Comprehensive List of Obama Tax Hikes

From the ATR website.

President Barack Obama has signed into law 21 new or higher taxes on the American people. The full list is below:

1. A 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco: On February 4, 2009, just 16 days into his administration, Obama signed into law a 156 percent increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco, a hike of 61 cents per pack. The median income of smokers is just over $36,000 per year.

2. Obamacare Individual Mandate Excise Tax (takes effect in Jan 2014): Starting in 2014, anyone not buying “qualifying” health insurance — as defined by Obama-appointed HHS bureaucrats — must pay an income surtax according to the higher of the following:

	1 Adult	2 Adults	3+ Adults
2014	1% AGI/$95	1% AGI/$190	1% AGI/$285
2015	2% AGI/$325	2% AGI/$650	2% AGI/$975
2016+	2.5% AGI/$695	2.5% AGI/$1390	2.5% AGI/$2085

The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that six million American families will be liable for the tax, and as Americans for Tax Reform has pointed out, 100 percent of Americans filing a tax return (140 million filers) will be forced to submit paperwork to the IRS showing they had “qualifying” health insurance for every month of the tax year. (Bill: PPACA; Page: 317-337).

3. Obamacare Employer Mandate Tax (takes effect Jan. 2014): If an employer does not offer health coverage, and at least one employee qualifies for a health tax credit, the employer must pay an additional non-deductible tax of $2,000 for all full-time employees. Applies to all employers with 50 or more employees. If any employee actually receives coverage through the exchange, the penalty on the employer for that employee rises to $3,000. If the employer requires a waiting period to enroll in coverage of 30-60 days, there is a $400 tax per employee ($600 if the period is 60 days or longer).Bill: PPACA; Page: 345-346.

Combined score of individual and employer mandate tax penalty: $65 billion/10 years.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Comprehensive List of Obama Tax Hikes

U.S. Move to Give Egypt $450 Million in Aid Meets Resistance

The Obama administration notified Congress on Friday that it would provide Egypt’s new government an emergency cash infusion of $450 million, but the aid immediately encountered resistance from a prominent lawmaker wary of foreign aid and Egypt’s new course under the leadership of the Muslim Brotherhood.

The aid is part of the $1 billion in assistance that the Obama administration has pledged to Egypt to bolster its transition to democracy after the overthrow last year of the former president, Hosni Mubarak. Its fate, however, was clouded by concerns over the new government’s policies and, more recently, the protests that damaged the American Embassy in Cairo.

The United States Agency for International Development notified Congress of the cash infusion on Friday morning during the pre-election recess, promptly igniting a smoldering debate over foreign aid and the administration’s handling of crises in the Islamic world.

An influential Republican lawmaker, Representative Kay Granger of Texas, immediately announced that she would use her position as chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee overseeing foreign aid to block the distribution of the money. She said the American relationship with Egypt “has never been under more scrutiny” than it is in the wake of the election of President Mohamed Morsi, a former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. 

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/world/middleeast/white-house-move-to-give-egypt-450-million-in-aid-meets-resistance.html?_r=1&hp

Escape from Utopia

Utopian rhetoric is so commonplace in our political life that we scarcely question or even notice it. Part of Charles Kesler’s achievement in I Am the Change is to help us see that familiar utopianism in all its strangeness.

Consider a commencement address by newly elected senator Barack Obama at Knox College in 2005. “So let’s dream,” said our future president. Make sure that college is “affordable for everyone who wants to go,” among other things, and “that old Maytag plant could re-open its doors as an Ethanol refinery that turned corn into fuel. Down the street, a biotechnology research lab could open up on the cusp of discovering a cure for cancer.” How did we reach the point where a politician could, as Kesler writes, “dangle before the citizens of Galesburg, Illinois, home of Knox College, the prospect not merely of a biotech research lab opening up down the street, but one that is on the verge of curing cancer”?

The answer lies in the three waves of progressivism that have washed over America in the last century. Kesler — a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College, editor of the Claremont Review of Books, and longtime ornament of these pages — has been studying this history for his entire career. He illuminates it mostly through close and characteristically wry attention to the words of the progressive presidents associated with each of those waves: Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. He identifies them as the leaders of attempts to transform the country’s politics, economics, and culture, respectively.

Read more: https://www.nationalreview.com/nrd/articles/328707/escape-utopia

How Much Do We Owe?

Have you ever wondered how much we as taxpayers actually owe because of commitments politicians have made on our behalf? Turns out, the answer is not as simple as you might think.

The place to start is with a report put out annually by the U.S. Treasury. There I learned that the federal government officially recognizes an outstanding debt of $17.5 trillion. This amount consists of $10.2 trillion in government debt held by the public, plus pension and retirement benefits owed to federal employees.
On the one hand, that amount exceeds our country’s entire gross domestic product and that’s pretty bad. On the other hand I was surprised that the number wasn’t even higher because… Hey wait a minute.
What about Social Security? It’s not on the list. What about Medicare? It’s not there either.
On further investigation, I found out why. “Social Security promises are part of current law and can be changed by Congress at any time,” I was told. Ditto for Medicare. And disability insurance. And survivors insurance. Etc. Etc. That’s a bureaucratic way of saying, “We can break those promises any time we want to.”
So let’s see if I’ve got this right. I’ve been paying Social Security taxes for some 45 years or so and the federal government doesn’t officially admit that it owes me a dime. The same is true for 45 years of Medicare taxes. But it does admit that it owes pension benefits and post-retirement medical benefits to federal workers. As a taxpayer, I’m liable for all the promises the government has made to its own employees. But federal workers are not liable (necessarily) for all the promises the government has made to me.
If you are a bond holder or a federal employee the federal government is saying, “We owe you the money.” But if you’re a senior on Medicare or Social Security, the government’s position is, “We can default on our promises to you anytime things get a bit tight.”
What’s wrong with this picture?

