Monday, February 2, 2015

Nuclear Cartoon


Why does the GOP have a problem with conservatives?


Establishment Republicans want our votes, not our values.
That's the topic of Friday's "Todd's American Dispatch," as Todd Starnes reacted to the National Review accusing former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee of trying to emulate Larry the Cable Guy.
"The fact is, the down-home values of the gun-toting, Bible-clinging, cast-iron skillet cooking crowd are just not welcome in the hoity-toity world of martini-sipping, country club Republican rubes," Starnes said.

In midst of measles outbreak, Obama tells parents to get their kids vaccinated


In the midst of a measles outbreak, President Obama is telling parents to get their kids vaccinated.
Obama says those who don't get their shots can pose a risk to infants and other people who can't get vaccinated.
The president spoke in an interview with NBC Sunday. The interview is airing Monday on The Today Show but the network released excerpts in advance.
More than 100 cases of the measles have been reported in the U.S. since last month. Many cases have been traced directly or indirectly to Disneyland in Southern California.
Obama says measles outbreaks are preventable. He says he understands that some families are concerned about vaccinations, but the science on them is "pretty indisputable."
Obama says a major success of civilization is the ability to prevent diseases that have been devastating in the past.

Walker, eyeing 2016 White House bid, says he's open to sending US troops to fight ISIS


Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said Sunday he is open to sending U.S. troops to the Middle East to defeat Islamic State fighters -- a bold foreign policy statement in contrast with the Obama administration’s position.
Walker told ABC’s “This Week” that he wouldn’t rule out sending troops, as Islamic State appears to grow and strengthen despite U.S.-led efforts to destroy the radical Islamic group.
“I wouldn't rule out anything,” Walker said. “When you have the lives of Americans at stake ... we have to be prepared to do things that don't allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores."
In a wide-ranging interview in which Walker also made a case for a potential 2016 run, he suggested an Islamic State attack on U.S. soil is "a matter of when .. not if."
And he suggested that the administration, which has U.S. troops helping to train government-backed forces in Iraq, is not doing enough.
Secretary of State John Kerry and other top U.S. officials said last week that coalition forces have launched 2,000 airstrikes in Iraq and Syria that have killed Islamic State leaders and thousands of its fighters. However, Walker suggested the U.S. must do more.
“We must take the fight to ISIS and other radical Islamic groups,” he told ABC.
The administration is reluctant to send troops to the Middle East to fight the militant group, considering the move would be unpopular among Americans, after recent U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Walker leads all potential GOP candidates, according to a Bloomberg Politics/ Des Moines Register Iowa Poll released this weekend. He has 15 percent of the vote, with Kentucky GOP Sen. Rand Paul in second with 14 percent, following Walker's rousing speech last weekend at the Iowa Freedom Summit.
“You can make all of the speeches you want,” Walker also told ABC. “But people want new, fresh leadership.”
He also suggested that he or perhaps Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, another potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, could beat presumptive Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton because they each are a “name for the future.”
He suggested the Clinton name is now synonymous with 20th century ideas and Washington, top-down government.
"Former Secretary of State Clinton embodies all the things that we think of Washington," Walker said. "She lives here, she's worked here, she's been part of the Washington structure for years, not just as a Democrat, but across the spectrum."
Walker has won three elections in the past four years, but Wisconsin has not voted for a Republican president in the past three decades.
On the issue of immigration, Walker said Sunday he opposed “amnesty” for people who have entered the U.S. illegally, but appeared to suggest that deporting the millions now in this country is not a practical solution.
Walker was in Washington this weekend meeting with potential campaign aides and donors. And last week, he announced the formation of a political nonprofit group ahead of a potential White House bid.

In new budget, Obama proposing 14 percent tax on overseas profits to fund infrastructure projects


