Obama is in Maryland at the NIH, where he'll speak at 11 am (details here). At 3 pm, he'll meet via video conference with Gen. Stanley McChrystal and other high level officials. Michelle Obama is in Copenhagen trying to win the Olympics for the U.S. Meanwhile, Obama staffers are taking on tax reform today. The meeting will be live streamed at 12:30 pm eastern. Obama maintained during the campaign that he would streamline the tax system:
Today, the tax subgroup of the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board (PERAB) will hold a meeting to gather ideas on tax reform. It will be the first of several such meetings. The meeting will center on tax simplification and will be live streamed at www.whitehouse.gov/live .
I wanted to take the opportunity to explain why we assembled this subgroup, what areas the PERAB tax reform subgroup will focus on and what it has been tasked to produce.
Tax reform is important to the President and a priority for many members of Congress. As the President said when he announced his international tax proposals in May, "It's a down payment on the larger tax reform we need to make our tax system simpler and fairer and more efficient for individuals and corporations." Read more at WH
At around 11 a.m. eastern, Obama and Timothy Geithner will announce a plan to reform international tax policy, which will crack down on offshore tax havens and end incentives for companies that ship jobs overseas. I'll post video when it's up.
The two components of the president's plan include reforms that ensure the tax code does not handicap companies seeking to create jobs at home, as well as reforms that reduce the amount of tax revenue lost to tax havens.
The White House is targeting companies that use loopholes in the law that allow them to legally avoid paying billions in taxes. It also focuses on wealthy individuals who break the law by creating hidden overseas accounts.
The Obama administration plans to raise $103.1 billion by removing tax advantages for investing overseas and will use that money to help make a tax credit permanent, the officials said. The administration also hopes to raise $95.2 billion over the next 10 years by cracking down on overseas tax havens.
The White House, under the plan, would eliminate the "check-the-box" provision which allows corporations to designate overseas subsidiaries as branches of the company, not subjected to taxes. This tax loophole enables companies to avoid paying U.S. taxes. CNN
The White House apparently got a special delivery today:
The suspicious package at the White House has been cleared, BNO News confirms. AP reports it appears to be a box of tea bags.
There are tea parties and then there are tea parties, the ones full of paranoid people who are calling for taking down the "socialist" government. Nothing wrong with protesting the bailouts and taxes but that seems to be a guise. What they're really protesting is Obama and what they view as "socialism." But it seems to me, the reason the tea parties have taken off is because of the pushback from the left. The left hasn't been able to stop talking about the tea parties, which has helped advertise the tea parties. When Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the tea parties astro turf-- as opposed to grass roots-- that's going to make a lot of people mad. If the left kept quiet, we wouldn't have so many tea parties today.
Meanwhile, Obama talks about reforming the tax system, largely to deaf ears.
Swamp: President Barack Obama, vowing today to make good on a promise to simplify income taxes, maintained that tax relief which his administration already has won in its early months is helping to revive the economy.
On the day that looms as an expensive deadline for many Americans, the closing day for filing of income tax returns, the president delivered a speech near the White House to tout tax breaks that he has won and the reform he still promises.
"We need to simplify a monstrous tax code that is far too complicated for most Americans to understand, but just complicated enough for the insiders who know how to game the system,'' the president said.
This mid-day address was intended as not only an appeal to the tax-paying public on a widely loathed "Tax Day,'' but also a message aimed at Congress - where Republicans are railing at the president for big spending and budget deficits. The spending, Obama argues, is a necessary stimulus to revive the economy. The deficit, he promises, will be cut in half. And tax relief, he says, already is on the way.
Tea Party or anti Obama? I know Rush Limbaugh likes to tie the two together -- anti Obama means a successful U.S. to Rush and his followers. I'm sure some of these people are mad about bailouts, while others, the ones that hate groups are targeting, have an irrational hate and fear of Obama. It makes me sad that so many people are so stupid:
