Another Study Shows Obamacare Isn’t Largest Tax Increase Ever

By  Joan McCarter  on Tue Jul 17, 2012

The screeching over the Affordable Care Act as the biggest middle-class tax hike ever from Republicans has quieted down some this week, as the Republican House realizes they've got yet another vacation coming up and a whole heckuva lot of legislating they haven't bothered to deal with yet still out there waiting for them. But it will be the focus of Republican outrage all summer long, and we're going to see a redux of August '10 with astroturfed town meetings featuring frothing teabaggers screaming about gubmint keeping its paws off their Medicare.

So, in preparation for that, here's yet one more analysis, this one from USA Today, showing that very few in the middle class will end up having to pay more in taxes as a result of the law. This, they say, is what might happen.

•About 7 million people could pay more because the law makes it more difficult to deduct medical expenses. People with lower incomes are less likely to itemize deductions.

•About 4 million workers could pay more because of a new $2,500 limit on flexible spending accounts, which can be used to shield medical expenses from taxation.

•The tax that rendered the law constitutional, to be assessed on those who fail to buy mandated health insurance, could hit about 4 million people across all income brackets.

All in all, the paper says, less than 10 percent of the nation's 140 million taxpayers could see a tax increase. That same 10 percent (unless they refuse to purchase insurance at all) will also get the benefits of not having copays for any preventive care, not being denied coverage for a serious illness that arises because of some specious "pre-existing condition," and the security of knowing that they'll always be able to be insured. For that small sliver of the population, that's a pretty decent tradeoff.

Originally posted to Joan McCarter on Tue Jul 17, 2012

Technorati Tags: Affordable Care Act,Mandates,Taxes,Barack Obama,Current Events

How Romney Spent All Day Calling Obama A Foreigner

By Igor Volsky on Jul 17, 2012     From ThinkProgress

Mitt Romney’s campaign is hoping to distract voters from the growing drum beat of conservatives calling on the former Bain Capital executive to release his tax returns by smearing President Obama as a foreigner, in a not-so-subtle effort to revive the right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding his birthplace.

Indeed, the Romney team, and even Romney himself, spent all of Tuesday painting the president as not a “real” American. Here is a timeline of the campaign’s orchestrated smear:

11:00 AM — OBAMA IS ‘SMOKING SOMETHING,’ GREW UP IN INDONESIA: Obama “has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” [Co-chair John Sununu, Fox News]

11:30 AM — OBAMA HAS TO ‘LEARN HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN’: “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way. And I wish this president would learn how to be an American. [Co-chair John Sununu, Romney campaign conference call]

lsky on Jul 17, 2012 at 6:28 pm

Mitt Romney’s campaign is hoping to distract voters from the growing drum beat of conservatives calling on the former Bain Capital executive to release his tax returns by smearing President Obama as a foreigner, in a not-so-subtle effort to revive the right-wing conspiracy theories surrounding his birthplace.

Indeed, the Romney team, and even Romney himself, spent all of Tuesday painting the president as not a “real” American. Here is a timeline of the campaign’s orchestrated smear:

11:00 AM — OBAMA IS ‘SMOKING SOMETHING,’ GREW UP IN INDONESIA: Obama “has no idea how the American system functions, and we shouldn’t be surprised about that, because he spent his early years in Hawaii smoking something, spent the next set of years in Indonesia, another set of years in Indonesia, and, frankly, when he came to the U.S. he worked as a community organizer, which is a socialized structure, and then got into politics in Chicago.” [Co-chair John Sununu, Fox News]

11:30 AM — OBAMA HAS TO ‘LEARN HOW TO BE AN AMERICAN’: “The men and women all over America who have worked hard to build these businesses, their businesses, from the ground up is how our economy became the envy of the world. It is the American way. And I wish this president would learn how to be an American. [Co-chair John Sununu, Romney campaign conference call]

11:30 AM — OBAMA’S AMERICA IS ‘SOCIALISM’: “It seems to me that the Obama America, there’s no risk but there’s plenty of reward. That’s called socialism to me. In the small business America, there’s a lot of risk, and a chance of reward, and that’s called capitalism, and that’s what made the United States the greatest nation on the face of the earth.” [Businessman Kyle Koehler, Romney campaign conference call]

1:35 PM — ROMNEY SAYS OBAMA’S POLICIES ARE ‘EXTRAORDINARILY FOREIGN’: “Celebrating success instead of attacking it and denigrating making America strong. That’s the right course for the country. His course is extraordinarily foreign.” [Mitt Romney, Pennsylvania]

© 2005-2012 Center for American Progress Action Fund

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama,Mitt Romney,2012 Elections,Politics,Current Events