Sunset Provision

Republicans claim that letting the Bush tax cuts expire is a tax increase. If the Republicans wanted them to last forever, they should have made it the law when they had the House, the Senate and the White House back in 2005. 

They put tax cuts into effect under Bush and they had an expiration date for the end of 2010. Obama and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner want to preserve those tax cuts for 95% of working Americans, because it would be the responsible thing to do for our economy at the present time. They consider it sound fiscal policy to allow those tax cuts that only go to 2% of the highest earners in the country to expire as scheduled. Obama wants to extend the taxes cuts on individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000. 


The midterms will provide the most selfish generation in the history of our country an opportunity to show how much they value America.  


On the campaign trail, Democrats are pointing out, that for the last decade, the richest two percent in America have been living high on the hog, while the middle class has gotten record levels of unemployment. We’re been in the middle of two wars that nobody wants to pay for. In the last decade, the top two percent of income earners haven’t been asked to make any sacrifice whatsoever.  


Republicans and their buddies in the Tea Party have been running around this country screaming about deficits for the last 18 months. They claim, that they love America, but they don’t what to pay the tab, because their greedy.  


Republicans made millions of unemployed wage earners wait because, they were concerned that the $34 billion relief package wasn’t paid for. Bush’s tax cuts were supposed to stimulate the economy, but we ended loosing 8 million jobs. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has pointed out, that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts added about $1.7 trillion to the deficit between 2001 and 2008. By making those tax cuts permanent for another decade it would cost our Treasury $4.4 trillion.

Gibson Will Not

According to Bartle Bull “Chris Gibson is a proven leader who exemplifies the qualities of intelligence and experience that our District and our County need today.”

We presently have a proven leader, who has met with constituents in all 137 towns of the 20th. Congressional District. Scott Murphy has visited Delaware County numerous times to discuss national and local concerns with both supportive and hostile constituents.

Murphy has been saving, creating jobs, and growing small businesses for 15 years. Prior to becoming our Congressman, he helped create over 1,000 jobs, and worked to make small businesses the economic engines of their communities.
After graduating from Harvard, Scott became a high-tech entrepreneur. He founded Small World Software, later sold to iXL. For the eight years prior to being elected to Congress, Scott worked for Advantage Capital Partners. Advantage helped other businesses grow and create jobs for their local communities. Murphy's job is still helping companies grow, expand, and most of all create and protect good-paying jobs here at home.

Many small companies have weathered the recession and are ready to grow, but the banks on Wall Street are mostly lending to larger companies. Small businesses have historically been the engine of job creation in this country and Obama proposed that we take $30 billion of the money Wall Street banks have repaid and use that money to enable community banks to give credit to small businesses to keep them afloat.

Obama has also proposed a new small-business tax credit, for small businesses who hire new workers or raise wages. He wants to eliminate all capital gains taxes on small-business investment and provide a tax incentive for all businesses to invest in new plants and equipment.

These steps won’t make up for the 8 million jobs that have been lost, but it’s the only way to move towards full employment and will begin to lay a new foundation for long- term economic growth, while addressing the problems that America’s families have confronted for decades.

Murphy will vote to help Obama create jobs. Republican Chris Gibson will not.

The Wrong Path

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said: “The policies put in place by the previous administration prior to this great recession have left us with a terrible legacy of challenges.  We live in one of the richest economies in the world, but one in eight Americans is on food stamps today.  And America is a less equal country today than it was 10 years ago, in part, because of the tax cuts for the top two percent that were put in place in 2001 and 2003.” 

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reported that as a direct result of the Bush tax cuts, the poorest 20% of earners saw their after-tax incomes rise just 0.4 %.  Meanwhile, the top 1% of households got a 5% jump. 

Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan insisted: “Republicans ought to know about killing jobs, because they got rid over 8 million jobs during the last administration. We’ve got about 20 million people looking for work. We’re slogging through economic quicksand and America is in deep debt. The Republican solution is to continue giving those that make $1 million a year a $80,000 a year tax cut.”

Bush’s tax cuts, two wars, that weren’t paid for, plus Medicare prescription bill which wasn’t paid for. Nevertheless, congressional Republicans are saying, that the economy is too soft right now to let Bush’s tax cuts expire on those in the top 2% income bracket. Congressional Republicans what us to continue to borrow money from the Chinese in order to give tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. 

Minority Leader Senator Mitch McConnell claims: “They propose to raise taxes on the top two brackets, which would capture 50% of small business income and up to 25% of the workforce.  It will have a devastating impact by raising taxes in the middle of a recession.  The impact of all of this taxation regulation and increased litigation has a deterrent effect on what we would all like to do, which is to create more jobs.” 

Mitch McConnell talks about the deficit. It’s absolutely absurd to claim that 50% of small businesses are in the top two income brackets.

Koch Industries

According to Jane Mayer, the author of “Covert Operations: The Billionaire Brothers Who are Waging a War Against Obama,” Charles and David Koch of Koch Industries inherited a very large oil and chemical company from their father. It’s the biggest privately-held oil and chemical company in the whole world, the second largest privately-held company of any kind in America. 

These brothers are tied in the rankings for the ninth richest men in America. The political strategy of the brothers has been to stop the government from limiting greenhouse gas emissions and make sure there is no tax on fossil fuels. They sought to prevent chemicals like formaldehyde from being labeled as causing cancer, because they’ve made many millions of dollars from formaldehyde.  These things have been done to protect Koch Industries’ bottom line profitability.

