The budget lowers the top tax rate to 25 percent for the wealthiest taxpayers, down from the current 39.6 percent, while raising taxes on middle-class families with children by an average of $2,000.
.. he assumes that all his plans for cuts will magically drive growth and tax revenues to unimaginable levels, producing a $5 billion surplus. It doesn’t matter how many times this has been discredited; Republicans believe it as an article of faith, and their 2015 budget is a more faith-based blueprint than any that have gone before.
Dirty Secret Lurks in the Struggle Over a ‘Grand Bargain’
“One of the big differences between budget discussions now and previous ones back to the ‘80s is that I’m not sure anyone here really wants to cut a deal,”
..That is, many Republicans are no more interested in voting to reduce Medicare and Social Security benefits than Democrats are, lest they threaten their party’s big advantage among the older voters who dominate the electorate in midterm contests like those in 2014.
And Democrats are no more eager than Republicans, with control of both houses of Congress up for grabs, to vote for the large revenue increases that a grand bargain would entail.
US Wars in Afghanistan, Iraq to Cost $6 trillion
The decade-long American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq would end up costing as much as $6 trillion, the equivalent of $75,000 for every American household, calculates the prestigious Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
.. According to the report, the US “has already paid $260 billion in interest on the war debt,” and future interest payments would amount to trillions of dollars.
Revamping the Tax Code
Both want to address the tax code’s two big problems. First, it is inefficient: it imposes high marginal rates on individual and corporate income, which discourages work and investment, but it leaks a colossal $1.1 trillion a year through countless deductions, exemptions and credits. (To put that in perspective, total federal tax revenues are only $2.8 trillion.)