The Fiscal Cliff

[il Padrino Ute]

Happy Sequestration Day everyone!

[Surfah]

Happy Sequestration Day everyone!

I planned to spend the first day of my layoff golfing but Gidget had to go and get sick.

[byu71]

Since Obama is talking about how he has protected the middle and lower classes with his policies, I was really shocked helping my youngest do his taxes.

He makes around 27,000 a year. His ex takes the deduction for his daughter. His deductions, even including his house payment, just four payments, taxes etc. are less than the standard deduction, so that is all he takes.

When we got done, he owes another $200 in fed, had 2,000 withheld and gets $100 from the state, had $1,115 withheld. I told him we should do it on turbo tax because I must have missed something. Of course in addition he had his SS, medicare or medicaid or whatever all those other taxes are now. He also pays a pretty good premium for his health insurance because the company plan isn't so hot.

The kid would really probably get more money net if he was on unemployment, food stamps and all that other stuff. Of course he won't do as well in the long run because he will be dead ended and now he has made some good strides and I suspect will continue.

My question is who are all these people that pay no taxes. How do they pull that off. The good thing is he is even complaining about Obama more and saying, "I am no rich guy, who the hell is my taxes going to".

[Coach McGuirk]

Why the hell did I come in so early today?

Turns out I still have my job. Work is pissed that I am sitting at home.

[Moliere]

The Dems predicted Armageddon but looks like everything is fine. Market is flat. What gives? Maybe I need to stop taking my financial advice from Harry Reid....at least on everything but real estate.

[Joe Public]

My question is who are all these people that pay no taxes. How do they pull that off.

If he has even one qualifying child for purposes of the earned income credit and child tax credit, he almost certainly gets his entire $2K withholding back plus another $3K or so from the EIC. We could start a new thread on whether that is good tax policy.

[Omaha 680]

The Dems predicted Armageddon but looks like everything is fine. Market is flat. What gives? Maybe I need to stop taking my financial advice from Harry Reid....at least on everything but real estate.

Bloomberg says we can borrow and infinite amount of money. We're fine.

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

[byu71]

If he has even one qualifying child for purposes of the earned income credit and child tax credit, he almost certainly gets his entire $2K withholding back plus another $3K or so from the EIC. We could start a new thread on whether that is good tax policy.

I need to tell him it is critical he get to claim his child as a dependent. Maybe offer the ex some incentive to do that. She has two other kids, she doesn't need the deduction as bad as he does.

[Bo Diddley]

If he has even one qualifying child for purposes of the earned income credit and child tax credit, he almost certainly gets his entire $2K withholding back plus another $3K or so from the EIC. We could start a new thread on whether that is good tax policy.

There are tax incentives for having children. In general, I agree with this type of policy. There's a documentary on BYUtv that talks about our declining birth rates, and some of the problems we will have in the future because of it. I wonder if we should create more incentives to have children.

[Omaha 680]

Krauthammer: Hail Armageddon

“The worst-case scenario for us,” a leading anti-budget-cuts lobbyist told The Post, “is the sequester hits and nothing bad really happens.”

Think about that. Worst case? That a government drowning in debt should cut back by 2.2 percent — and the country survives. That a government now borrowing 35 cents of every dollar it spends reduces that borrowing by two cents “and nothing bad really happens.” Oh, the humanity!

A normal citizen might think this a good thing. For reactionary liberalism, however, whatever sum our ever-inflating government happens to spend today (now double what Bill Clinton spent in his last year) is the Platonic ideal — the reduction of which, however minuscule, is a national calamity.

Or damn well should be. Otherwise, people might get the idea that we can shrink government and live on.

Hence the president’s message. If the “sequestration” — automatic spending cuts — goes into effect, the skies will fall. Plane travel jeopardized, carrier groups beached, teachers furloughed. And a shortage of junk-touching TSA agents.

The Obama administration has every incentive to make the sky fall, lest we suffer that terrible calamity — cuts the nation survives. Are they threatening to pare back consultants, conferences, travel and other nonessential fluff? Hardly. It shall be air-traffic control. Meat inspection. Weather forecasting.

