I thought this article clarified the income issue

You guys are probably sick of hearing my opinions on this if you read the last thread, but I wanted to re-post this section of an article that addresses the income level concern.  It sounds like the only state that asked for income guidelines to go as high as $83,000 was New York, and their request was denied, so that income level is not a part of the current bill. (To me it sounds like even the $60,000 guideline may be limited to New York, but I'm honestly not sure on that and will try to find out).

--The president also complained that the bill would cover too many children who don't need federal help. "This program expands coverage, federal coverage, up to families earning $83,000 a year. That doesn't sound poor to me," the president told the Lancaster audience.

Dorn says that's not exactly right, either. "This bill would actually put new limits in place to keep states from going to very high-income levels. SCHIP money would no longer be available over 300 percent of the federal poverty level, which is about $60,000 for a family of four."

The president gets to make the $83,000 claim because New York had wanted to allow children in families with incomes up to four times the poverty level onto the program. That is, indeed, $82,600. The Department of Health and Human Services rejected New York's plan last month, and under the bill, that denial would stand. White House officials warn, however, that the bill would allow a future administration to grant New York's request.

link to the entire article:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14962685 

• Sorry to keep bringing it up - SCHIP - DW
  • I found several opposition articles and will post the high points.... - Observer
    • My conclusion - DW
      • I would have to agree...... - Observer
  • Transcript: Democratic response to Pres. Bush's - radio address. (worth reading!) kam (sm)
    • Not asking you to defend ... just an fyi... - Observer
    • It's almost funny to me - DW
  • I have been reading up today...and will read more... - Observer
  • Just my feelings on it - Lifelong Democrat
    • Uh oh...LLD :-) see inside - Observer
    • I thought this article clarified the income issue - somewhat. (sm) kam
      • Thanks, your post - DW
    • I understand - DW
  • I should add.... - DW

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Poster tried to get you to read this before but obviously ignored by most.  You might want to remember this at the polls.........  This was just back in March when this was attempted by Obama.. your hero!

WASHINGTON - Presidential candidates John McCain, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton interrupted their campaign schedules to return to the Senate for votes on taxes and spending likely to become key points of contention in the race for the White House.

Votes on tax cuts and on a one-year ban on pet projects topped the Senate’s agenda before an expected late-night vote yesterday to pass a $3 trillion Democratic budget blueprint. The nonbinding plan predicts a balanced budget in four years and promises generous increases for many domestic programs, but achieves those goals only by assuming major tax increases when President Bush’s tax cuts expire in about three years.  This was found out and release the morning after they tried to get this passed in the mddle of the night back in March. 

Obama(D-Ill.) and Clinton (D-N.Y.) both promise to reverse Bush’s tax cuts for wealthier taxpayers, but the Democratic budget they’ll be voting for would allow income tax rates to go up on individuals making as little as $31,850 and couples earning $63,700 or more.

in this household. Sure, we could lose our jobs, however, we are quite prepared for something like that. We have an emergency fund in place that would last at least a year (a year's worth of mortgage and utilility payments), we don't have a car payment, all credit cards are paid off and we have CDs, retirement funds, etc. It's called planning for the future and planning for the unexpected. We have paid into unemployment, so of course we would take it if we had to.

Since sales tax was brought up below, let's take a little poll..........

Do you believe that a federal sales tax to replace the current income tax system would be a good move?  Do you think it would be more fair or less fair and why?

I'll post my opinion separate from this.

I agree that the bill is a bit confusing, but I think it's great so many of us are actually looking into it to find out what it is really about.  I think the New York Times article below clarifies the income guidelines pretty well.  I also want to say that I heard that if we go with Bush's $5 billion plan for SCHIP it will be grossly underfunded, as apparently, it is already underfunded and many kids who qualify with the current income guidelines cannot get on SCHIP, so I hope he is willing to at least compromise and give more money to the program if his veto isn't overridden.  It's for a good cause, darn it!

"Oct. 16 — It is the $83,000 question: Could children with that amount of family income qualify for subsidized health insurance under the bipartisan bill passed by Congress and vetoed by President Bush?

When the House votes Thursday on whether to override the veto, Republicans will insist that the answer is yes. They will express outrage that rich children could get coverage from the government while hundreds of thousands of poor children still go uninsured.

Democrats say it is a total distortion for Mr. Bush and his Republican allies to say that the bill allows coverage with family incomes up to $83,000 a year.

