Obama Weekly Address: Working Together in the New Year to Grow Our Economy and Shrink Our Deficits

In this week’s address, President Obama talks about the bipartisan agreement that Congress reached this week which prevented a middle-class tax hike, congratulates the newly sworn-in members of Congress, and looks forward to working with the new Congress in the new year to continue to grow our economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way.

Watch President Obama's weekly address.

Buchanan: The Republicans -- After Dunkirk

By Pat Buchanan

At the Potsdam conference with Harry Truman and Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill learned that the voters of the nation he had led for five years through World War II had just voted to throw him out of office.

"It may well be a blessing in disguise," said his wife Clementine.

"At the moment, it seems quite effectively disguised," replied Churchill.

Republicans must feel that way today. For they have survived their own Dunkirk. They may have left their helmets, canteens and rifles behind, but they did finally get off the beach.

That Republicans suffered a rout, as the British did with the fall of France and evacuation at Dunkirk in 1940, is undeniable.

The party that blocked tax increases since George H.W. Bush agreed to raise Ronald Reagan's top rate of 28 percent to 35 percent, thus repudiating his "no-new-taxes" pledge, just signed on to one of the largest tax increases in history.

Payroll taxes on working Americans will rise by a third, from 4.2 percent of wages and salaries to 6.2 percent. For couples earning $450,000, the tax rate rises from 15 to 20 percent on dividends and capital gains, and from 35 to 39.6 percent on ordinary income. The death tax will rise from 35 to 40 percent on estates over $5 million.

Obamacare will push those rates up further. And now we learn the bill was stuffed with tax breaks for windmills, NASCAR owners and Hollywood.

Why did Republicans go along?

Had they not, taxes would have risen for everyone. And Obama would have…

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Source: Town Hall

White House: Here's What's in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012

In this new White House White Board, Brian Deese, the Deputy Director of the National Economic Council, explains what the new agreement to extend tax cuts for the middle class means for the economy and how it met President Obama's key economic priorities.

Watch the White Board:

The Right’s Unwitting Obama Apologists

By David Limbaugh

I hate to break it to those deniers who believe that President Obama's tax-guzzling capacity has somehow been diminished by the fiscal cliff provision to fix "permanent" tax rates. You're dreaming.

Several smart columnists and respected conservative editorial pieces tell us that a major silver lining in the crisis deal just concluded is that by agreeing not to reinstitute the Clinton tax rates (and leave the Bush rates in place) for all but the "wealthy" (income of $400,000 for single filers and $450,000 for marrieds), Obama and the Democrats made a major concession. They argue that if Democrats couldn't do better after Obama was just re-elected and when the debt is so high, they'll never be able to. They'll have to realize that they will never be able to sustain their desired welfare state through raising taxes alone and have to come to the table on serious spending cuts and entitlement reform.

This assumes that Obama and the Democrats have any real interest in reducing spending or curbing entitlements. They have shown no interest in doing so, despite the crushing debt problem threatening the nation's solvency.

Obama doesn't base his spending plans on projected revenues, except on a micro level when the law requires him to present bills with revenue-neutral scoring, at which point he…

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Source: Town Hall

PSL: From one 'cliff' to the next

Anti-worker deal on taxes sets stage for anti-worker deal on spending

By Walter Smolarek

Poor and working people know what crises are. Being evicted, losing your job, or being sick and uninsured is a crisis. Crises have definite causes and consequences that require immediate action.

But for Wall Street’s loyal servants in Washington, crises are not all that bad. They present an opportunity to carry out on a grand scale the permanent bipartisan agenda of Congress to protect the rich and their ability to make money. Fiscal cliffs, debt ceilings and other creatively named points of no return induce so much fear that workers often find themselves paralyzed and unable to present any real resistance to the austerity schemes that are hatched in the halls of power.

These types of crises are so convenient for the politicians that they manufacture them all the time. First came the 2011 “debt ceiling” negotiations. Since 1917, Congress has periodically increased the amount of money the federal government is allowed to borrow in a relatively drama-free affair that prevented the country from going bankrupt. However, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives decided that they would refuse to raise the debt ceiling unless major cuts to vital social programs were made. Months of fear-mongering and negotiations in Washington produced the Budget Control Act of 2011.

With wide bipartisan support…

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Source: Party for Socialism and Liberation