Obama: Senate deal 'the right thing to do for our country' on deficit

President Obama hailed the Senate’s ‘fiscal cliff’ legislation Tuesday as a model of bipartisan compromise ¬– and urged the House to pass the bill “without delay.”

In a statement after the Senate’s early morning vote, Obama said the bill would help “grow the economy and shrink our deficits in a balanced way.”

The deal “protects 98 percent of Americans and 97 percent of small business owners from a middle class tax hike,” Obama said.

The legislation, negotiated by Vice President Biden and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky), was approved in an 89-8 vote just after 2 a.m.

The deal would extend the Bush-era income tax rates on individuals to $400,000 and family income up to $450,000. It permanently sets the estate tax rate at 40 percent, up from 35 percent, and exempts inheritances below $5 million. 

It would also postpone the automatic spending cuts known as the sequester for two months.

“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” Obama said.

The president had campaigned for reelection on a pledge to raise income tax rates for all households earning above $250,000. But the bill’s $450,000 threshold marked a significant step in efforts to get "the wealthy to pay a little more," Obama said.

“Last year, I worked with Democrats and Republicans to cut spending by more than $1 trillion.  [The fiscal cliff bill] does even more by asking millionaires and billionaires to begin to pay their fair share for the first time in twenty years,” Obama said. “As promised, that increase will be immediate, and it will be permanent.”

Obama had angered Republicans on Monday with a campaign-style event at the White House in which he drew cheers for his criticism of Congress’s failure to pass a broader ‘grand bargain’ on the deficit.

“There’s more work to do to reduce our deficits, and I’m willing to do it,” Obama said in his statement Tuesday morning. “But [this bill] ensures that, going forward, we will continue to reduce the deficit through a combination of new spending cuts and new revenues from the wealthiest.”

Source  http://thehill.com/blogs/on-the-money/budget/275077-obama-senate-deal-the-right-thing-to-do-four-our-country

John Barrasso On Fiscal Cliff: Obama Wants To Go Over The Edge

A Republican lawmaker working on budgetary issues told "Fox News Sunday" that he believes President Barack Obama wants to go over the so-called fiscal cliff at the end of the year, and may not be negotiating in good faith.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), the chairman of the Republican policy committee, told Fox's Chris Wallace that he expects the U.S. will go over the cliff.

"I believe the president is eager to go over the cliff for political purposes," Barrasso said. "I think he sees a political victory at the bottom of the cliff: He gets all this additional tax revenue for new programs, he gets to cut the military, which Democrats have been calling for for years, and he gets to blame Republicans for it."

For the past week, Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner worked to pass what he called Plan B, a tax deal that had no chance of receiving presidential approval, in an attempt to twist Obama's arm ahead of the end of the year, when the Bush tax cuts expire.

That plan failed when Boehner could not wrangle enough votes from the more conservative elements of his caucus, leaving Obama to plead with House Republicans late on Friday to sign off on at least a limited package of tax cuts for the middle class, before everyone sees their taxes rise.

Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and who appeared on the show as the Democratic counterpoint, responded that responsibility for making a deal lies with more than just the president, and that Congress needs to show more willingness to meet Obama halfway.

"We only have nine days left here," Conrad said. "When are we going to get serious about actual solutions?"

Despite the amplified rhetoric about a fiscal "cliff" that could possibly doom the American economy, few in Washington seem to be treating the imminent tax hikes as a true doomsday. Many politicians are on holiday this weekend, and the Sunday shows -- normally a major battleground for political disputes of this sort -- were populated largely with bit players in the debate.

And as The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim reported Saturday, there are no signs that federal agencies are preparing any major changes ahead of the deadline, suggesting they do not anticipate any direct fallout from the sequestration that goes into effect at the end of the year.

Source  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/23/john-barrasso-fiscal-cliff_n_2355580.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

Fiscal Cliff: Obama Declines Boehner's Proposal of Raising Rate for Earners Making $1M

Signaling new movement in "fiscal cliff" talks, House Speaker John Boehner has proposed raising the top rate for earners making more than $1 million, a person familiar with the negotiations said. President Barack Obama, who wants higher top rates for households earning more than $250,000, has not accepted the offer, this person said.