Who is right? Each side appears to overstate its case. The bill does not encourage or prohibit coverage of children with family incomes at that level.

Of the 6.6 million children now covered by the program, most come from families with incomes well below $83,000, and the bill would give states financial incentives to sign up low-income children who are eligible but not enrolled.

In general, children with family incomes below the poverty level ($20,650 for a family of four) are eligible for Medicaid. The State Children’s Health Insurance Program is meant for families with too much income to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance.

Mr. Bush said Monday that the bill would expand eligibility for the program up to $83,000.

But Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and an architect of the bill, said Tuesday that the president’s argument was specious. “About 92 percent of the kids will be under 200 percent of the poverty level,” Mr. Hatch said at a news conference with supporters of the bill, including the singer Paul Simon.

Another Republican author of the bill, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, said the White House claims were “flatly incorrect.”

States establish income limits for the child health program. A recent survey by the Congressional Research Service found that 32 states had set limits at twice the poverty level or less, while 17 states had limits from 220 percent to 300 percent of the poverty level. Only one state, New Jersey, has a higher limit. It offers coverage to children with family incomes up to 350 percent of the poverty level, or $72,275 for a family of four.

In New York, which covers children up to 250 percent of the poverty level, the Legislature this year passed a bill that would have raised the limit to 400 percent of the poverty level, or $82,600 for a family of four. The Bush administration rejected the proposal, saying it would have allowed the substitution of public coverage for private insurance.

States that cover middle-income children often charge premiums and co-payments on a sliding scale, so the coverage is not free.

While the bill passed by Congress would not prohibit states from setting the income limit at $82,600, it would set stringent new standards for such coverage.

In general, after Oct. 1, 2010, a state could not receive any federal money to cover children above 300 percent of the poverty level unless a vast majority of its low-income children — those at or below 200 percent of the poverty level — were already covered. To meet this test, a state would have to show that the proportion of its low-income children with insurance was at least equal to the average for the 10 states with the highest rates of coverage of low-income children.

Moreover, if a state was allowed to cover children over 300 percent of the poverty level, the federal payment for those children would, in most cases, be reduced. New Jersey and New York would be exempt from the cuts if they met the bill’s other requirements.

Citing that provision, the White House said Oct. 6 that the bill included a “grandfather clause” allowing higher payment rates for children above 300 percent of the poverty level in New Jersey and New York.

Jocelyn A. Guyer, a researcher at the Health Policy Institute of Georgetown University, said: “This is a wildly contentious political issue, but it’s largely a theoretical question. More than 99 percent of children in the program are below three times the poverty level, and New York is the only state that has expressed any interest in going to four times the poverty level.”

Suzanne Esterman, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Human Services, said that 3,000 of the 124,000 children in the state program — about 2.4 percent — had family incomes exceeding three times the poverty level.

Some of the current confusion can be traced back to a bill introduced in March by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Representative John D. Dingell of Michigan, both Democrats. They would have explicitly allowed all states to expand eligibility to families making four times the poverty level. But the bill passed by Congress did not go that far." -by Robert Pear

(AP)  Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices - amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.

Down the drain?  Beware of Obama's plan to 'spread the wealth around'

By Betsy Newmark
High School History and Government Teacher/Blogger

If the McCain campaign can’t use this Obama quote to raise doubts about his attitude towards wealth and success, then they deserve the shellacking they seem headed for.

“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?” the plumber asked, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.”

“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded. “My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Plumbers of the country, unite! Forget about the work and effort you put into building up a business or the scummy work that you do that many of us don’t know or don’t want to do. If you have succeeded, you should be willing to give up more of what you earn to help those who haven’t had the great good luck that you have had to be a successful plumber. Remember how Obama is going to give 95% of all of us a tax cut even though over 30% of the population doesn’t pay taxes?

He might call it a tax credit, but what he’s really doing is his vision of “spreading the wealth around.” It sounds a lot like Huey Long’s 1935 plan to “Share the Wealth.” And when he finds that he can’t tax the top 5% of the population to gain enough wealth to spread to the 95% of the rest of us, do you really think that he’ll stop with that 5%?

Remember…This is the guy who said in the ABC debate during the primary season that his approach to raising tax on capital gains is not based on whether it would provide more revenue but on his idea of what is fair:

GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,” which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.

But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.

