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In the Crossfire: Did Obama sell his agenda?
Tonight on Crossfire, has the President sold his agenda? Do you think members of Congress were paying attention to Obama's State of the Union last night?
At 6:30pmET we have two party spokesmen. Communications Director of the Republican National Committee, Sean Spicer and Communications Director of the Democratic National Committee, Mo Elleithee join S.E. Cupp and Stephanie Cutter.
We want you to weigh in on tonight’s Fireback question: Do you think 2014 will indeed be a "year of action" as President Obama says?
Vote by tweeting Yes or No using #Crossfire or comment on our Facebook post. View results below or through our Poptip results page.
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Filed under: 2014 Elections • Fireback • In the Crossfire • Mo Elleithee • Obama • S.E. Cupp • Sean Spicer • State of the Union • Stephanie Cutter |
Meet the Hosts
Author, documentary filmmaker, historian, Speaker of the House (1995-1999), and 2012 Republican presidential candidate
Fmr. Obama Deputy Campaign Mgr. and W.H. Sr. Adviser, founder of Precision Strategies, fmr. Sr. Adviser to Maj. Leader Reid and Sen. Kennedy
Conservative columnist for New York Daily News, contributing editor at Townhall Magazine, commentator and author
Former Special Adviser for Green Jobs under President Obama, co-founder of Rebuild the Dream, author and attorney
He didn't sell any of his agenda to anyone not already 100% committed to buying, regardless of what he is selling.
Equality is unobtainable, never has been, never will be.
For all who complain about why they don't have what other people have and wait on the government to give it them because they believe they deserve a portion of what I've earned, there will be many times more people who will work to better their situation. Human desire to betterment of ones family and self is greater than the indifference to a mediocre existence.
I'm at the lower end of middle-class but proud of my accomplishments and tired of the (LOW LIFE YOU OWE ME) attitudes. I am also tired of the socialist liberalism that has swept across this nation.
The only choice for income equality in America is to pool all earned income, divide by the the total population at the end of each year and disperse that amount to each person alive at that time. What do you the the result of such a program would bring? For me I will say _____ you!
He did not. Nobody believes him and yes, he gives a good speech. Glib only gets you so far.
Obama is selling the SOS. Snake Oil, Pie in the Sky Promises. (Finally) the people are starting to catch on. The Polls are reflecting the failures of Big Liberal Ideas that have been in place for the last 100 years, give or take a decade. It's either you take charge of your life or leave it to the Liberal/Progressives. Obama/Liberals/Progressives have left you with a 17 Trillion dollar debt that will have to be paid, one way or the other.
State of the Union Addresses are basically non-memorable and inconsequential. Nothing more than an introduction of few tag lines rather than an all out sales pitch. Did he get those tag lines across to the people to carry them around to the people for further action? Of course.
Easily remembered points of his speech:
$10.10 – New minimum wage proposal
Women make $.72 on the dollar compared to men for the same job which is basically systemic sexism
Obama may act alone to work on jobs & economic disparity if Congress continues to refuse to work toward those.
Give diplomacy a chance in Iran (walk soft and carry a big stick)
The war in Afghanistan will be basically ended at the end of this year with a small number of troops to remain on guard there.
YES it will
He was right on the money. Now grow up Teapublican Taliban Klan members.
What is with the Twitter requirement to vote in your poll? Are you just schilling for Twitter and Facebook? Are we talking tit for tat or a full-on kickback.
CNN making commenters jump through hoops is dissuading the free exchange of ideas.
The President failed to say how all that he wants to do is going to be paid for. He seems to have forgotten his economic"plan" that he announced during his campaign. According to that plan the federal government is suppose to be posting surpluses by 2015. The President has yet to provide the financial details as to how his ecumenic "plan" is even possible we are still waiting for the budget cuts that are suppose to go along with the tax hike on the rich and the
ACA taxes as a part of the President's balance approach to deficit reduction.. ThePresidentt has yet to tell the people what additional tax hikes and budget cuts will be required so that the federal government will start posting surpluses by 2015 as is suppose to be his plan.
How about the rich resume paying taxes and we quit giving billions to the energy industry? When the rich get a tax cut, the middle class has to work harder to pay the difference.
We need more taxes, and everyone should pay them, not just those of us who can not afford lawyers and accountants to pad our taxes for us.
Patriots pay their taxes.
But the President promised no new taxes in any way for 98% ao Americans.