Read more: http://townhall.com/columnists/johncgoodman/2012/09/29/how_much_do_we_owe

IG Report Says AOC Hired Illegal Immigrants

The Architect of the Capitol's office has hired illegal immigrants to work on the Capitol grounds, a well-placed source told Roll Call on Thursday.
The source, who asked not to be more specifically identified because of the sensitivity of the issue, said the AOC Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation that found a number of such workers on the payroll.
They were hired or contracted, the investigation found, as a result of a lax approach to background checks or holes in the agency's process for performing the checks, the source said.
The report that resulted from the investigation, which contains recommendations for strengthening background checks of AOC employees, has been transmitted to senior leadership with the AOC and Capitol Police, the source said.
AOC Inspector General Carol Bates declined to comment on the investigation and the report, as did Democratic and Republican staffers for the House Administration Committee, which oversees Congressional operations and would likely be aware of the probe.
AOC spokeswoman Eva Malecki said she could not get into specifics of the inspector general's work. She did, however, defend the agency's hiring practices.
"The AOC and its contractors utilize the E-Verify system to confirm the eligibility of newly hired employees, and have used it since the law was enacted in 2007," Malecki said of the voluntary government-run program that helps employers verify whether a job applicant is in the country legally. "In addition, new hires, whether they are AOC employees or contractors, undergo fingerprinting and criminal background checks by the U.S. Capitol Police."

Read more: http://www.rollcall.com/news/source_ig_report_says_aoc_hired_illegal_immigrants-217882-1.html?pos=htmbtxt

Why Turkey Will Never Join the EU

When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became prime minister of Turkey, it was anything but clear that he would last more than a few months. The military, the constitutional guardian of Atatürk’s secular order, had killed the Islamist administration of Erdogan’s mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, only a few years earlier. At the time, Erdogan was jailed for several months as a seditionist. Though he was nonetheless permitted to assume the prime minister’s office in 2003 after leading his Islamist party to victory, the man who famously proclaimed “I am a servant of sharia” still aroused great suspicion.

To survive and thrive, Erdogan would have to find ways to erode and nullify his Kemalist opponents. Thanks to Europe, he had cards to play.
It had long been a Kemalist dream to integrate Turkey fully into the West. The leaders of the secular order it was Erdogan’s goal to supplant craved acceptance into the European Union. Ingeniously, Erdogan grasped the brute truth: Turkey would never in a million years be admitted into the EU; Europe’s leaders would never tolerate it.
Of course, to say this aloud would be so déclassé, so downright Islamophobic, that the French and Germans would rather be caught sipping California wine. So rather than be forthright, they have constructed for Turkey an open-ended European-integration “process” — and is there anything transnational progressives love more than a “process”? This one is a limitless series of hoops for the Turks to jump through, at the end of which rainbow Ankara will be admitted to the club . . . probably right around the time hell freezes over or the euro becomes the world’s reserve currency.

Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/328816/why-turkey-will-never-join-eu-andrew-c-mccarthy

White House Moves To Head Off Sequester Layoffs

The White House moved to prevent defense and other government contractors from issuing mass layoff notices in anticipation of sequestration, even going so far to say that the contracting agencies would cover any potential litigation costs or employee compensation costs that could follow.
Some defense companies—including Lockheed Martin, BAE Systems and EADS North America—have said they expect to send notices to their employees 60 days before sequestration takes effect to comply with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give advance warning to workers deemed reasonably likely to lose their jobs. Companies appeared undeterred by a July 30 guidance from the Labor Department, which said issuing such notices would be inappropriate, due to the possibility that sequestration may be averted. The Labor Department also said companies do not have enough information about how the cuts might be implemented to determine which workers or specific programs could be affected should Congress fail to reach a compromise to reduce the deficit, triggering $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, half from defense, half non-defense. For 2013, that would amount to $109 billion in spending cuts.
So the Office of Management and Budget went a step further in guidance issued late Friday afternoon. If an agency terminates or modifies a contract, and the contractor must close a plant or lay off workers en masse, the company could treat employee compensation costs for WARN Act liability, attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs as allowable costs to be covered by the contracting agency—so long as the contractor has followed a course of action consistent with the Labor Department’s guidance. The legal fees would be covered regardless of the outcome of the litigation, according to the OMB guidance issued by Daniel Werfel, controller of the Office of Federal Financial Management, and Joseph Jordan, the Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.

Read more: http://nationaljournal.com/nationalsecurity/white-house-moves-to-head-off-sequester-layoffs-20120928