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Last week, 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney finally admitted that his tax rate is around 15 percent , due to the fact that the overwhelming majority of his income comes from investments . Despite paying a lower rate than many middle class families, Romney said during a GOP primary debate tonight in Florida that he is “proud of the fact” that he pays “a lot of taxes.” Watch it: Romney added that “I’d like to see our tax rate come down,” and indeed, under the tax plan that Romney has put forward, his own taxes would be cut nearly in half . Under current law, Romney would pay about a 24 percent tax rate in 2013. However, if his own plan were in place, that rate would fall dramatically : [Citizens for Tax Justice] calculated what Romney would pay if his own plan passed. That is, if you kept the Bush tax cuts in place, including keeping the capital gains tax at 15 percent, and scrapped the Medicare tax, as Romney wants to do. Under that system, Romney would pay a rate of a little under 15 percent — because virtually all his income is from capital gains and dividends. The group calculates that this means Romney’s plan would give him a tax cut of more than 40 percent. Overall, the wealthy would do very well under Romney’s tax plan, with millionaires receiving a $150,000 annual tax cut . In fact, Romney’s proposed tax cut for millionaires is twice the size of the Bush tax cuts .

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Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) has a new tax plan that he is touting as “ fairer, flatter, and simpler .” “My plan will lower individual income tax rates for all Kansans,” Brownback claims. While it’s true on paper that all rates would go down under Brownback’s proposed tax overhaul, it’s certainly not true that all Kansans would be paying lower taxes. Because Brownback’s plan eliminates a variety of credits and deductions upon which lower and middle income taxpayers depend, it would actually increase taxes on low- and middle-income families, while still cutting them for Kansas’ richest one percent . According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Police, under the plan: – The poorest 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 2.2 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $242. – The middle 20 percent of Kansas taxpayers would pay 0.3 percent more of their income in taxes each year, or an average increase of $146. — Upper-income families, by contrast, reap the greatest benefit with the richest one percent of Kansans, those with an average income of over a million dollars, saving an average of $16,933 a year . As ITEP put it, “Governor Brownback’s tax reform proposal would actually make the Kansas tax structure more unfair and ensure that low and middle income families pay more , while dramatically decreasing state taxes owed by the wealthiest Kansans.” Kansas’ own Department of Treasury came to the same conclusions, finding that low-income Kansans would see their taxes go up under the plan, sending Brownback’s administration into damage control . And so far, state lawmakers aren’t lining up to lend the plan their support. “ It’s been Robin Hood in revers e,” said state Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley (D). “What we are doing is stealing from the poor to give to the rich.” “It’s a significant problem in the eyes of many legislators because it appears to be increasing taxes for the poor and decreasing taxes for the rich,” added state Sen. John Vratil (R).

Tags: donate, economy, feeds, income, income-families, january-2012, jobs, pat-garofalo, state budgets, taxes, thinkprogress

While foreclosure rates hit a four-year low in 2011 , the early signs for 2012 don’t look good when it comes to housing, as banks have begun to work through a backlog of foreclosures that were delayed by the foreclosure fraud scandal. In fact, the New York Federal Reserve anticipates that 3.6 million foreclosures will occur in the next two years, piling on to the 1 million in 2010 and the 800,000 last year. “The ongoing weakness in housing has made it more difficult to achieve a vigorous economic recovery,” said New York Fed President William Dudley. “Housing has inhibited economic activity through a number of channels.” (HT: Realty Biz News )

Tags: author, economy, green, health, january-2012, lgbt, pat-garofalo, security, tweets, var-jplayerswf