Eh,
Sorry Rabbi but the rich have been paying high taxes for the last 100 years. We are no better off than the 1930's. We have a 17 Trillion Dollar Federal debt to prove it. Next?
The rich were paying a lot higher taxes in the past Gunderson.
The current top tax rate is 39.6% up from the 35% we had under the Bush tax cuts. The level that rate starts at is 400K (single filer)
Since 1917, these are the top tax rates and minimum cutoff where income starts to be taxed at that rate:
1917 – 67%, 2,000,000
1918 – 77%, 1,000,000
1919-1921 – 73%, 1,000,000
1922-1923 – 56%, 200,000
1924 – 46%, 500,000
1925-1931 – 25%, 100,000 (actually 24% in 1929)
***GREAT DEPRESSION BEGINS AT END OF 1929***
1932-1935 – 63%, 1,000,000
1936-1939 – 79%, 5,000,000
1940-1941 – 81%, 5,000,000
1942-1943 – 88%, 200,000
1944-1945 – 94%, 200,000
1946-1947 – 86.5%, 200,000
1948-1949 – 82%, 400,000
1950-1951 – 91%, 400,000
1952-1953 – 92%, 400,000
1954-1963 – 91%, 400,000
1964 – 77%, 400,000
1965-1967 – 70%, 200,000
1968 – 75%, 200,000
1969 – 77%, 200,000
1970 – 72%, 200,000
1971-1978 – 70%, 200,000
1979-1980 – 70%, 212,000
1981 – 69%, 212,000
1982-1983 – 50%, 106,000
1984-1986 – 50%, 159,000-171,000
1987 -38.5%, 90,000
1988-1990 – 28%, 30,000- 32,000
1991-1992 – 31%, 82,000-87,000
1993-2000 – 39.6%, 250,000-288,000
2001 – 39.1%, 297,000
2002 – 38.5%, 307,000
2003-2012 – 35%, 312,000-388,000
2013 – 39.6%, 400,000
For most of the years prior to Reagan, we had relatively high top marginal tax rates at relatively high income levels. The 1980 70% tax rate at 212,000 dollars is the equivalent of a 600,000 dollar income today with inflation. Reagan lowered the top tax rates AND lowered the dollar amount you had to earn to pay them. He didn't have large tax rates on the very rich.
And since Reagan is where the income inequality problem started taking off... BECAUSE those tax rate changes have become accepted as the norm.
I think we probably need to keep the current rates as they are but enact a new top rate at the level we had in 1965 (and move it up with inflation instead of leaving it static). The period from 1965-1972 was pretty solid continuous growth without much in the way of increased income inequality. The only longer stretch of growth was from 1992-2007... but income inequality soared during that stretch.
Basically, add one final marginal bracket to what we have now. 70% at an inflation adjusted 200,000 1965 dollars (which would be 1.5 million dollars today). Make it so the big companies have an incentive NOT to take huge amounts out of their companies and into their pockets... give them an incentive to reinvest. That is what fixes the income inequality issue we've been seeing. Not minimum wage increases or increased entitlements.
Very disappointing speech – Not one single real idea, plan or even any mention of how we need to put sensible measures in place to protect American jobs and or incentives that could be provided to return jobs to Tax-Paying American Citizens in the private sector.
The ONLY REAL FIX for our great country is to RAISE REVENUE, by Bringing Back Businesses and Jobs to TAX-PAYING AMERICAN CITIZENS.
Unfortunately most of our politicians are joke – Only it's not so funny, because over the past several decades, all they've been doing is screwing the American people, by stalling, spending, removing protections and allowing illegal aliens to continue to pour in and American jobs and industry to pour out, and all while collecting their American tax-payer funded pay checks, benefits and whatever else they get on the side from their various lobbyist friends.
It seems to me that over the last 2-3 decades that both parties were always able to distract and polarize voters with insignificant peripheral BS, which get's most voters so caught up in the BS that they lose sight of the bigger picture.
We'd really all be better off by just cutting through the BS and all the my team vs your team name calling nonsense and really focus on America and improving the future of the American people.
Once they're elected, our leaders should be working together for the good of the our country and our citizens by using combinations of the best ideas from both sides versus just trying to make the other side look bad so they lose the next election. – How's that been working?
All the nonsense just allows the puppet-masters to continue to do what's best for them at the expense of the American people while we're polarized and distracted.
