Geithner Won’t Rule Out New Taxes for Middle Class
August 02, 2009 8:02 AM

PrintRSSE-mailShare this story with friendsFacebookRedditTwitterStumbleUponMoreTo get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.”

Geithner was clear that he believes a key component of economic recovery is deficit reduction. When I gave him several opportunities to rule out a middle class tax hike, he wouldn’t do it.

“We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically,” Geithner told me. “And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”

“We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we convince the American people that we are going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established,” he said.

While Geithner told me, “There are signs the recession is easing,” he warned that, “We have a ways to go.”

“I want to emphasize the basic reality that unemployment is very high in this country,” the secretary said. But, he underlined that the administration is “going to do what is necessary to bring growth back on track.”

Turning to the bank bailout, he told me it is “quite unlikely” that the U.S. Treasury will go back to Congress to ask for more funding for the financial rescue package.

"We do not plan to ask for more money and I think it’s quite unlikely that we do," Geithner said in his most blunt language to date on TARP funding. The secretary said that today the TARP has roughly $130 billion, in part due to more than $70 billion that has already come back into the government.

Geithner also strongly endorsed legislation currently pending in the House that would increase the power of the SEC and give shareholders more rights to vote on executive compensation. He insisted that Republican criticism that the government is overly involved in the financial system is unfounded.

"Everybody understands that we cannot have our financial system go back to the practices that brought this economy to the brink of collapse," he told me. "It is going to take fundamental reform."

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/pe.....ew-taxes-pledge.html

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April Fools Day joke.... the federal excise tax on cigarettes increased April 1, 2009 by 156 percent (or 61 cents per pack). And this is a tax that everyone who smokes will pay, despite the fact that, according to the taxpayers' lobby Americans for Tax Reform, one in four smokers live below the poverty line and 55 percent of smokers can be defined as "working poor," which means they make something less than $250,000.00 per year.

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Obama Officials Don't Dismiss Possibility of New Taxes

The word in Washington Sunday is that the economic train is emerging from the tunnel of recession, but Obama administration officials could not explain why few jobs are waiting in the station and suggested new taxes may be around the bend.

FOXNews.com
Sunday, August 02, 2009

President Obama may have to break his campaign pledge and raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for public health care and the growing deficit, an eventuality that administration officials touched lightly on Sunday as they promoted an economy emerging from recession.

With an expected deficit next year of $1.8 trillion, and spending still being planned for a $1 trillion, 10-year health care reform, officials say something will have to be done to prevent further erosion of the economy.

"We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we ... can convince the American people that we're going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said on ABC's "This Week."

Asked point blank whether it was right to suggest it is a matter of when, not if, taxes will be raised, Geithner responded, "It is absolutely right."

But the president's team circling the Sunday morning news shows was quick to note that there are signs the recession is easing despite a persistent decline in job losses in the past six months.
..............>>>>..............>>>>...............http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/02/obama-officials-end-recession-near/

Will the voters remember in 2011?

Shocking!

When the voters start paying their heat bills in the winter, if the crap and tax bill is passed, when the price of gasoline goes to $5 a gal due to tax increases, when interest rates go thru the roof because of the debt, maybe then the people will remember when they vote in November who put them in this position.

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Tax revenues plummet as gov’t programs expand
BY STEPHEN OHLEMACHER The Associated Press

    WASHINGTON — The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.
    The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
    Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.
    The last time the government’s revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression. “Our tax system is already inadequate to support the promises our government has made,” said Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury Department official in the Reagan administration who is now vice president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.
    “This just adds to the problem,” he said.
    While much of Washington is focused on how to pay for new programs such as overhauling health care — at a cost of $1 trillion over the next decade — existing programs are feeling the pinch, too.
    Social Security is in danger of running out of money earlier than the government projected just a few month ago. Highway, mass transit and airport projects are at risk because fuel and industry taxes are declining. .......................>>>>.................................>>>>...............http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00800&AppName=1

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White House:
No tax hike
for middle class
    WASHINGTON — In a rebuke to the Treasury secretary, the White House said Monday that President Barack Obama remains opposed to any tax hike for families earning up to $250,000.
    White House press secretary Robert Gibbs restated the assurance after Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and National Economic Council Director Larry Summers appeared Sunday to leave open the possibility Obama would tap middle-class Americans’ income to reduce the deficit or help pay for a health insurance overhaul.
    “I’m going to deal with this and I’ll do this one more time,” Gibbs said after repeated questions from reporters about the differences between the economists and Obama. “The president was clear. He made a commitment in the campaign. That commitment stands.”
    The conflicting statements from administration economic and political officials illustrate the problem facing Obama: how to fi nd a politically palatable way to pay for the health insurance overhaul he insists is the cornerstone to bringing the rapidly escalating federal deficit under control.
    And the mixed signals are coming out of the White House as Congress heads into its August recess and what’s expected to be a monthlong battle across the country over the direction and financing of the health care plans emerging in the House and Senate.
    In their Sunday television interviews, Geithner and Summers sidestepped questions on Obama’s intentions about taxes. Geithner said the White House was not ready to rule out a tax hike to reduce the federal deficit; Summers said Obama’s proposed health care overhaul needs funding from somewhere.

http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00202&AppName=1

taxing for funding stuff we dont really need.....ie: cars/healthcare/fishing/etc........

we dont have to stimulate anyone....however, the government sees it differently, while at the same time talking out the other side
of their mouths.....

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http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....707&ViewMode=GIF

Uhh how did we get here?

All our problems magically appeared in November?/ I think not..

All the problems in Schenectady started when the Dems took over the city/county council and kept raising taxes to where they are now and there's no end in sight IMHO.

Quoted from Vaedur

Uhh how did we get here?

All our problems magically appeared in November?/ I think not..

You're right. Two things however.

The Senate has been Democrat controlled for the last 2.5 years.

Secondly, it was your president who decided to "work toward the future" and not look back at previous administrations, tho that philosophy seems to have changed lately.