FRIDAY MARCH 7, 2014, 12:02 AM
BY JOAN VERDON
STAFF WRITER
THE RECORD
The experts who keep track of store openings and closings have been forecasting for more than a decade that the day was coming when American retailers would have to pay for building far too many stores.
That day of reckoning, some say, has arrived, with one retail watcher predicting a “tsunami” of store closings this year.
That prediction, by Brian Sozzi of Belus Capital Advisors in New York, was made in January. RadioShack announced this week that it was closing up to 1,100 of its stores, and Staples said Thursday that it was shutting 225 of its locations.
Even retailers that recently have been in expansion mode are trimming their store counts. Teen retailer Aéropostale is planning to close 175 stores in coming years. The Children’s Place of Secaucus, while continuing to open stores, will shutter 125 of its weakest shops by 2016.
Today, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R) of Michigan jumpstarts the tax reform debate. It’s about time. The tax code stables in Washington haven’t been cleaned out since 1986—more than a quarter century ago, when Ronald Reagan was President.
Since then, year after year, the tax code gets engrafted with more special interest loopholes, credits, and carve-outs. Not only is this unfair to those without lobbyists, it makes the tax code mindlessly complex—a job security program for tax lawyers and accountants.
Worse yet, back in the 1980s, the U.S. had among the lowest income tax rates on businesses in the world. Today, our small and large businesses pay among the highest rates.
Our corporate tax rate is now the highest in the industrialized world at 35 percent—because almost all other nations have slashed their business taxes to attract jobs and businesses. This high corporate rate in practice acts as a tariff on the goods and services we produce in the United States. Our analysts at Heritage find that this lowers wages of American workers. Want to give U.S. workers a raise? Cut the tax rates on businesses so they invest more here.
Camp aims to fix all of this by rewriting the tax code, and that starts with lowering tax rates across the board and eliminating loopholes.
He would shrink the current seven income tax brackets down to three: 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent for those families with incomes above $450,000. That highest rate of 35 percent is still too high and an unnecessary nod to the class warriors on the left, but it would be an improvement on the current Obama rate of more than 40 percent.
The corporate tax rate would fall from 35 percent to 25 percent, which is at least closer to the world average. Camp would also allow companies to bring capital stored abroad back into America at a low tax rate of less than 10 percent, which will mean more investment and insourcing of jobs on these shores—as well as more revenue for the Treasury.
Camp’s plan also simplifies the tax code by allowing millions of tax filers a larger standard deduction, which means they can forgo the hassle of itemizing deductions and go straight to the EZ form. For those who do itemize deductions, many of the carve-outs will be gone—but not the mortgage or charity write-offs.
Expect the White House to lambast this plan as a “tax cut for the rich,” but the evidence from history shows that lower tax rates are usually associated with higher overall tax receipts and more taxes paid by the rich. In the 1980s after two rounds of Reagan tax rate reductions, income tax receipts doubled, and the share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent, 5 percent, and 10 percent rose as the economy expanded.
This is an important history lesson. Now, congressional revenue estimators are using “dynamic scoring” to estimate what happens to the economy and revenues if the new plan is implemented. This yields a “growth dividend” for the economy of at least $700 billion, our sources tell us. A word of advice to Chairman Camp: Use that extra money for better treatment of capital investment or to lower tax rates still further to get even more growth.
The U.S economy has slogged along at just a little over 2 percent growth during this recovery—and last year, less than that. Imagine 4 percent growth for the next decade, and you’ve added nearly $2 trillion more in tax revenues to pay the government’s bills.
I’d prefer to see something closer to a pure flat tax with one tax rate, a postcard-sized return, and no double tax on saving and investment—much like what Steve Forbes proposed back in 1996. And there are some bad ideas buried in the Camp plan, such as a tax on the assets of big banks that received bailout funds in 2008-09. That seems more at home in the Obama redistribution budget than in a pro-growth tax reform vision.
But on balance, this is a gutsy and courageous first attempt to take on the beehive of special interests in Washington and grow the economy while making the tax system fairer and more comprehensible.
The tax system we have is absurd in the 21st century. It’s as if we were trying to operate our businesses and compete in global markets with clunky computers and an operating system built in 1985. If Republicans want to be the party of solutions, the party of growth, and the party of reform, they ought to rally behind the spirit of Mr. Camp’s initiative—and even make it bolder.