But, let's face it – Neither party is actually running our country – Powerful puppet-masters play both sides to make sure that they get what they want. Unfortunately what they want is not usually in the best interest of the majority of the American people. (American citizens)
Foreign Lobbyists here in the US promote sending US jobs to countries like China, where they work for slave wages, no benefits, no OSHA safety standards or no real environment regulations. It also doesn't help us compete when these company's factories are subsidized by China's communist government. Just check out the current Chinese extreme pollution issues – We all live in the same world, but not every country plays by the same rules.
The so called "Global Market Place" is not a level playing field. Companies may have made higher profits by "out sourcing", but they've been putting middle class Americans who are a good part of the world's customer base out of work.
The American people need American leaders who will start putting some sensible measures in place to stem the tide or this is going to continue to have a devastating effect on the United States of America and the American people.
Aren't there at least a handful of these powerful puppet-masters that are fellow Americans with enough of a conscience, guts and loyalty to America and their fellow Americans to start trying to turn this trend around?
If there aren't any, we're screwed.
The bottom line is that "Our Government" has to protect domestic industry and the jobs that those industries provide. If they do that, the rest will take care of itself.
The so called "Global Market Place" is not a level playing field. Companies may have made higher profits by "outsourcing", but they've been putting middle class Americans who are a good part of the world's customer base out of work.
Bringing manufacturing back to the US not only gives jobs to the US citizens who would be working in those manufacturing facilities, but to the people that would be working in the businesses that would spring up all around them. This should also include the safe harvesting, production and distribution of our own natural energy here in the USA, rather than paying for fuel from countries where they hate us. Let's keep that money and those jobs here in the US.
The lack of businesses and good jobs in the USA is what's really going to rob us, our children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the potential of a prosperous or even decent future.
It's all happened because, over the last 25-years, our government has allowed our country's industries to get sucked out to China, India, Mexico, etc and allowed illegal aliens and H-1B foreigners to come into our country and take away tax-paying Americans jobs and drive down domestic prices and wages.
That's where our government leaders have to step up and put some sensible measures and incentives in place to keep jobs here in the USA or the real economy and infrastructure of the country we love will be destroyed along with the future of the American people.
Nowadays it's obviously not about being either lazy or uneducated as many try to profess, but about wages, expenses and regulations that are not even remotely close to the wages, expenses and regulations in our country.
Regardless of what the Free-Traitors keep trying to sell us, we can see what's real. The American People need to just trust their own instincts, common sense and what they've seen actually going on all around them versus all of the nonsense that the free-traitors are still trying to sell us.
The ONLY REAL FIX for our great country is to RAISE REVENUE, by Bringing Back Businesses and Jobs to TAX-PAYING AMERICAN CITIZENS.
The American People need Our Leaders to start remembering that they are elected by the Citizens of the United States of America to represent the interests of those citizens and the country itself.
They are NOT elected by or to represent the Global Market Place, Lobbyist or Foreign citizens!
President Obama, again, has set the bar high for America. Unfortunately, the wealthy will use their wealth to oppose him and oppress the middle class, yet another year.
I applaud President Obama for speaking the truth to the American people. I only wish the media would focus on issues instead of fluff pieces about starlets and rock brats. We need less entertainment news and more FACTS.
America is ignorant, because there are more entertainment stories crowding out real news. Real news is almost dead (Thank G-d for the BBC and PBS). The major networks and news outlets are a sham, their editorial opinions driven by advertising dollars rather than a sense of integrity.
I miss Walther Cronkite. He told us the truth, every night.
Don't Liberals ever get tired of blaming everything on everyone BUT the President. This guy could go out and shoot puppies on the White House lawn and somehow it would be the fault of the rich, or Bush, or the Republicans.
Amen, a new direction is coming and they can begin the count down!
In his post " I applaud President Obama for speaking the truth to the American people. I only wish the media would focus on issues instead of fluff pieces about starlets and rock brats. We need less entertainment news and more FACTS.",the most appalling part is obama lied to him and he still supports him.
Rabbi, you want facts try this, the go and pray about it!
Equality is unobtainable, never has been, never will be.
All who complain about why they don't have what other people have and wait on the government to give it them, believe they deserve a portion of what I've earned, however, there will be many times more people who will work to better their situation. Human desire for betterment of ones family and self is greater than the indifference to a mediocre existence.
I'm at the lower end of middle-class but proud of my accomplishments and tired of the (LOW LIFEYOU OWE ME) attitudes. I am also tired of the socialist liberalism that has swept across this nation.
The only choice for income equality in America is to pool all earned income, divide by the the total population at the end of each year and disperse that amount to each person alive at that time. What do you the the result of such a program would bring? For me I will say _____ you!