Tax cuts

This amendment to the economic stimulus bill passed by the House and now being considered by the Senate, submitted by conservative icon-in-the-making Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), was breathtakingly bold. The gist, from Sen. DeMint’s Website:
o Permanently repeal the alternative minimum tax once and for all;
o Permanently keep the capital gains and dividends taxes at 15 [...]

The House Republican leadership has sent a letter to the White House asserting that it’s answered the call for new stimulus ideas with a tax cut plan — that’s been debunked by the person whose research it cites.

That previously mentioned luncheon with Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) went awry when the news broke that former Health and Human Services Secretary-nominee Tom Daschle had withdrawn from consideration. But before that, the congressman was quite revealing while spinning against the Democratic version of the stimulus. Short takes:
• Newt Gingrich spoke at the House Republicans’ retreat [...]

Let’s pretend that this Rush Limbaugh op-ed in the Wall Street Journal isn’t a (pretty funny) goof on the invented controversy about whether he’s preventing Republicans from reaching bipartisan nirvana. It seems like Limbaugh is serious about this bit:
I say, cut the U.S. corporate tax rate—at 35 percent, among the highest of all industrialized nations—in [...]

One of the goals of the unanimous Republican “no” vote on the stimulus package Wednesday was producing news analyses like this one, from The New York Times.
The failure to win Republican support in the House seemed to echo the early months of the last Democratic administration, when President Bill Clinton in 1993 had to rely [...]

It’s no news that many liberal critics of the Democrats’ stimulus plan are wondering why so much would go toward tax rebates and so little, relatively speaking, would target infrastructure projects. And those voices found new reason to be critical today.
A report released by the American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that America’s aging bridges, [...]

It came as a welcome change of pace yesterday when President Barack Obama took the inaugural podium, looked the country in the eye and warned that surviving two wars and this dismal economy will require sacrifices from Americans that transcend trips to the mall.
For as much as government can do and must do, it is [...]

Faced with rising criticism from economists and Democrats alike, President-elect Barack Obama yesterday scrapped his plan to include $150 billion in business tax credits in his emerging economic stimulus proposal.
The provision would have given businesses a $3,000 tax credit or every new employee they hired, and every employee they planned to fire but retained instead. [...]

The classic 1985 film Brewster’s Millions is strangely analogous to the tale playing out in Washington these days as lawmakers — and President-elect Barack Obama — draft plans for an enormous spending bill to buoy the sinking economy.
You remember the story: Monty Brewster (Richard Pryor) is forced to spend $30 million in 30 days in [...]

Democrats and many economists were none too happy last week when President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team announced plans to include $300 billion in tax cuts as part of its economic stimulus blueprint — and the number of critics just keeps growing.
In his column in The New York Times today, Princeton economist and recent Nobel Laureate [...]