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GOP caves on debt ceiling
Tonight on Crossfire, Republicans cave on the debt ceiling and Obamacare is pushed back, again. With the Senate up for grabs, will voters side with the President or with Republicans?
At 6:30pm ET two swing Senators: Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Dean Heller (R-NV) will join S.E. Cupp and Van Jones.
Tonight, the President will also be dining with the President of France, Francois Hollande, who is taxing the wealthy 75%. Do you agree with his policies?
We want you to weigh in on tonight’s Fireback question: Where would you rather live?
Vote by tweeting USA or France using #Crossfire or comment on our Facebook post. View results below or through our Poptip results page.
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
While I'm not sure I want France's system, I do think our current tax structure is too flat.
In 2011, The low rate was 10% and goes up to 17.000 dollars and the top rate was 35% and began at about 380,000 dollars.
We had little debt growth from 1945-1970... and the top rate was between 70 and 94%. The highest tax rates make it so the wealthiest are more likely to keep their money in their businesses rather then pay out exorbinant dividends.
Let's look at 1965 as a benchmark. The top rate was 70% for those making over 200,000 dollars. That is the equivalent of about 1.5 million today.
I think we need that kind of high end tax bracket still. It encourages businesses to keep their money in their business rather then paying it out to the owners as huge dividends. It keeps CEO salaries in check too. Let's be conservatinve... let's say add just one new bracket... a 60% tax bracket for money over 2 million dollars... and let's see how that changes things.
It's interesting that the national debt started taking off in the early 80's... just about the same time the top tax rate started getting very low and very flat. That 70%/200,000 tax bracket range saw us have the lowest debt as a percentage of GDP since WW2... that WAS the sweet spot. Adjust for inflation, index it and put those tax rates back in place.
OMG caves? I mean really.....last time they piushed for cuts and got lambasted in this "cnn". This time they dont bother, pass right away and now its "caving".. LMAO Do you see ppl?
Um, Well,
The Jury is still out of who is going to win this battle. So far the Liberal's/Peasants are way out in front. Actually over 17 Trillion now. Most of the Conservatives have moved offshore. Careful what you vote for, you may just get it.
All you ever hear about is job creation. It probably doesn't make much difference how many jobs you create if you keep letting our friends on the corporate boards send them off to China. Both liberals and conservatives have a reason to comply with this. Conservatives because their corporate pals will make a buck off of it, and liberals because it suits their sense of equality – why should Americans hog all the good jobs? The problem is that sending jobs off to Asia means giving your economy away one job at a time, and voluntarily surrendering your economy to anybody is the stupidest thing you could possibly do. So I agree with ProtectAmericanJobs below about keeping the jobs in this country.
come on teaparty! you can't stand for the republicans spending increases. shut it down!
The Wall Street masters who own the Guns Over People tea potty will NEVER let wingnut idiots mess with their profits. Count on that and move on.
Republicans know if they don't comply that is it for their election chances. Not caving would be a distraction from their Obamacare concern trolling.
If more people would have listened to Ross Perot back in 1992, America wouldn't be in this mess.
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 a 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 social issues like gay marriage and abortion, which got most voters so caught up in the BS that they'd always 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.
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 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!
If more people would have listen to Ross Perot back in 1992, America wouldn't be in this mess.
Van really sounds stupid now