President Obama will on Monday give Congress his $4 trillion spending plan for fiscal 2016 that includes a request for billions of dollars in much-needed public works projects -- an idea that has bipartisan support but little backing for the proposed tax increases to fund such efforts.
Obama will propose a six-year, $478 billion public-works program for highway, bridge and transit upgrades, with half of it to be financed with a one-time, 14 percent tax on U.S. companies’ overseas profits.
The tax would be due immediately. Under current law, those profits are subject only to federal taxes if they are returned, or repatriated, to the U.S., where they face a top rate of 35 percent. Many companies avoid U.S. taxes on those earnings by simply leaving them overseas.
The tax is part of a broader administration plan to cut corporate tax breaks and increase taxes on the country’s highest wage-earners to pay for projects to help the middle class.
Members of the GOP-controlled Congress and other fiscal conservatives have dismissed the overall plan since elements of it were announced several weeks ago -- part of a White House strategy to win support prior to the president's State of the Union address, in which more details were released, and a campaign-style tour in several states ahead of Monday’s release.
Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, told NBC's "Meet the Press,” as he has said in recent weeks, that he was willing to work with the administration to see if both sides can “find common ground on certain aspects of tax reform."
However, he disapproved on the president’s budget plan.
"What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics," Ryan said. "This top-down redistribution doesn't work."
Obama's budget proposal for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 will offer an array of spending programs and tax increases that Republicans now running Congress have already dismissed as nonstarters.
White House officials were not authorized, by name, to discuss the budget, but described the proposal to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.
The proposal improves on an idea that the administration has pushed since the summer of 2013. The administration's budget last year proposed a smaller four-year bridge-and-highway fund. While it paid for it by taxing accumulated foreign earnings, it did not specify a formula.
This time, the budget will call for the one-time tax on the up to $2 trillion in estimated U.S. corporate earnings that have accumulated overseas. That would generate about $238 billion, by White House calculations. The remaining $240 billion would come from the federal Highway Trust Fund, which is financed with a gasoline tax.
The former chairman of the House Ways and Means, now-retired Rep. Dave Camp, R-Mich., proposed a similar idea last year with a lower mandatory tax, but the plan did not make headway in Congress.
At issue is how to get companies to bring back some of their foreign earnings to invest in the United States. The current 35 percent top tax rate for corporations in the United States, the highest among major economies, serves as a disincentive and many U.S. companies with overseas holdings simply keep their foreign earnings abroad and avoid the U.S. tax.
Under Obama's plan, the top corporate tax rate for company profits earned in the U.S. would drop to 28 percent. While past foreign profits would be taxed immediately at the 14 percent rate, going forward new foreign profits would be taxed immediately at 19 percent, with companies getting a credit for foreign taxes paid.
Most U.S. companies and Republican lawmakers prefer a "territorial" tax system employed by most developed countries, in which companies are taxed only on income earned within a country's borders. That difference could be a major hurdle to a broad overhaul of corporate taxes.
Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., have proposed paying for highway and bridge fixes by letting companies voluntarily pay taxes on foreign earnings at a one-time low rate of 6.5 percent. The White House opposes such voluntary "tax holidays," however, and critics say that without broader tax fixes, such holidays simply encourage companies to park their foreign profits overseas.
Other lawmakers have proposed boosting the Highway Trust Fund with a higher gasoline tax, an idea considered more palatable now that gas prices are low. However, the president is opposed to that idea.
The Obama plan proposes a 75 percent increase in funding for projects such as light rail and other public transportation systems. It also would nearly double spending on grants for local road, rail, transit and port projects. Since 2009, Congress has approved more than $4.1 billion for the competitive grants; the budget asks for $7.5 billion over six years.
Obama is releasing his budget as the federal deficit drops and his poll numbers inch higher. Though Republicans will march ahead on their own, they ultimately must come to terms with the president, who wields a veto pen and has threatened to use it.
Obama is proposing to ease painful, automatic cuts to the Pentagon and domestic agencies with a 7 percent increase in annual appropriations. He wants a $38 billion increase for the Pentagon that Republicans probably also will want to match. But his demand for a nearly equal amount for domestic programs sets up a showdown that may not be resolved until late in the year.
Another centerpiece of the president's tax proposal is an increase in the capital gains rate on couples making more than $500,000 per year. Obama wants to require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they are inherited. He also wants to impose a fee on the roughly 100 U.S. financial companies with assets of more than $50 billion.
Obama would take the $320 billion that those tax increases would generate over 10 years and funnel them into middle-class tax breaks, expanded child care and a free community college program.
Altogether, the White House calculates that Obama's tax increases and spending cuts would cut the deficit by about $1.8 trillion over the next decade, according to people briefed on the basics of the plan. For 2016, the Obama budget promises a $474 billion deficit, about equal to this year. The deficit would remain less than $500 billion through 2018, but would rise to $687 billion by 2025 -- though such deficits would remain manageable when measured against the size of the economy.

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