A 2011 Government Accountability Office report gave a sampling of the vastness of what could be cut, consolidated and rationalized in Washington: 44 overlapping job training programs, 18 for nutrition assistance, 82 (!) on teacher quality, 56 dealing with financial literacy, more than 20 for homelessness, etc. Total annual cost: $100 billion-$200 billion, about two to five times the entire domestic sequester.

Are these on the chopping block? No sir. It’s firemen first. That’s the phrase coined in 1976 by legendary Washington Monthly editor Charlie Peters to describe the way government functionaries beat back budget cuts. Dare suggest a nick in the city budget, and the mayor immediately shuts down the firehouse. The DMV back office, stacked with nepotistic incompetents, remains intact. Shrink it and no one would notice. Sell the firetruck — the people scream and the city council falls silent about any future cuts.

[Pelado]

Sequestageddon - Mark Steyn

The sequester supposedly cuts $44 billion from the federal budget — or from the rate of growth of the federal budget. Whatever. $44 billion is about what the United States government borrows every nine days, so it’s not a lot. But it’s apparently responsible for everything that matters in American life.

That being so, maybe it would be easier to reinstate this critical $44 billion and cut the other $3.8 trillion, which is apparently responsible for nothing other than Harry Reid’s beloved federally funded cowboy-poetry festival and the cost of the dress uniforms for the military detachment accompanying the first lady at her Oscars appearance. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, warned of “over 170 million jobs that could be lost” thanks to the sequester. There are only 135 million jobs in America, but the sequester gods are so powerful they can eliminate every job in Canada, Britain, and Germany too.

Speaking of the first lady’s Academy Awards appearance, I see she gave the Oscar for Best Film to Ben Affleck’s movie Argo. If you haven’t seen the picture, it’s about a group of government operatives whose ingenious plan to achieve their objectives depends on creating a fake movie as a cover story. Obama seems to have taken this inspiring tale to heart. In the Affleck version, the fake movie is a space opera for which John Goodman rustles up a few cheesy costume designs for some generic aliens. They make a promotional brochure, take out an ad in Variety, and hold a well-attended press conference, awash in cocktails and canapés. But there is no movie. And so it goes with Obama’s monthly cliffhangers. The White House press corps show up for the reception, and they all excitedly report the intriguing teasers about the white-knuckle thriller coming soon to your town: This weekend, Les Sequesterables, starring Maxine “I Dreamed a Dream” Waters and a cast of hundreds of millions of downtrodden laid-off extras; next week Zero Debt Thirty, in which Paul Ryan proposes cutting $30 from the federal budget and all civilized life comes to an end; next month Django Short-Changed, in which a retired bounty hunter discovers his Social Security check is a buck seventy-three lower than usual because cruel plantation owners like Mitt Romney aren’t willing to pay their fair share; and coming soon No Silver Linings Playbook, in which Barack Obama warns yet again that total societal collapse is just around the corner but at the eleventh hour manages to avert it by swooping in with a daring, last-minute tax increase.

Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?

http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...don-mark-steyn

[Uncle Ted]

Sequestageddon - Mark Steyn


http://www.nationalreview.com/articl...don-mark-steyn

What is interesting is either the democrat and republican bills that didn't pass in the senate would have cut more from the budget deficit than what sequestration is cutting. The democrat bill would have cut $110B from the budget by reducing spending by $55B and raising taxes by $55B. The republican bill which was approved in the house twice last year would have cut $315 billion from the budget and even would have given Obama the power to pick the cuts to be made. Of course, if the republican bill would have passed in the senate it would have put Obama in a very interesting position given all the "sequestageddon" propaganda the white house has been putting out.

[Uncle Ted]

[YOhio]

Good partisan-free article on the sequester report by the great Jamie Dupree.

http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-wa...s-and-details/

[Pelado]

Good partisan-free article on the sequester report by the great Jamie Dupree.

http://blogs.ajc.com/jamie-dupree-wa...s-and-details/

What fun is that?