while the latter signed into law seven different major tax cuts… If there were any truth whatsoever to starving the beast, we should have seen a rise in spending during the Clinton years and a fall in spending during the Bush years. In fact, we had exactly the opposite results. […] contrary to Republican dogma, tax increases did not kill jobs during the Clinton administration. In fact, 23 million jobs were created, compared with one-fourth that number under Mr. Bush. The key reason for this is that real G.D.P. grew twice as fast during the Clinton years as it did during the Bush years: 3.9 percent per year on average compared with 2 percent. – Bruce Bartlett – NYTimes.com

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Poll: Americans Want to Eat the Rich – Is President Obama’s populist-tinged contrast with Mitt Romney effective? If you pay attention to today’s Washington Post poll, it probably is. The poll asks which is the bigger problem: unfairness in the economic system that favors the wealthy, or over-regulation of the free market that interferes with growth and prosperity? Fifty-six percent of Americans say unfairness, 34 percent over-regulation. – Daily Intel

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)

“This is not a distraction, this is what this campaign’s going to be about,” Obama said, contrasting his record with Romney’s record as a businessman and their proposed policies. “I’ve got to think about those workers in that video just as much as I’m thinking about folks who’ve been much more successful,” Obama said in a reference to his campaign ads attacking Bain’s record at two shuttered companies that resulted in laying off workers and closed plants. […] “His main calling card for why he thinks he should be president is his business experience,” Obama said of Romney. “He’s not going out there touting his experience in Massachusetts. He’s saying I’m a business guy and I know how to fix it, and this is his business. And when you’re president, as opposed to the head of a private equity firm, your job is not simply to maximize profits,” Obama said. “Your job is to figure out how everybody in the country has a fair shot.” Obama took yet another dig at Romney. “If your main argument for how to grow the economy is, ‘I knew how to make a lot of money for investors,’ then you’re missing what this job is about,” Obama said. —Roll Call

(Source: underthemountainbunker.com)