Ignore the Administration’s Inflated Obamacare Coverage Numbers
Peter Suderman|Feb. 24, 2014 12:24 pm
In a speech to the Democratic Governor’s Association last week, president Obama touted the success of Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion. “We’ve got close to 7 million Americans who have access to health care for the first time because of Medicaid expansion,” he said.
That’s false.
We don’t know how exactly many people have gotten health coverage through Medicaid for the first time as a result of Obamacare, but the actual number is certainly much lower than the 7 million President Obama claimed.
As The Washington Post’s Fact Checker explains—again—the 7 million figure comes from reports counting the number of people who have enrolled in Medicaid since October 1 last year, when Obamacare’s online exchanges launched. But many of those enrollments are in states that did not participate in the law’s Medicaid expansion, and many of those who signed up in states that did participate were renewing existing coverage. Avalere Health, a health consulting firm that has been tracking Obamacare’s implementation, estimates that the number of new enrollees is somewhere in the range of 1.1 to 1.8 million. (And that number counts people who were previously eligible prior to Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion but signed up after the fact.)
That’s Medicaid. What about private coverage? Once again, solid numbers are hard to pin down. But the true number of enrollees is virtually certain to be lower than the administration’s headline estimates.
The administration said earlier this month that, by the end of January, 3.3 million people had signed up for private coverage through the exchanges. But that figure leaves two important questions unanswered: How many people have paid the first premium, a requirement to actually be enrolled in coverage? And how many of those people were previously uninsured?
Dinesh D’Souza Speculates on ‘Retribution’: ‘Vindictive’ Obama Sees Critics as Enemies
by Evan McMurry | 12:46 pm, February 22nd, 2014
Author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souzaspeculated to Megyn Kelly Friday night that FBI’sindictment of him for campaign finance fraud may be Alinsky-style political retribution for his anti-Obama film 2016. Earlier this week, four Senatorssent a letter to FBI Director James Comeydemanding an explanation for what they termed the “selective prosecution” of D’Souza.
“I am a public critic of the president and I do recognize this has made me vulnerable to a form of counterattack,” D’Souza said. He added that Obama, whom he characterized as “vindictive,” had released a video response to 2016 on his website, proving the film had gotten under the president’s skin.
Insurers Seek Healthy Enrollees, Doctors Educate New Patients, Employers Wrestle With Added Costs
On Jan. 1, the key provisions of the Affordable Care Act took effect. Americans gained access to new health plans subsidized by federal dollars. Insurers no longer can turn away people with existing conditions. Millions are now eligible for new Medicaid benefits.
But the federal law also upended existing health-insurance arrangements for millions of people. Companies worry about the expense of providing new policies, some hospitals aren’t seeing the influx of new patients they expected to balance new costs and entrepreneurs say they may hire more part-time workers to avoid offering more coverage.
Tell Us
How Has the Health Law Affected You?
The law’s true impact will play out over years. It will depend in part on whether backers overcome serious early setbacks, including crippling glitches in the new online insurance marketplaces and many states’ rejection of the Medicaid expansion. But another obstacle the law faces is pushback from some consumers and industry over the higher costs, complex rules and mandatory requirements it imposes. ( Watch doctors, business owners and patients share their stories about the health law, and tell us your own. )
So far, 3.3 million have signed up for plans through the new government marketplaces, federal officials said Feb. 12. About 6.3 million were determined eligible for Medicaid through the exchanges over the final three months of 2013, including people who might have been able to enroll without the law.
The law’s potential for change can be seen in the lives of people like Jaime Hood, a 37-year-old in Belton, Mo. She suffers from hemophilia and had been rejected for coverage until this year. Now, she will have access to drugs and other treatments she sometimes skipped.
+106%: Obama Has More Than Doubled Marketable U.S. Debt
February 18, 2014 – 1:37 PM
By Terence P. Jeffrey
(CNSNews.com) – The marketable debt of the U.S. government has more than doubled–climbing by 106 percent–while President Barack Obama has been in office, increasing from $5,749,916,000,000 at the end of January 2009 to $11,825,322,000,000 at the end of January 2014, according to the U.S. Treasury’s latestMonthly Statement of the Public Debt.
During the eight-year presidency of George W. Bush, the marketable debt of the U.S. government almost doubled–climbing 93 percent–from $2,977,328,000,000 at the end of January 2001 to $5,749,916,000,000 at the end of January 2009.
