Does the middle class ever get a break?

All I heard during Barrack Obama's campaign was how he was going to look out for the middle class and how Bush and McCain would do nothing more than make the rich richer.  Well, every time I turn on the news, I cringe.  All I see are crooks.  CEO crooks, rich crooks, and political crooks.  These crooks are getting rich off of taxpayers and we are getting nothing in return.  The initial bailout has done nothing.  The stock market is still extremely low.  The only good thing I've heard of late is that gas is below 2 dollars a gallon right now.  Now GM wants a bailout.  Their CEOs flying in on private jets and asking for a handout.  I truly do not want to get them one because I know it won't change anything.  However, it breaks my heart to think of the millions of people who will truly suffer from this....including my mother.

Now President-elect Obama still claims to be out there for the middle class, but I just don't see it.  His plans will do nothing more than to help the lower class.  The rich will survive as they are rich, but it will be the middle class who again takes the hit.  The more TV I watch, the more I see Obama as nothing more than a puppet of his political party. 

My husband is so stressed out about this economy and his business that he is losing sleep at night.  He had to fire someone yesterday to save costs which means he will have to work a lot more hours to cover for the person he had to let go which will add more stress and little to no downtime for him.  Not to mention the poor bloke he had to fire right before the holidays. 

I'm sitting here at my desk thinking about our monthly house payment and our two kids and I wonder how we will make it if my husband's boss decides to close his store.  Will he send him to another store or will he just let him go?  How will he find another job in this economy that would make enough money to pay our house payment?  What will happen to my mom if GM gets rid of legacy expenses and she loses my dad's pension and her health benefits.  What happens to my brother when his factory goes under and he is left with three kids and a wife to support? 

Is anyone else literally sick to their stomach about all of this?  I feel like I could just hurl and then I turn TV on and see all these crooks and I just want to scream.  I've tried to stay positive and I've tried to give Obama the benefit of the doubt but his pal Bill Clinton is the one who started the housing crisis by forcing bad loans to be given and Obama has done nothing but surround himself with Clintons and I just can't shake the feeling that we won't rebound from this......at least not for a very very long time.

• Does the middle class ever get a break? - Chele
  • In a word.......... sm - m

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Then my income will just push us into that bracket.  I wonder if that will negate my entire income?  If so, I guess we may be better off if I just quit? Right now I work because I can't afford to quit.  I won't be able to afford it then either so what will I do?  I wonder how many others will be in my situation? 

FYI, we live in a small older home that we are trying to pay off so that when our two children are college-age, maybe we can afford it. We don't live extravagently by any means.  What will happen to people like us?

Just call it something besides a tax.

Who Pays for Cap and Trade?

Hint: They were promised a tax cut during the Obama campaign.Article

Cap and trade is the tax that dare not speak its name, and Democrats are hoping in particular that no one notices who would pay for their climate ambitions. With President Obama depending on vast new carbon revenues in his budget and Congress promising a bill by May, perhaps Americans would like to know the deeply unequal ways that climate costs would be distributed across regions and income groups.

Politicians love cap and trade because they can claim to be taxing "polluters," not workers. Hardly. Once the government creates a scarce new commodity -- in this case the right to emit carbon -- and then mandates that businesses buy it, the costs would inevitably be passed on to all consumers in the form of higher prices. Stating the obvious, Peter Orszag -- now Mr. Obama's budget director -- told Congress last year that "Those price increases are essential to the success of a cap-and-trade program."

Hit hardest would be the "95% of working families" Mr. Obama keeps mentioning, usually omitting that his no-new-taxes pledge comes with the caveat "unless you use energy." Putting a price on carbon is regressive by definition because poor and middle-income households spend more of their paychecks on things like gas to drive to work, groceries or home heating.

The Congressional Budget Office -- Mr. Orszag's former roost -- estimates that the price hikes from a 15% cut in emissions would cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. That's about $680, not including the costs of reduced employment and output. The three middle quintiles would see their paychecks cut between $880 and $1,500, or 2.9% to 2.7% of income. The rich would pay 1.7%. Cap and trade is the ideal policy for every Beltway analyst who thinks the tax code is too progressive (all five of them).

But the greatest inequities are geographic and would be imposed on the parts of the U.S. that rely most on manufacturing or fossil fuels -- particularly coal, which generates most power in the Midwest, Southern and Plains states. It's no coincidence that the liberals most invested in cap and trade -- Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey -- come from California or the Northeast.

Coal provides more than half of U.S. electricity, and 25 states get more than 50% of their electricity from conventional coal-fired generation. In Ohio, it totals 86%, according to the Energy Information Administration. Ratepayers in Indiana (94%), Missouri (85%), New Mexico (80%), Pennsylvania (56%), West Virginia (98%) and Wyoming (95%) are going to get soaked.

Another way to think about it is in terms of per capita greenhouse-gas emissions. California is the No. 2 carbon emitter in the country but also has a large economy and population. So the average Californian only had a carbon footprint of about 12 tons of CO2-equivalent in 2005, according to the World Resource Institute's Climate Analysis Indicators, which integrates all government data. The situation is very different in Wyoming and North Dakota -- paging Senators Mike Enzi and Kent Conrad -- where every person was responsible for 154 and 95 tons, respectively. See the nearby chart for cap and trade's biggest state winners and losers.

Democrats say they'll allow some of this ocean of new cap-and-trade revenue to trickle back down to the public. In his budget, Mr. Obama wants to recycle $525 billion through the "making work pay" tax credit that goes to many people who don't pay income taxes. But $400 for individuals and $800 for families still doesn't offset carbon's income raid, especially in states with higher carbon use.

All the more so because the Administration is lowballing its cap-and-trade tax estimates. Its stated goal is to reduce emissions 14% below 2005 levels by 2020, which assuming that four-fifths of emissions are covered (excluding agriculture, for instance), works out to about $13 or $14 per ton of CO2. When CBO scored a similar bill last year, it expected prices to start at $23 and rise to $44 by 2018. CBO also projected the total value of the allowances at $902 billion over the first decade, which is some $256 billion more than the Administration's estimate.

We asked the White House budget office for the assumptions behind its revenue estimates, but a spokesman said the Administration doesn't have a formal proposal and will work with Congress and "stakeholders" to shape one. We were also pointed to recent comments by Mr. Orszag that he was "sure there will be enough there to finance the things that we have identified" and maybe "additional money" too. In other words, Mr. Obama expects a much larger tax increase than even he is willing to admit.

Those "stakeholders" are going to need some very large bribes, starting with the regions that stand to lose the most. Led by Michigan's Debbie Stabenow, 15 Senate Democrats have already formed a "gang" demanding that "consumers and workers in all regions of the U.S. are protected from undue hardship." In practice, this would mean corporate welfare for carbon-heavy businesses.

And of course Congress is its own "stakeholder." An economy-wide tax under the cover of saving the environment is the best political moneymaker since the income tax. Obama officials are already telling the press, sotto voce, that climate revenues might fund universal health care and other new social spending. No doubt they would, and when they did Mr. Obama's cap-and-trade rebates would become even smaller.

Cap and trade, in other words, is a scheme to redistribute income and wealth -- but in a very curious way. It takes from the working class and gives to the affluent; takes from Miami, Ohio, and gives to Miami, Florida; and takes from an industrial America that is already struggling and gives to rich Silicon Valley and Wall Street "green tech" investors who know how to leverage the political class.

that John McCain's economic plan is designed from the ground up to raise incomes and create jobs for Americans - especially middle-class Americans - and get our economy moving again. It is in sharp contrast to Barack Obama's plan, which does not treat the middle class well and which will reduce jobs rather than create them.

"The McCain tax plan will allow middle-class Americans to keep more of what they earn than the Obama tax plan. McCain will increase the exemption for children from $3,500 to $7,000 per child, and he will provide a refundable health care tax credit of $5,000 for every family. What does this mean for middle-class families? Consider a married couple, one of whom works, earning $55,000 plus employer-paid health insurance of $8,000, and who rent their home and have two young children. Under McCain's plan, this family would receive a tax refund of $2,087 for health care and other things. Under Obama's plan, including his proposed worker's credit, this same family would not get any tax refund; in fact, they will have to pay taxes of $1,213. That's a $3,300 advantage for that family with McCain's plan compared with Obama's.

McCain's plan also provides incentives for firms to hire more workers and to pay them more. He will stop penalizing American firms when they create jobs in America rather than overseas. The U.S. tax code now levies a tax of 35 percent on American firms, the second highest in the world. McCain would reduce the tax to 25 percent, an important reason why his plan creates more jobs than Obama's. Another reason is that McCain will not raise the tax on small businesses, as Obama's plan does. Under Obama's plan, the top marginal income tax rate, which many small businesses pay, will rise to over 50 percent, including his proposed 5 percent increase in the statutory rate, 3 percent for Medicare, 3 percent for Social Security, and 4 percent from the phase out of exemptions.

McCain's economic plan is comprehensive and helps the middle class in many other ways. By promoting domestic energy production, including nuclear power and exploration and production of oil and gas - which Obama has opposed - McCain will reduce the price of gasoline, electricity and heating oil. By promoting free-trade agreements, he will reduce taxes on job-creating exports and reduce the prices that middle- and lower-income families pay for food and clothing. In contrast, Sen. Obama opposes good trade agreements - voting against the Colombia free-trade agreement - that would create jobs in America."

He just wants our vote and he figured this would be the way to get it.  To promise to not tax us middle class folks.  I don't believe he intends to keep his promise.  He may at first but the bottom line is that all the government spending of his and the 3 trillion dollars he plans to spend....where he is going to get that money?  He is going to get it from us and that includes the middle class. 

All the companies who get tax hikes will pass that tax onto us as well by jacking up prices of products and services so we the consumers pay for that tax hike.  Then Obama will have to raise taxes on the middle class as well to cover his government spending.  It is common sense people.  Look at his record.  He has consistently wanted to raise taxes and that includes on us middle class folks he is all of sudden so interested in helping out since he is up for election.  Give me a break.  I see through the lies and false promises.  That isn't change.  That is Washington elitists at their norm.

Very, very contradicting to me.  Obama changing a lot of what he said lately and it gets worse.  He wants us to vote early and take off from work Nov. 4th to help him win.  Fox news also reports Obama and his campaign lays out plans to kill expectations after win because of concerns that many supporters are now harboring unrealistic hopes of what can be achieved.  What the heck?  Now he says, "it will be hard to achieve goals and will take time."  He says one thing and then says another.  I want to know where these unauthorized credit cards came from for his campaign.  I want to see his birth certificate that he cannot cough up and there is a petition out and he is under investigation if he was truly born in the good ole USA.  Call your State Department and they will tell you there is an investigation and they trying to get this resolved before Nov. 4th.  So much uncertainty.   Hope I do not offend anyone, but just like a bumper sticker I read

I'll keep my God, my freedom, my guns, and my money, you can keep THE CHANGE.  VOTE FOR MCCAIN/PALIN.

the middle class person's best friend!  Funny how now he wants to help us, when each time he had the opportunity to, he voted against it. 

I'm not voting for Hillary but....

know that it scares the heck outta me and others, Obama.......his middle name is hussein.....

one of the bibles say something to the effect of when the *stuff* happens (the bad stuff) - it's going to happen from the *inside out* -

but glad you are ALL so trusting.......i trust nobody 100%. 

i cannot stand ALL of these candidates this time around......

JMHO - no flames please

Adults acting like children once again.  Proves my point every time.