1. - Saturday, April 28, 2012 - 23:54 - 1 note

  2. “I have called for personal sacrifice. I am assured of the willingness of almost all Americans to respond to that call. A part of the sacrifice means the payment of more money in taxes.”

    — FDR

  3. - Sunday, April 22, 2012 - 15:20 - 4 notes

  4. “The central paradox of budget politics on the right: Republicans have defined themselves almost entirely by their determination to reduce debt, but virtually every means of actually getting there — taxes, defense cuts, restructuring entitlements — strikes them as politically unpalatable.”

    — Matt Bai

    (Source: The New York Times)

  5. - Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 02:12 - 0 notes

  6. “

    If you make more than $1 million every year, you should pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle-class families do. On the other hand, if you make less than $250,000 a year — like 98 percent of American families do — your taxes shouldn’t go up.

    That’s all there is to it. It’s pretty sensible. Most Americans support this idea. One survey found that two-thirds of millionaires do, too. So do nearly half of all Republicans.

    We just need some Republican politicians to get on board with where the country is.

    I know they’ll say that this is all about wanting to raise people’s taxes. They probably won’t tell you that if you belong to a middle-class family, then I’ve cut your taxes each year that I’ve been in office, and I’ve cut taxes for small business owners 17 times.

    ”

    — President Obama

    (Source: whitehouse.gov)

  7. - Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 02:08 - 2 notes

  9. - Friday, March 2, 2012 - 23:25 - 0 notes

  10. “Even if you cut spending a lot… you have to raise taxes and unfortunately you can only get some portion of it from the very richest, you’re going to have to raise taxes a bit more broadly than that and cut spending. I’m bringing you bad news — it’s called reality.”

    — Bill Gates

    (Source: The New York Times)

  11. - Tuesday, February 28, 2012 - 22:59 - 1,736 notes from Obama for America (originally from Obama for America)

  12. barackobama: Tax code unfairness as depicted in a pretty infographic.

    barackobama:

    Tax code unfairness as depicted in a pretty infographic.

  13. - Sunday, February 12, 2012 - 15:29 - 0 notes

  14. “

    The idea of cutting taxes was a part of a policy that I call starving the beast. It’s you take away the government’s credit card, as Ronald Reagan said. And this will force spending down. This will shrink the size of government. And conservatives believe that there’s only so much freedom out there. And the more the government, the more power government has, there’s less freedom for the people.

    And they have a tendency to look at this in terms of spending as a share of GDP. So it can be measured very precisely. So if the federal government takes 25 percent of GDP, then essentially, we have only 75 percent freedom. We’re not 100 percent free. You know, if we could cut government spending down to 20 percent of GDP, then we would gain five percent freedom. We’ll go from being 75 percent free to being 80 percent.

    I’m serious. This is the way they think. And this drives a lot of these policies that on the surface don’t make any sense. They’re just about taking away the government’s resources to force it to shrink to — if you cut the budgets of the regulatory agencies, then they can’t regulate. This is a good thing.

    They really believe that there’s absolutely nothing good that comes out of government, unless it comes out of the Pentagon.

    ”

    — Bruce Bartlett

    (Source: billmoyers.com)

  15. - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 12:44 - 0 notes

  16. “

    Just yesterday, Bill Gates said he agrees with me that Americans who can afford it should pay their fair share. I promise you, Bill Gates does not envy the rich. He doesn’t envy wealthy people.

    This has nothing to do with envy. It has everything to do with math.

    ”

    — President Obama

    (Source: whitehouse.gov)

  17. - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 10:00 - 2 notes

  18. “[It] wasn’t shocking at all. That’s the US system. If people want capital gains taxed more like the highest rate on income, that’s a good discussion. Maybe that’s the way to help close the deficit.”

    — Bill Gates on Mitt Romney’s tax rate

    (Source: telegraph.co.uk)

  19. - Saturday, January 28, 2012 - 10:00 - 3 notes

  20. “When we’ve got a trillion — more than $1 trillion worth of tax breaks that were supposed to be temporary for the top 2 percent slated to continue, we’ve got a tax code full of loopholes for folks who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them — we’ve got to ask ourselves, what’s more important to us? Is it more important for me to get a tax break, or is it more important for that senior to know that they’ve got Medicare and Social Security that’s stable? Is it more important for me to get a tax break, or is it better for that young person to get a break on their college education? Is it more important for me to get a tax break, or is it more important that we care for our veterans?”

    — President Obama

    (Source: whitehouse.gov)