(Washington, DC) -- President Obama is set to introduce new initiatives aimed at boosting financial security for the middle class.
He's expected today to outline his child care credit plan and a proposal that would require companies to offer workers retirement accounts.
Families making up to $85,000 a year would see their tax credit jump to 35-percent of qualifying child care expenses.
Obama will also introduce a measure that would ease the burden on student loans by capping payments at ten-percent of the borrower's income.
Families providing care for aging loved ones would see a boost in government support as well.
The announcement comes two days before Obama's State of the Union Address, where he's expected to talk about job creation, address the budget deficit and discuss changing the culture in Washington.
Source:ozarksfirst.com/
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance System. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Campaign Finance System. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
The claws have come out in D.C.
WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Maybe it's because 2010 is the Chinese year of the tiger and not the year of the ox, the rabbit or some more placid beast but so far this year, it seems everybody here is growling.
Republicans are slagging Republicans, Democrats are retracting and apologizing and clarifying stuff said about other Democrats from the sly to the ridiculous.
The level of public discourse, which had been coasting noisily around the level of a schoolyard girl fight, has been jolted into a whole other realm of belligerency, possibly by the political and territorial brawl set off by the Christmas Day underwear bomber.
As Republican Party chairman Michael Steele warned on Meet the Press yesterday, "The mood of the country now is sour. People are angry, they're frustrated, they're scared."
There may have been more projection than poetry in that observation, coming as it did from the guy who publicly told critics in his own party last week, "If you don't want me in the job, then fire me. But until then, shut up."
Shocked and appalled Republicans had been adding their voices to the vortex of churl over Steele's newly published manifesto, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," whose existence came as a total surprise to the party with which he is now locked in a "No, YOU shut up" routine.
For a few days last week, it seemed an actual girl fight over Clark Kent-ish sex symbol and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag would drown out the political girl fight as Orszag's engagement to one Bond girly TV reporter came so soon after the delivery of his "love child" with another Bond girly Greek shipping heiress ex-girlfriend.
Then came the leaked dog ears from the long-awaited 2008 campaign tell-all book Game Change by Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann and suddenly Orszag's love life was yesterday's what-now-passes-for-news.
The book's highlights include former president Bill Clinton undercutting Barack Obama to Sen. Ted Kennedy in aid of an endorsement for his wife (Kennedy famously endorsed Obama instead), of Hillary Clinton expressing concern over her husband as a potential problem for her if she took the secretary of state job, and of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid providing an early entry for the head-shaker quote of 2010 with the words "negro dialect." None of which brought any calm to the ruckus.
Maybe the slow but sure spiral into the mud since summer (the slope got truly slippery around the time the town hall bellowing started and now even the tea partiers are arguing with each other) was a predictable action/reaction response to a new president who had campaigned on post-partisan civility and cool inclusiveness.
Perhaps it's some skewed political manifestation of Newton's third law of motion whereby Barack Obama's unifying political movement has been met with an equal and opposite force of belligerence and discord.
The president himself has expressed some anger lately, which seems overdue but maybe that's just because everyone else was already ranting.
Chances are though that action is the only thing that will speak louder than words, especially these days and even when they're his words.
Source:torontosun.com/
Republicans are slagging Republicans, Democrats are retracting and apologizing and clarifying stuff said about other Democrats from the sly to the ridiculous.
The level of public discourse, which had been coasting noisily around the level of a schoolyard girl fight, has been jolted into a whole other realm of belligerency, possibly by the political and territorial brawl set off by the Christmas Day underwear bomber.
As Republican Party chairman Michael Steele warned on Meet the Press yesterday, "The mood of the country now is sour. People are angry, they're frustrated, they're scared."
There may have been more projection than poetry in that observation, coming as it did from the guy who publicly told critics in his own party last week, "If you don't want me in the job, then fire me. But until then, shut up."
Shocked and appalled Republicans had been adding their voices to the vortex of churl over Steele's newly published manifesto, "Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda," whose existence came as a total surprise to the party with which he is now locked in a "No, YOU shut up" routine.
For a few days last week, it seemed an actual girl fight over Clark Kent-ish sex symbol and White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag would drown out the political girl fight as Orszag's engagement to one Bond girly TV reporter came so soon after the delivery of his "love child" with another Bond girly Greek shipping heiress ex-girlfriend.
Then came the leaked dog ears from the long-awaited 2008 campaign tell-all book Game Change by Time's Mark Halperin and New York magazine's John Heilemann and suddenly Orszag's love life was yesterday's what-now-passes-for-news.