OBAMA: Right.

GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.

So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?

OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.

Just what we need in these fragile economic times — a guy who wants to raise taxes because he thinks it’s a matter of “fairness” and time to “spread the wealth around.”

That will be some incentive for other plumbers who want to work hard and build up a successful business.

But don’t worry - according to Joe Biden, it’s the patriotic thing to do.

Your point of view has been expressed. Constant repetition only weakens your case.  If you felt strongly that this was true, you would be confident that you would be proved right and not have to beat a dead horse. Be a member of polite society and consider others' time and interests before you attempt to monopolize a free forum with only your one point over and over.

and we are not just repeating ourselves.  We are posting new info for others WHO CARE to read it.  If you are not interested and do not care, DON'T READ IT. 

Interesting post by someone on another site:

ladyplumber10:35AMDec 3rd 2008

When you have 4 different citizenships in question, American, British, Indonesian, and Kenyan, and multiple different names :Barack Obama, aka, Barry Soreto, aka Barack Dunham, aka Barry Dunham...you folks who think this is a piece of cake to wade through are nuts. It's like untangling a badly knotted necklace.
There is a great interview with Alan Keyes on why he is suing Mr Obama in the CA Sumpreme Court in Essence magazine...
http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/alankeyesobama
also it is known that Mr Obama's passport in 1981 at the age of 20 was Indonesian. Ever wonder WHY he has sealed all of his college records @ Columbia and Harvard...likely because he came in under Indonesian
citizenship and qulaified for foreign student grants.
For those of you who think that the certificate shown on his web site is sufficient:
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=80931
PART 1
"Hawaii Revised Statute 338-178 allows registration of birth in Hawaii for a child that was born outside of Hawaii to parents who, for a year preceding the child’s birth, claimed Hawaii as their place of residence," the document said. "The only way to know where Senator Obama was actually born is to view Senator Obama's LONG LEGAL original birth certificate from 1961 that shows the name of the hospital and the name and signature of the doctor that delivered him."

(From Alan Keyes suite against the Sec of State of CA and demanding they hold back the 55 electoral votes)

For those of you who think that even if he was born to an American overseas..he is still a US Citizen...
NOT SO. for the law from 1952-1986 (Obama was born in 1961) states that to an American Citizen and one alien parent in wedlock, the American parent must have resided in the US for 5 years beyond the age of 14 (or the age of 19)Mr Obama's mother was 18 when he was born, so he wouldn't qualify.
http://travel.state.gov/law/info/info_609.html
For those of you who think that he has to have been checked out this far into the game...think again. I met with my DC House REP face to face who said that officials voted into office by the public, don't get checked out...my own rep never had been nor do US senators. The FBI doesn't get involved in political matters, and there is NO PRIOR legal precedent for a prez candidate that wants to keep his life "private". Remember Hillary was the first to challenge his citizenship...but took his short cert of live birth as his long legal birth certificate. This document is not offical enough to get him a passport. So whose job is it to approve a candidate...the candidates own party according to the FBI agent that I interviewed...can you say conflict of interest?! It is also the job of each individual sec of state. Personally, for the prez national election, I think it should be the job of the US Sec of State. Each state sec of state can certify state candidates. FOLKS-this has not resurfaced...it has never left.. but the Obama loving main stream media won't cover it, because they will wind up with egg all over their face. I think a few things are cool: one, that Alan Keyes is the one in CA suing, but no one can call the race card as he is black. Justice Clarence Thomas took the supreme court case, and again no one can call a race card. My DC rep feels that every court in the nation will find a loop hole to dismiss for fear of rioting. I told him that men are fighting and dying overseas to protect our freedoms and our constitution..why should they if we won't protect it from within? Also if the courts were afraid of rioting in the 1950s&1960s SEGREGATION might still be alive today! I would love to see a black man as prez, but not one who had to speak deceit and lies to get there. Let's NOT be in such a hurry to make history, that we are doing nothing to protect history...and to protect our constitution....

http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008/12/01/obama-birth-certificate-rears-its-ugly-head-again/197#comments

I would argue that the New Deal actually did help the economy, but it wasn't large enough.  During the New Deal the GDP steadily grew with the exception of one period where FDR actually slacked off with his programs and instead did tax cuts.  Unemployment also went down during this period.  I know Fox is saying the New Deal didn't work, but the numbers don't support that theory.

See charts below: