well damn god forbid they actually cut spending and not raise taxes.... i mean... you know damn well that 250.000 mark will get lowered and most of the working class is gonna get hit .... just so we can hope and change and provide "entitlement" garbage to people that should not get it

 I challenge anyone to find an instance of history where the current Democratic economic model was a success. Good luck.

Jack

Do you really believe that BO will balance the budget?  GW said that he would, ironically four years after his term .  BO is now saying he can do it (with a democrat Congress) after his term too . 

Ten to one says that he will change what is considered as the budget.  By removing Social Security and MEDICARE he could do it (without a democrat congress).  But SS and MED will balloon the next twenty years with the baby boomers reaching collecting age.

I'll give four to one odds that the regular budget maybe balanced, but emergence spending/stimuli bills will be needed every six months for one or another crisis (real or made up).

Another option is that he will balance it for submission, but Congress will pump up the price.  All the time BO knows his bill will never work and then sign a bloated budget just because "Congress, the reps of the people wants it".

I did not believe Bush could do it, I really do not believe BO will want to do it.

PS: Lets not forget the Billions of dollars in interest being added this last week. 

Why do folks on the left think that rich folks take their money in a big pile and sit on it? People that have money to spend, use it for everything from paying the pool cleaner on up (that equals jobs for someone). How many middle class folks employ limo services? Not many, so when times get tough these jobs go away. It's a fact that small businesses (many in that 250K tax bracket and higher) employ a vast number of workers. The lefts rhetoric would have you believe that "rich" people somehow had the money fall into their lap and they don't work for it. Notice "fair" was not part of the hope and change.

I'm not even close to rich (even the Obama definition of rich) yet I can see what effects this "tax the rich" schemes have. Tell you what, when your job goes away because your employers tax burden is up, just act like an adult and you'll be fine.. The answer is easy, we need less government. I'm tired of paying for service that I and everyone I know will never use.

That is pretty damn funny.

BTW - excuse the bad spelling, please - no excuse, I know, but I am multi tasking

Dear, JackDuggan,

Here is something to thing about:

Last year I made $285,000.00 working for a large transportation company.  Tuesday (last week) I finished and sent off my taxes (1040's and assorted other forms).  The total taken out during the year by the feds along with state and local taxes came to $188,000.00.  Upon completing the tax forms it was determined that another $23,000.00 was to be paid out to federal, state, and local taxes.  Which means a total pay out in taxes of $211,000.00; thus leaving me with a total income for the year of approxmatily $74,000 take home.  And, with that I had to pay normal living expenses.  

To make to kind of money it was expected of me to work no less than 10 to 12 hours a day for at least five days, and in most cases it turned out to be six days.  This hard work cost me two things over that thirty years; the loss of my wife (of 22 years), and my health.  

I am not really sure how to finish this little thread, and that is because I get really upset with people who believe they know how we who make over $200,000.00 live and spend our money. 

I put in some long, long hard hours to earn that money.  And, now I have people out there who in all there great and wonderful wisdom think I don't pay enough.

Raising taxes (on the rich or otherwise) during a recession is NEVER a good idea.  You need to wait until the economy recovers before you even consider raising any taxes.

The first thing that we need is a solid plan from the administration.  We need a strict set of rules that outline when the government will and will not get involved in "bailing out" companies.  Part of the reason the economy is continuing to tank is because no one knows what the government plans to do.  Will it intervene and bailout a company or will it let them go bankrupt?  In the midst of bailing out all the banks letting Lehman Brothers fall was the worst decision the Bush administration could have made.  They either needed to bail them all out or none of them.  What they did was fuel uncertainty which has caused all banks to contract and thus bring out economy to a screeching halt.  Don't get me wrong I am against bailouts of any kind but if the decision was made to bailout one it needed to apply to all.

So what we need now is a set of guidelines from the administration that are publicly available to outline what they plan to do.  That will start to bring some amount of confidence back into the market and help fuel a recovery.

Next we need to cut spending.  Part of the reason that we are in this mess is that we have been spending beyond our means as a country.  This means making some potentially unpopular decisions but it is necessary.  Obviously in tough times like this you don't cut unemployment funding, but we should be cutting funding to foriegn countries, we need to take care of ourselves before we can help others.

And finally we need to make tax cuts across the board.  This has been discussed numerous times on this site so I won't go into details but taxes need to be cut.

Once we have seen a year or so of economic growth then you can start thinking about increasing taxes and whatnot, but not until the economy actually recovers a bit.