The book's highlights include former president Bill Clinton undercutting Barack Obama to Sen. Ted Kennedy in aid of an endorsement for his wife (Kennedy famously endorsed Obama instead), of Hillary Clinton expressing concern over her husband as a potential problem for her if she took the secretary of state job, and of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid providing an early entry for the head-shaker quote of 2010 with the words "negro dialect." None of which brought any calm to the ruckus.
Maybe the slow but sure spiral into the mud since summer (the slope got truly slippery around the time the town hall bellowing started and now even the tea partiers are arguing with each other) was a predictable action/reaction response to a new president who had campaigned on post-partisan civility and cool inclusiveness.
Perhaps it's some skewed political manifestation of Newton's third law of motion whereby Barack Obama's unifying political movement has been met with an equal and opposite force of belligerence and discord.
The president himself has expressed some anger lately, which seems overdue but maybe that's just because everyone else was already ranting.
Chances are though that action is the only thing that will speak louder than words, especially these days and even when they're his words.
Source:torontosun.com/
Friday, January 8, 2010
Dodd's Retirement Is Indictment of Campaign Finance System
Since Sen. Chris Dodd's (D-Conn.) announcement on Wednesday that he will not run for re-election, many observers have noted that passing legislation to overhaul our financial system will now become easier.
This isn't because he can ignore an angry base or bad polling, but because Sen. Dodd no longer has to worry about raising money from the same Wall Street interests he would be working to regulate. As my colleague David Donnelly pointed out in The New York Times today, "unfortunately, the other senators are still too reliant on financial sector cash for their re-elections."
Through the 2008 election cycle and the first three quarters of 2009, the financial, real estate, and insurance interests poured more than $560 million in campaign contributions to Congress and spent millions more on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has made the influence of these interests clear. "Frankly, the banks own the place," he said.
Sen. Dodd's retirement, and the freedom it gives him, is a perfect example of why we need to change the way campaigns are financed in this country. That it takes retirement to boost the likelihood of good policy is an indictment of our broken campaign finance system. To change the system, Congress must pass the Fair Elections Now Act.
The Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752, H.R. 1826) would give candidates for Congress the option to run a competitive race with a blend of small dollar donations and limited public funds directed to candidates by individual voters. Candidates using the system could take no contribution of more than $100. Sen. Dodd, a co-sponsor of the legislation, has long supported the measure. "Whether you're a Washington lobbyist or a Chicago lobbyist, what we ought to have is public financing for congressional and presidential campaigns. That would solve the whole problem," Sen. Dodd told an audience at the YearlyKos convention in 2007 (it's at the 12:10 point in the video).
Sponsored by Sen. Durbin and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), this legislation would put people in office unencumbered by special interest campaign cash. In addition to Rep. Larson, the House bill has the broad bipartisan and broad cross-caucus support of 124 co-sponsors.
With Sen. Dodd's long-time support for Fair Elections, and the new-found freedom his retirement gives him, he should work with Congress to make sure it takes up this important legislation.
Source:huffingtonpost.com/
This isn't because he can ignore an angry base or bad polling, but because Sen. Dodd no longer has to worry about raising money from the same Wall Street interests he would be working to regulate. As my colleague David Donnelly pointed out in The New York Times today, "unfortunately, the other senators are still too reliant on financial sector cash for their re-elections."
Through the 2008 election cycle and the first three quarters of 2009, the financial, real estate, and insurance interests poured more than $560 million in campaign contributions to Congress and spent millions more on lobbying, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) has made the influence of these interests clear. "Frankly, the banks own the place," he said.
Sen. Dodd's retirement, and the freedom it gives him, is a perfect example of why we need to change the way campaigns are financed in this country. That it takes retirement to boost the likelihood of good policy is an indictment of our broken campaign finance system. To change the system, Congress must pass the Fair Elections Now Act.
The Fair Elections Now Act (S. 752, H.R. 1826) would give candidates for Congress the option to run a competitive race with a blend of small dollar donations and limited public funds directed to candidates by individual voters. Candidates using the system could take no contribution of more than $100. Sen. Dodd, a co-sponsor of the legislation, has long supported the measure. "Whether you're a Washington lobbyist or a Chicago lobbyist, what we ought to have is public financing for congressional and presidential campaigns. That would solve the whole problem," Sen. Dodd told an audience at the YearlyKos convention in 2007 (it's at the 12:10 point in the video).
Sponsored by Sen. Durbin and Rep. John Larson (D-Conn.), this legislation would put people in office unencumbered by special interest campaign cash. In addition to Rep. Larson, the House bill has the broad bipartisan and broad cross-caucus support of 124 co-sponsors.
With Sen. Dodd's long-time support for Fair Elections, and the new-found freedom his retirement gives him, he should work with Congress to make sure it takes up this important legislation.
Source:huffingtonpost.com/
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)