The proposal, however, indicated progress in talks that had appeared stalled. The person would only discuss the plan on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

As part of a broader budget deal, Boehner is still seeking more spending cuts than Obama has proposed, particularly in mandatory health care spending. Boehner has asked for a long-term increase in eligibility age for Medicare and for lower costs-of-living adjustments for Social Security.

Boehner's tax proposal was first reported by Politico.

A Boehner aide would not comment on the report.

At issue are expiring tax rates that would automatically increase on Jan. 1 for virtually every income tax payer if Congress and the president don't act. Steep budget cuts are also scheduled to kick in, unless Congress and Obama agree to forestall them with other deficit reduction measures.

Obama has insisted on extending current rates for the 98 percent of taxpayers in household that earn less than $250,000. He would let the top two marginal rates increase from 33 percent to 35 percent and from 36 percent to 39.6 percent for those taxpayers making over that threshold.

Until now, Boehner had maintained his opposition to raising any rates. Instead, he had proposed to raise up to $800 billion in tax revenue over 10 years by limiting tax loopholes and deductions as part of a broad tax overhaul.

But the speaker and House Republicans have come under increasing pressure form a number of Senate Republicans who say they should yield to Obama's demand on tax rates and then press him for additional cuts early next year in exchange for an increase in the nation's borrowing limit.

Obama has proposed about $600 billion in spending reductions over 10 years, including about $350 billion in Medicare and other health care savings. But he has also proposed about $200 billion in additional spending, including aid to the unemployed and to struggling homeowners and for public works projects.

Read more: http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/politics/2012/12/16/fiscal-cliff-obama-declines-boehner-proposal-raising-rate-for-earners-making-1m/#ixzz2FIsuOm6Y

Cliff jumping with Obama

Why are Republicans playing the Democrats' game that the "fiscal cliff" is all about taxation?

House Speaker John Boehner already made the preemptive concession of agreeing to raise revenues. But the insistence on doing so by eliminating deductions without raising marginal rates is now the subject of fierce Republican infighting.

Where is the other part of President Barack Obama's vaunted "balanced approach"? Where are the spending cuts, both discretionary and entitlement: Medicare, Medicaid and now Obamacare (the health care trio) and Social Security?

Social Security is the easiest to solve. So you get a sense of the Democrats' inclination to reform entitlements when Dick Durbin, the Senate Democrats' No. 2, says Social Security is off the table because it "does not add a penny to our deficit."

This is absurd. In 2012, Social Security adds $165 billion to the deficit. Democrats pretend that Social Security is covered through 2033 by its trust fund. Except that the trust fund is a fiction, a mere "bookkeeping" device, as the Office of Management and Budget itself has written. The trust fund's IOUs "do not consist of real economic assets that can be drawn down in the future to fund benefits." Future benefits "will have to be financed by raising taxes, borrowing from the public, or reducing benefits or other expenditures."

And draining the Treasury, as 10,000 baby boomers retire every day. Yet that's off the table. And on Wednesday, the president threw down the gauntlet by demanding tax hikes now — with spending cuts to come next year. Meaning, until after Republicans have fallen on their swords, given up the tax issue and forfeited their political leverage.

Ronald Reagan once fell for a "tax now, cut later" deal that he later deeply regretted. Dems got the tax; he never got the cuts. Obama's audacious new gambit is not a serious proposal to solve our fiscal problems. It's a raw partisan maneuver meant to neuter the Republicans by getting them to cave on their signature issue as the hold-the-line party on taxes.

The objective is to ignite exactly the kind of internecine warfare on taxes now going on among Republicans. And to bury Grover Norquist.

I am not now, nor have ever been, a Norquistian. I don't believe the current level of taxation is divinely ordained. Nor do I believe in pledges of any kind. But Norquist is the only guy in town to consistently resist the tax-and-spend Democrats' stampede for ever higher taxes to fund ever more reckless spending.