As we’ve been noting, Mitt Romney’s economic plan calls for a massive tax cut for the rich, even while the plan would likely result in a tax increase on millions of middle class families . And as it turns out, Romney’s tax cuts for the rich would dwarf even those put in place by George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, as Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden noted: Republican presidential candidate Romney’s plan for federal taxation begins with a hefty portion of Bush-era tax policy: Permanently extend all the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003, including those that mainly benefit the extremely wealthy. Then Romney layers on a heaping batch of new tax cuts for the rich, including a full repeal of the estate tax—which is currently paid by only the richest 0.14 percent of estates—and a massive corporate tax cut. The result is a tax code that asks even less of the rich than George W. Bush’s did. Romney’s plan also gives nearly 60 percent of its benefit to the richest 1 percent of Americans, while preserving the loopholes that let the wealthy pay less than middle class families. Romney’s constantly claims that he’s “ not worried about rich people ,” and that his tax plan is “ focused ” on the middle class. In fact, he’s absurdly claimed that he’s not proposing any tax cuts for the wealthy at all. But as it turns out, he would lavish even more tax breaks onto the rich than did George Bush, even after Bush’s tax cuts were a significant factor leading to today’s large budget deficits.

Tags: budget deficit, deficit, feeds, health, lgbt, pat-garofalo, security, taxes

An analysis by Reuters finds that “middle-aged borrowers are piling up student debt faster than any other age group,” with debt for those aged 35-49 increasing by nearly 50 percent in the last three years. The reason for this debt explosion is that “ the tough economy has pushed people to seek mid-career training,” while more people are attending for-profit colleges, which push students to pile up larger debt loads. (HT: Jordan Weissmann )

Tags: economy, feeds, media, pat-garofalo, student loans, student-debt, tweets, unemployment

Last month, there was finally some good news on the jobs front, as the unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent and the economy created 140,000 private sector jobs. However, the continued slow-burning crisis in housing could easily short-circuit any burgeoning labor market recovery, as the Wall Street Journal detailed today: Some economists fear the continued slump in housing could short-circuit the recovery in jobs by making it harder for Americans to relocate to find work. In theory, as the economy improves, people tend to relocate from places where jobs are scarce to areas where companies are hiring…While some relocation continues, economists believe mobility overall has been muted in part because of the housing bust. Low home values have made it much harder for Americans to move because selling a home is so difficult. That is especially true for the 10.7 million Americans—or 22% of homeowners with a mortgage—who owed more than their homes were worth as of the end of September , according to figures from real-estate firm CoreLogic. According to work by Prof. Joseph Gyourko of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, homeowners who are underwater — meaning they owe more on their mortgage than their home is currently worth — are 30 percent less likely to move than non-underwater borrowers. So the housing crisis is locking people in place, even if moving could help them find a job and increased mobility could alleviate the unemployment crisis. Borrowers being stuck underwater is bad enough, but adding to the bad news is the fact that, after slowing down their foreclosure processes to deal with the fallout from the foreclosure fraud scandal, banks have picked it back up, with foreclosure jumping 21 percent last quarter . And there’s little reason to believe things are going to get much better in 2012, as scheduled foreclosure hit a nine-month high in November, meaning a slew of foreclosure is right around the corner . Continued foreclosures will drag home prices down even further, sinking those already underwater down even deeper, in a vicious cycle that will weigh down the wider economy.

Tags: foreclosures, health, media, newt gingrich, pat-garofalo, pennsylvania, security, taxes

According to the latest data from the Commerce Department, the financial sector now accounts for 8.4 percent of the United States’ Gross Domestic Product, “ eclipsing the peak it hit in 2006 .” In the 1950s, the financial sector accounted for less than 3 percent of GDP. Meanwhile, financial firms are once again making more than 30 percent of all corporate profits in the U.S.