During the time that Bush and Obama have been in office, the marketable debt of the U.S. government has nearly quadrupled, increasing by $8,847,994,000,000.
How can Jason Furman, who claims to be an economist, be anything other than a government shill? The supply and demand theory that is the basis of economics says that when you raise the price of something by 40%, demand for it will surely fall. Surely, he knows better.
The ones who will be hurt the most by this are minority youth trying to enter the workforce. Look for inner city youth unemployment to rise significantly and hundreds of thousands more to land on the dole. Maybe that’s the goal here.
If you can’t pull better than a minimum wage job you’re the one whose going to lose here. Big government cannot dictate what businesses will do. So they force businesses to pay more. What happens? Employees are dismissed and those remaining are required to do more.
Most businesses that can only pay minimum wage are marginal at best. This could cause a few to close their doors. Thanks Barry!
Where are all these rising home values? Not here. Prices tanked from the high’s of 2006, 2007 and are nowhere near what they were.
Many of the big ‘earners’ left NYC years ago for CT. Then CT couldn’t resist and implemented an income tax. Many hedge funds are still in Greenwich and Stamford to avoid NY/NYC taxes.
Many of the very big earners that I know have moved to FL for their principle residence (when able). Unless they send their kids to boarding school, they’d stay around here until the last one graduates High school.
Many of the 500k-10million earner types have to have a presence in the area. But the real big earners head south. As such, their income taxes must be replaced by the rest of us.
Class warfare never works. But the left wingers keep using it to ‘rally the troops’ and in the end, the smart rich guys manage to legally keep as much of their well earned income away from the tentacles of the government. This crap never worked in Cuba and North Korea, and it wont work here. So will one of you Dumbocrats please tell Barry to pick a new subject.
Poll: 71% of Obama voters, 55% Democrats ‘regret’ voting for his re-election
BY PAUL BEDARD | FEBRUARY 18, 2014 AT 2:45 PM
Over seven in 10 Obama voters, and 55 percent of Democrats, regret voting for President Obama’s reelection in 2012, according to a newEconomist/YouGov.com poll.
Conducted to test the media hype about a comeback by 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the new poll found voters still uninspired by Romney, but also deeply dissatisfied with Obama who has so far failed to capitalize on his victory over 15 months ago.
The poll asked those who voted for Obama’s reelection a simple question: “Do you regret voting for Barack Obama?”
— Overall, 71 percent said yes, 26 percent no.
— 80 percent of whites said yes, 61 percent of blacks said no and 100 percent of Hispanics said yes.
— 84 percent of women said yes, and just 61 percent of men agreed.
— 55 percent of Democrats said yes, as did 71 percent of independents.
After Secrets first published their poll, YouGov.com noted that the sample for the question was small and recharacterized the sample as “those who reported voting for Barack Obama in 2012 but would vote for someone else if the election were held again” from “those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012.”
CBO says minimum wage bill would cost jobs, boost income
February 18, 2014, 01:41 pm
By Erik Wasson
President Obama’s proposal to raise the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour would cost 500,000 jobs in 2016, according to a report released Tuesday by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.
The report also found raising the minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $10.10 would significantly boost income for about 16.5 million workers, raising their income by $31 billion and potentially pulling nearly 1 million people out of poverty.
The White House and economic groups on the left immediately pushed back at the CBO’s conclusions on jobs, arguing its findings ran counter to other research.
“CBO’s estimates of the impact of raising the minimum wage on employment does not reflect the current consensus view of economists,” Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Jason Furman wrote in a blog post. “The bulk of academic studies, have concluded that the effects on employment of minimum wage increases in the range now under consideration are likely to be small to nonexistent.
Furman also highlighted the positive findings of the CBO report, starting with the estimate that 16.5 million workers would see their incomes boosted.
He told reporters that the CBO report is an overall a positive for raising the minimum wage and would not diminish the idea’s popularity.
The United States of Decline America unravels at an increasingly dizzying pace.
By Deroy Murdock
America is unraveling at a stunning speed and to a staggering degree. This decline is breathtaking, and the prognosis is dim.
For starters, Obama now rules by decree. Reportedly for the 27th time, he has changed the rules of Obamacare singlehandedly, with neither congressional approval nor even ceremonial resolutions to limit his actions. Obama needs no such frivolities.