The hunt for Norquist's scalp is a key part of the larger partisan project to make the Republicans do a George H.W. Bush and renege on their heretofore firm stand on taxes. Bush never recovered.

Why are the Republicans playing along? Because it is assumed that Obama has the upper hand. Unless Republicans acquiesce and get the best deal they can right now, tax rates will rise across the board on Jan. 1, and the GOP will be left without any bargaining chips.

But what about Obama? If we all cliff dive, he gets to preside over yet another recession. It will wreck his second term. Sure Republicans will get blamed. But Obama is never running again. He cares about his legacy. You think he wants a second term with a double-dip recession, 9 percent unemployment and a totally gridlocked Congress? Republicans have to stop playing as if they have no cards.

Obama is claiming an electoral mandate to raise taxes on the top 2 percent. Perhaps, but remember those incessant campaign ads promising a return to the economic nirvana of the Clinton years? Well, George W. Bush cut rates across the board, not just for the top 2 percent. Going back to the Clinton rates means middle-class tax hikes that yield four times the revenue that you get from just the rich.

So give Obama the full Clinton. Let him live with that. And with what also lies on the other side of the cliff: 28 million Americans newly subject to the ruinous alternative minimum tax.

Republicans must stop acting like supplicants. If Obama so loves those Clinton rates, Republicans should say: Then go over the cliff and have them all.

And add: But if you want a Grand Bargain, then deal. If we give way on taxes, we want, in return, serious discretionary cuts, clearly spelled-out entitlement cuts and real tax reform.

Otherwise, strap on your parachute, Mr. President. We'll ride down together.

Source  http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/obama/ct-oped-1203-krauthammer-20121203-20,0,7748066.story

President Obama arrives in Bangkok

President Barack Obama on Sunday launched a three-day tour through Southeast Asia in Bangkok, where his motorcade departed the airport and made the trek along wide open highways into the center of the city, then past the Government House which was decked out in bunting and a large sign reading “Welcome to the Honorable Barack Obama.”

We arrived outside the Wat Pho Royal Monastery, a colorful and ornate Buddhist temple in the Phra Nakhon district.

Reporters were led to the open archway of a room with a golden Buddha and dark marble floors. This was the Eastern Viharn Phra. A faux tree towered behind the statue and the ceiling was painted red with gold medallions.

A few minutes later head monk Chaokun Suthee Thammanuwat, wearing a bright orange robe over one shoulder, led Obama, dressed in dark gray suit, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, in a royal blue pantsuit and gold necklace, into the room.

Reporters couldn’t hear what they were saying as they circled the Buddha; the monk appeared to be explaining things for a few minutes before they left.

We were then taken to another large hallway dominated by a huge reclining gold Buddha, which stretched the length of the building.This was the Viharn of the Reclining Buddha, and we were instructed to remove our shoes before entering. Again the monk led Obama and Clinton for a stroll past the giant figure, which dwarfed them all.

Our third stop was in the courtyard where the trio strolled past a number of colorful spire-like columns. This was the Phra Maha Chedi Group. The place was empty of tourists for the president’s private tour.

This reporter overheard Clinton say: “What a peaceful place,” and Obama responded: “If you have 80,000 people here it’s not so peaceful. This is kind of a treat.” Obama was  making a joke about the budget, saying to the monk, “Yes we’re working on this budget, we’re going to need a lot of prayer for that.” And they laughed.

The motorcade left about 10 minutes later, headed for the hospital to visit the king.

Source  http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2012/11/18/president-obama-arrives-in-bangkok/

Obama turns to Reddit for last-minute votes

With just a few hours left in the election, President Obama turned back to Reddit in a last-minute plea for votes.

Obama made headlines in August when he used Reddit, an up-and-coming social news site, to interact with young, tech savvy voters in a question-and-answer session. On Tuesday, he went back to Reddit to remind readers to vote.

"I'm checking in because polls will start closing in this election in just a few hours, and I need you to vote," Obama said on Reddit, the self-proclaimed "front page of the Internet."

