3 February 2015 - Obama's budget plan revealed
Activer le mode zen
Obama's record budget: Tax the rich, help the middle class
Staff (The Chicago Tribune)
Promising to help America's middle class, President Barack Obama on Monday sent Congress a record $4 trillion budget that would hammer corporate profits overseas and raise taxes on the wealthy while boosting tax credits for families and the working poor.
Obama's budget also would steer hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation's crumbling infrastructure of roads and bridges, help provide two years of free community college and reverse the across-the-board, automatic budget cuts that have slammed the Pentagon and nearly every government department.
In the face of certain opposition from Republicans, an optimistic Obama hailed a "breakthrough year for America" of new jobs, lower unemployment and shrinking deficits after the great recession of 2008, and he called for moving past years of "mindless austerity." The blueprint for the 2016 budget year that begins Oct. 1 represents a 6.4 percent increase over estimated spending this year, projecting that the deficit will decline to $474 billion.
Read on...
______________________________
Liberal
Lisa Mascaro (The Los Angeles Times)
President Obama released a $4-trillion budget Monday with liberal priorities that have little chance of passage but will serve as an initial foray in negotiations with the new Republican Congress and help define the Democratic Party in the run-up to the 2016 presidential race.
The administration’s annual federal budget, like those that will follow from the House and Senate, is a largely aspirational blueprint, even more so in Obama’s final term. This budget, ending in September 2016, is the last one the president will still be in office to fully execute.
There are several factors working in his favor this year, including a strengthening economy, a falling deficit and rising public approval of the administration.
Read on...
____________________________
Opinion
Max Ehrenfreund (The Washington Post)
U.S. households with average incomes -- the 20 percent taking in between $49,086 and $84,055, to be exact -- would on average see an increase of $7 in their tax bill under President Obama's proposals, according to an analysis published this week by the Tax Policy Center. The editorial board at The Wall Street Journal wonders why Obama is calling his plan "middle-class economics":
In selling his proposals in Kansas the other day, Mr. Obama said that middle-class economics is about "lowering the taxes for working families by thousands of dollars, putting money back into their pockets so that they can have a little bit of cushion in their lives." Paying $7 more isn't much of a cushion.
The same goes for the second and fourth income quintiles. According to the think tank, the taxes of those groups would rise by 0.1% on average.
That last line is inaccurate -- the analysis finds that in the second and fourth quintiles after-tax income, not taxes, would increase by 0.1 percent on average. Those group's taxes would decline by $17 and $51 respectively.
Read on...
______________________________
Opposition
David Jackson (USA Today)
Republicans spared no rhetorical flourish in deriding the budget proposal. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called it "another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances— ever." House Majority Whip Peter Roskam, R-Ill., compared it to the Seattle Seahawks' disastrous second-and-goal pass in Sunday's Super Bowl.
And more than a few Republicans noted that the budget release deadline happened to fall on Groundhog Day, suggesting a sense of deja vu in Obama's budget.
Modern presidential budget proposals are as much political documents as accounting ones, often declared "dead on arrival" in Congress by opposing political parties. The result has been a series of spending bills funding the government temporarily.
Read on...
Archives
Accédez aux archives de la revue
La Clé anglaise
Accédez à notre portail de ressources
[page;/html/cle/facebook/FacebookCode11.html]
Pour citer cette ressource :
"3 February 2015 - Obama's budget plan revealed", La Clé des Langues [en ligne], Lyon, ENS de LYON/DGESCO (ISSN 2107-7029), mars 2015. Consulté le 19/04/2024. URL: https://cle.ens-lyon.fr/anglais/key-story/archives-revue-de-presse-2015/3-february-2015-obama-s-budget-plan-revealed