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When President Obama introduced the “Buffett rule,” aimed at ensuring that millionaires and billionaires can’t pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families, 2012 GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney called it “ class warfare ,” adding that it is “simply the wrong way to go.” At the time, we noted that Romney may be sensitive to the Buffett Rule because it likely applies to him . One of the major ways in which the wealthy are able to pay lower taxes than the middle-class is through the preferential treatment of investment income. The top capital gains tax rate of 15 percent — as opposed to the 35 percent top income tax rate — means that those wealthy individuals who make their money from investments pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families in the 28 percent or 25 percent brackets, and the same as those in the 15 percent bracket. A Citizens for Tax Justice analysis found that Romney would have paid about a 14 percent tax rate in 2010, because of his millions in capital gains income. Romney won’t release his tax returns, so it’s impossible to tell with complete precision what his tax rate actually is. However, during an interview today with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, Romney said that all of his income is from interest, dividends and capital gains, meaning that the CTJ analysis of his tax plan likely has a lot of truth to it, if it doesn’t overestimate how much he paid: My own calculation is, if that were the case, for anybody, no taxes on interest, dividends, and capital gains, I would have paid no taxes in the last ten years, because all my income is from dividends, interest, and capital gains . Watch it: So it would seem that there really is a Romney rule : lower taxes for investors like him than for working middle-class families. Romney claims that his economic plan would provide the middle-class with a tax cut because it completely eliminates the tax on capital gains for anyone making less than $200,000 annually. However, the vast majority of people who make that much have literally no capital gains income whatsoever.

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The National Labor Relations Board today dropped a complaint against mega-manufacturer Boeing that had been used as a political football by Republicans for months. Of course, the GOP rushed forward to hail this as some sort of win for conservatism. 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich called it “a victory for South Carolina and all right-to-work states ,” while Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) said it is “a victory for American manufacturers, workers and the cause of job creation .” Ever since the NLRB first filed the complaint, the GOP has mischaracterized it as having something to do with so-called “right-to-work” states, states where workers are allowed to free-ride on union contracts. However, the actual complaint was about whether or not Boeing moved a production line from Washington to South Carolina in retaliation against workers for striking. It is illegal to shift production in order to retaliate against workers, and Boeing executives, on-tape, pretty clearly said that their motive for moving to South Carolina was to do just that. As Slate’s Dahlia Lithwick wrote, “there is ample precedent for the argument that threatening to move facilities because of strikes is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. And certainly the NLRB might reasonably have taken a Boeing executive at his word when he told the Seattle Times (on video!) that this was precisely what motivated the relocation.” However, Boeing and its workers this week completed a new contract , in which the company agreed to build a new line of airplanes in Washington: About 74 percent supported the contract on Wednesday in a ballot among 31,000 union members, mostly in the Seattle area, who accepted the surprise proposal unveiled last week. Boeing plans to increase output by 60 percent after four union walkouts since 1989 delayed hundreds of deliveries. Workers were promised that a revamped 737 jet would be built at a current factory near Seattle, and the union requested that the N.L.R.B. retract the complaint filed over a new 787 plant in South Carolina. The moral of the story is that collective bargaining worked and the workers in Washington will not be unfairly punished by Boeing for exercising their rights. “Both sides were faced with uncertainty and real losses, and the nature of collective bargaining is seizing the moment,” said Harley Shaiken, a labor professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “The agreement reached between Boeing and workers in Washington demonstrates that the law that protects workers’ rights is vital to our economy and necessary to enforce,” Rep. George Miller (D-CA) added. NLRB’s dropping of the complaint doesn’t mean that the initial charge was without merit or that union-busting is any less of a concern. It signals that the workers were able to work through their differences with the company, rendering the complaint unnecessary. Contrary to everything Republicans, at both the federal and state level have been saying for the last two years, collective bargaining is a critical tool to ensure a fair deal for workers, and the case with Boeing reflects that reality.

Tags: author, boeing, feeds, labor, pat-garofalo, security, taxes, unions, war

As Europe seeks to patch together a deal to keep the Eurozone together, economists at Citigroup see the continent headed for a long recession. “Our economists believe the sovereign debt and banking crises are causing a renewed recession in the Euro Area,” reads the analysis. “Beginning in 4Q 2012, they forecast real GDP to contract for 6 consecutive quarters . It is expected to be an especially protracted recession. Not even in Japan, during its lost decades, did real GDP decline for 6 consecutive quarters.”

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