However, more recently they’re attempting to influence policy by bankrolling a lot of right-wing organizing outfits. The Koch brothers have been funneling massive amounts of money into organizations with innocuous names, like Citizens for a Sound Economy, Citizens for the Environment, and Americans for Prosperity. All of these groups have been funded to serve the financial interests of Koch Industries. 

Last summer, groups like Americans for Prosperity were behind all of the supposedly grassroots tea party rallies around the country. The group paid for the buses, organizing the speakers, putting together training kits for attendees, making talking points and designing the Web sites. Early on, those that attended the tea party gathering were instructed to rally against things like climate change legislation in support of the billionaire oil tycoons. 

The Koch brothers have also been bankrolling efforts to reduce social services, defeat health reform and the economic stimulus package. They have an interest that is hardcore ideological conservatism and that agenda goes back long way. 

The Koch brothers are very hardcore libertarian ideologues and have been for many years. They were early backers and followers of a man named Robert LeFevre, an anarchist, who believed that the government should be completely decimated. LeFevre believed that the only responsibility government had was to protect individual rights. They were early supporters of getting rid of social security, income taxes, the FBI, the CIA and regulations. As head of one of the most influential companies in the country, Charles Koch has recently described himself as a radical. They’ve had a history of serious pollution problems and even criminal problems having to do with pollution record. 

Reaganomics

For the first six years of the Reagan presidency the Republicans controlled the Senate, and the Democrats the House of Representatives. Bills passed in the House with a simple majority vote had to get through the Senate with a supermajority to avoid a filibuster. After passing both Houses of Congress bills needed the support of Reagan, who with a veto could prevent the any bill from becoming law.

Alexander Hamilton’s 1791 report to Congress on manufactures laid out a six-step plan to build an industrial economy in this country and we followed it until Reagan started taking things apart.

When Reagan came into office, we were the largest exporter of manufactured goods and the largest importer of raw materials on the planet, and the largest creditor.  The consequence of Reaganomics has been that in just 29 years, we’ve become the largest importer of finished goods, manufactured goods, exporter of raw materials, which is the definition of a third world nation. Today, we’re in debt more than any country in the world. 

Post FDR and preceding Reagan, most Americans were experiencing prosperity. Today, with the exception of Mexico and Turkey, we’re the country with the highest income inequality level. Since 2000, income inequality increased rapidly, which continued a trend that goes back to the 1970s.

Republican deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy have gutted the earnings and purchasing power of the middle class and crippled the nation’s economy. This has resulted in a decaying infrastructure, cheap imports, poor health, job out sourcing, increased consumer debt, privatization of public services, free-market monopolies, a corrupt financial sector and corporate-controlled media and government.

Businesses have suffered a great blow from wealth inequality, severely damaging the economy, because purchasing power has been slipping away from the middle class and working poor.

Deceitful Charlatans

Many people are ignoring the fact, that there are only three ways to reduce our national debt. Increase taxes, cut spending and get our country out of this recession so that more people are employed and paying taxes.

Republicans are against raising taxes, especially on the very wealthy, but when it comes to the issue of cutting spending, they won’t name a single program, that they would cut. They refuse to go on the record and announce that they're in favor of cutting Social Security, abolishing Medicare and Medicaid or drastically cutting the Pentagon budget because they’re playing it safe.

They expect uninformed, frustrated and angry people to vote for their candidates, on a promise, that once they get elected, that they’ll come up with a plan to reduce the deficit. It’s a cynical ploy, because many of them are deceitful charlatans, who don’t have a clue on how to get things done in Congress.

Unless, we get out of this recession and get many more people employed and paying taxes, reducing the deficit will never happen. If the voters put Republicans back in control of our county, we will most likely see a deepening recession and it’s possible the unemployment rate would again drop to 25% as it did in 1933.

Small businesses are the key to our economy, since they create two out of every three new jobs. Congressional Democrats want to make sure that small businesses are getting financing and want to cut their taxes in certain key areas. Obama has propose that we eliminate capital gains taxes on small businesses so that when they’re starting up and don’t have a lot of cash flow, they get a tax break.

Obama said: “After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back... You would have thought at a time of historic crisis that Republican leaders would have been more willing to help us find a way out of this mess. Particularly since they created the mess."

Credit Card Rules

In the recent past, credit cards companies could suddenly increase your interest rates and your 12% interest rate could become a 20% interest rate. 

Today, credit card companies must give you 45 days’ notice before raising you interest rates.  And if you don’t like the rate increase, you now have the option of canceling the card before the increase goes into effect. 

When you sign up for a new card, some credit card companies used to jack up your rate almost immediately after you signed up for that card. Today, no interest rate increases for the first year after you sign up. Increasing the interest rate on items that you paid for under a different rate is unlawful. Rate hikes can only apply to new debt.  Those are some of the changes brought about by the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act of 2009 which Obama signed into law in May of last year, but nobody seemed to noticed. 

Recently, the final phase of the Credit Card Act went into effect, by regulating penalty fees that credit card companies can charge you for violations. Now, no fee can be over $25 or of greater value than the violation itself. If you go $10 over your credit card limit, the credit card company can’t fine you $50 for that $10 overcharge. They also can’t charge you an inactivity fee for not using an account and they can‘t penalize you more than once for a single violation.
 
Credit card reform is one of those things that Obama has done that when people list legislative accomplishments of his presidency, often doesn’t make the list. Politically, the Obama administration might not get much credit for it. He’s not good at getting credit for legislation that congressional Democrats have passed, even when it uniformly affects many Americans in a positive way.

The credit card industry responded to these new rules, by jacking up their interest rates to record heights, which provides an indication into how they operate.