“That’s the good thing about being president,” Obama joked on February 10. “I can do whatever I want.” In an especially bitter irony, Obama uttered these despicable words while guiding French president François Hollande through Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson — a key architect of America’s foundation of limited government.
Face it, liberals: Obamacare will increase the federal deficit
David Hogberg • | FEBRUARY 14, 2014 AT 7:17 PM
Liberals have accepted that Obamacare will increase the federal deficit. They just don’t know it yet.
When the Congressional Budget Office released its Budget and Economic Outlook on Feb. 4, which was quite devastating for Obamacare, liberal commentators were desperate to find the pony in it. Many of them touted claims that the report shows that Obamacare will reduce the deficit.
What the report actually did was refer to a previous CBO report showing that, from 2013-2022, Obamacare reduces the deficit by a cumulative $109 billion. That’s true in the “balance sheet” method that CBO must use to evaluate Obamacare or any other piece of legislation. In other words, the CBO can only count the revenues Obamacare raises against the benefits it must pay out.
Yet Obamacare has impacts beyond those that appear on a balance sheet. If it influences the economy negatively, it can also affect the budget. And that is exactly what the CBO found.
Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies will encourage some employees to work fewer hours. Because Medicaid and exchange subsidies are based on income and decline as one’s income rises, the CBO anticipates workers will reduce their hours in order to maintain their Obamacare benefits. By 2024, those reduced hours will reach the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs.
If Only a Snow Shovel Could Dig Us Out of This
Amy Payne
February 13, 2014 at 6:30 am
Thanks to Congress, the U.S. now doesn’t have a debt limit for the next year. Let two Heritage experts put this into perspective.
“President Obama, after less than five years in office, has already increased the debt limit by more than any other president in U.S. history, including President George W. Bush over eight years in office,” report Romina Boccia and Michael Sargent, authors of the newly updated Federal Budget in Pictures.
For the next year, now that Congress has given Obama a blank check, we’ll be following the borrowing and the spending and all the debt Washington is piling on Americans. The national debt, at $17.3 trillion, already exceeds $140,000 per household.
Sargent and Boccia, the Grover M. Hermann Fellow, teamed up with Heritage’s Senior Data Graphics Editor John Fleming to bring us 20 charts that will convince you the country’s in trouble.
There are some scary fiscal times ahead.
Imagine all of America and all of the taxes people pay to the federal government every year. Do you have an overwhelming idea in your mind? Just 16 years from now, ALL of that money will pay for just two things: entitlement programs and interest on the debt.
All of it.
The entitlement programs include Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare’s new entitlements. So if you think anything is important besides these mammoth entitlement programs—like national defense, a real constitutional priority—Congress needs to get going on some major reforms.
These are just a few of the mind-boggling facts you can see and share—if you dare—in this visual resource. Find out where your tax money went and get the latest on Obamacare’s tax hikes.
Obamanomics: Obama Democrats’ troubling view on work
By Michael Goodwin
February 9, 2014 | 1:34am
Among its many stamps, the Postal Service has a series called “Made in America, Building a Nation.” The strip of “forever” stamps is a collection of iconic photographs of 20th-century industry featuring men and women toiling on railroads, skyscrapers and factory floors.
A celebration of work and workers, the series quotes Helen Keller saying, “The world is moved along, not only by the mighty shoves of its heroes, but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”
My, oh, my, how times have changed. America now has a government that views work as a trap and celebrates those who escape it.
That is the upshot of last week’s remarkable exchange over ObamaCare. It began when the head of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported that the interplay of taxes and subsidies in the law “creates a disincentive for people to work.” The report predicted the mix would lead to fewer hours worked, costing the equivalent of nearly 2.5 million jobs.
NAACP president: Black people worse off under Obama
NAACP President and CEO Benjamin Jealous said Sunday that black Americans “are doing a full point worse” than when President Obama first took office.
“The country’s back to pretty much where it was when this president started,” Mr. Jealous told MSNBC host David Gregory on “Meet the Press.” “White people in this country are doing a bit better. Black people are doing a full point worse.”
The black unemployment rate was 12.7 percent when Mr. Obama took office. While the unemployment rate in the U.S. as a whole is below 8 percent, the Labor Department reported the black jobless rate was up from 12.9 percent to 14 percent for December.
The worst during Mr Obama’s first term was in September 2011, with 16.7 percent unemployment for blacks — the highest since 1983, the Department of Labor reports. The black teen jobless rate hit a staggering 39.3 percent in July 2012.