"If you’ve voted already, don't stop there -- spread the word to your friends, roommates and neighbors. Think of it as upvoting," Obama said, referencing Reddit's "upvote" feature that lets users vote on what they consider the most important news.

Last time Obama used Reddit, more than 200,000 users checked in on the webpage for the question-and-answer session at the same time -- blowing past Reddit's previous record.

The thread created today by Obama received nearly 400 comments in less than 25 minutes. Many users commented with support while a few vouched for Obama's opponent, Mitt Romney.

Meanwhile in other parts of the Web, Romney used Twitter to keep directing voters to a page on his campaign site with information on the election and where to vote.

"With your help, we will turn our country around and get America back on the path to prosperity," Romney tweeted around 3 p.m. "Please vote today."

Source  http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-obama-reddit-election-20121106,0,4784123.story

Obama’s foreign donors

In September, the Obama campaign got 1.8 million donations from small contributors who did not break the $200 threshold requiring that their information be reported to the Federal Election Commission. They gave the campaign 98 percent of the $181 million it raised that month, a figure vastly higher than its take in any previous month.

Is the Obama campaign financing itself through foreign money funneled in through a website owned by a private businessman, living in China, that uses the name Obama.com?

In 1997, we learned — too late — that the Clinton campaign had relied heavily on thinly disguised Chinese government money for much of its early blitz of issue ads in the 1996 election. The early intimations of funding fraud in the campaign (Al Gore’s exploits with the Buddhist monks) shaved off half of Clinton’s margin, cutting his lead from 14 to 7 points in the weeks before the election. But the full dimensions of the scandal were not apparent until then-Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn.) held hearings the following year revealing the depth of the campaign’s reliance on foreign money.

Now, in the last month of the 2012 race, Newsweek magazine has raised serious questions about Obama’s fundraising and its possible reliance on foreign donors and outright fraud to generate its funding. 

Newsweek raises questions, in particular, about Robert W. Roche, the co-founder and chairman of the board of Acorn International Inc., a media and branding direct-sales company based in Shanghai. He also owns the Obama.com website, which appears on the Internet throughout the world. Roche’s site links to Barackobama.com, the official campaign site, where it invites people to donate to the campaign. Obama.com gets 2,000 visits a day, two-thirds of which are from foreigners. Is it a giant money-laundering operation to feed foreign money into the Obama campaign?

Despite the disclaimer on the campaign site stating that foreign nationals cannot donate to Obama, the suspicion remains that Roche’s vigilance in assuring that Obama.com is on the Internet throughout the world has led to a significant influx of foreign cash into the coffers of the president’s reelection effort.

It will be too late to wait until 2013 to find out. The House Oversight Committee should immediately investigate, using its subpoena power, to see if there is, indeed, a flow of foreign money, via Obama.com, into the president’s campaign.

Roche, by the way, has visited the White House 11 times during Obama’s tenure, according to the visitor log.

These questions arise because the Obama campaign, unlike Romney’s or, for that matter, Hillary Clinton’s in 2008, refuses to ask donors for their CVV number (the number on your credit card that one is often asked for after giving one’s name and expiration date). The CVV is designed to assure that the donor is actually physically holding the card.

The Obama campaign is no stranger to fraudulent donations funneled in through phony names. In 2008, The Washington Post reported that Mary Biskup was reported to have donated more than $170,000 to the Obama campaign in small donations. But Biskup says she never gave any money to the campaign. Some other donor must have given the money in her name.

Given these past problems and the Obama campaign’s sudden influx of small donors, Newsweek wonders why the campaign does not require CVV numbers to minimize the chances of fraud. 

The magazine noted that the campaign’s past scandals “make it all the more surprising that the Obama campaign does not use … the card verification value [system].” The magazine added that “the Romney campaign, by contrast, does use the CVV — as has almost every other candidate who has run for president in recent years.”

Let’s find out the facts before the election. If a president who promised ethical transparency is using small donations — too small to trigger the federal reporting requirement — to funnel in foreign donations, we need to know. Before Election Day.

Source  http://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/dick-morris/261109-obamas-foreign-donors