Taxes

New York Times congressional reporter Carl Hulse was up to his old rhetorical tricks on Tuesday, using the Democratic euphemism “revenues," when Democrats are in fact calling for tax hikes as part of a budget deal tied to increasing the debt limit, in “Debt Divide Remains As President Steps In.”

Chris Matthews Tuesday once again showed that his tenuous grasp of reality is getting dangerously weak. During the final segment of "Hardball," the host unequivocally blamed the 2007 financial crisis and resulting recession on George W. Bush just moments before he said, "Okay, Obama hasn't been able to get us out of it yet, but...there’s no sense blaming one Party or the other" (video follows…

Susan Haigh's report Friday evening on the current status of budget negotiations between Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy and the state's public-sector unions contains two glaring errors which mar the entire enterprise. Haigh conveniently withheld the fact that the Nutmeg State's legislature has already approved $2.6 billion in new taxes over two years until her report's final paragraph,…

On Sunday’s This Week, ABC’s Christiane Amanpour repeatedly hit Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell with the White House’s plea for “revenue raising” measures, often the new euphemism for tax hikes, but when she talked to Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn, the Assistant Minority Leader in the House, she failed to press him about agreeing to GOP spending cut proposals and instead only asked…

I can't say that I'm up on what every state is doing, but it's hard not to notice contrasts between two trios of states singing decidedly different tunes: Wisconsin, Ohio and New Jersey, three states with recently elected conservative Republican governors, have either put their budgets to bed, or are on the verge of doing so, by cutting costs and not raising taxes. Connecticut,…

“Fiscal conservatism, in other words, comes with its own costs.” That sums up the lead story in Thursday’s National section by Michael Powell and Midwest bureau chief Monica Davey from Indianapolis, “The Indiana Exception? Yes, but...A State Averts the Worst of the Recession, But Its Success Comes at a Steep Social Cost.” It’s a major story, packed with statistics and charts and interviews,…

The MacIver Institute, a Wisconsin-based free-market think tank, has released a new video exploring the essential philosophy that underlies many liberal economic policies of late:the belief that the government, not the individual has the foremost right to the nation's wealth. Check out their new video with commentary by Rep. Paul Ryan after the break, and let us know your thoughts in the…

"HERETIC!!!" That is what leftwingers will be screaming at their computer monitors when they read The New Republic article by Ruy Teixeira in which he praises President Barack Obama for agreeing to extend the Bush tax cuts which are so hated by liberals. Even worse, he claims that the Bush tax cuts extension will improve the economy to the extent that they could improve Obama's re-election…

Update, June 20, 12:30 p.m.: Revised to reflect another AP math error not caught the first time around. Update 2, June 20, 3:20 p.m.: The AP has issued a correction indicating that lost sales taxes are $23 billion and teachers' salaries which could be paid are 460,000. The contradiction explained below about California's claim that it is failing to collect only $200 million (less than 1% of…

Newsweek's Evan Thomas on Friday tried to float the typical media meme that neither Party is doing anything to solve our nation's budget crisis. Unfortunately for him, fellow "Inside Washington" panelist Charles Krauthammer accurately noted that the Republicans have offered a proposal to cut $6.6 trillion in the next ten years, "but the Democrats have done nothing except to demagogue the plan…

Syndicated columnist Mark Shields said Friday that today's low income tax rates are "fundamentally un-American." Such happened on PBS's "Inside Washington" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Radio talker and MSNBC rock 'em, sock 'em robot Ed Schultz has finally met a tax he doesn't like and which, go figure, affected him directly -- a 10 percent payroll tax imposed by North Dakota on new businesses for their first two years, after which it drops to a seemingly generous two percent. Schultz, whose family owns a construction business in Fargo, N.D., says the tax has cost their…

CBS hounded four Republicans from the left during a town hall on the economy which aired on Tuesday's Early Show. Bob Schieffer, Erica Hill, and Rebecca Jarvis pressed Reps. Paul Ryan and Allen West, Senator Tom Coburn, and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley to consider tax hikes to deal with the deficit. Schieffer also specifically accused the three members of Congress of "doing nothing" to…

Previewing Tuesday’s Early Show town hall meeting with Republicans on the economy, CBS’s Bob Schieffer, who pushes his Face the Nation guests to agree taxes must be raised, hailed a Republican, Senator Tom Coburn, for expressing a willingness to include a tax increase in deficit negotiations. After dismissing the Republicans CBS assembled -- Monday afternoon at the Newseum -- for how they “…