Read the transcript.
The speech Mitch Daniels is giving is certainly better than what we’re hearing on the primary trail. That said, it’s for a very different audience — the American middle, as opposed to Republican primary voters. Daniel is also an impressive figure in his own way. I mean that. But, My God, not in a running for president kind of way. The idea that Daniels would be seen now by many Republican as a White Knight who could save them from Newt and Mitt is a testament to how weak they see the current field.
9:48 PM: I guess I wasn’t the only to hear that name-check of Romney on letting the housing market bottom out?
9:50 PM: Obama: Willing to be flexible on milk spill regs.
9:55 PM: Great idea for Mitt to release his tax returns today. True stroke of genius. Because who could have predicted President Obama would make the Buffett Rule a centerpiece of his speech?
9:58 PM: Dems are usually really bad at making the simple point that all tax policy involves trade-offs. This passage got it right. Probably the best part of the speech …
We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right.
10:02 PM: Email just out from the Speaker’s Office …
Because the president clearly cannot run on his record, he has regrettably turned to the politics of envy and division. The “Buffett Rule” is a gimmick. We need to cut spending, not impose tax hikes that would destroy jobs.
10:09 PM: Shorter Obama: I’m looking at you, Romney
9:29 PM: Follow along at home with the transcript of the speech.
9:31 PM: The rhetoric of the Republican primary has gone so far off the rails into creating a wild caricature of the president that I think it probably makes this speech more bracing (in a positive sense) for some viewers. I mean, where’s his call for more bureaucracy and hostility to achievement? Where are the apologies for America?
9:36 PM: Sad that McCain can’t stand for comprehensive immigration reform which he’s supposedly been pushing for for years.
9:46 PM: Here’s the passage where the president hits the Buffett Rule (still to come) …
But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes. Tax reform should follow the Buffett rule: If you make more than $1 million a year, you should not pay less than 30 percent in taxes. And my Republican friend Tom Coburn is right: Washington should stop subsidizing millionaires. In fact, if you’re earning a million dollars a year, you shouldn’t get special tax subsidies or deductions. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year, like 98 percent of American families, your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with rising costs and stagnant wages. You’re the ones who need relief.
Now, you can call this class warfare all you want. But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.
We don’t begrudge financial success in this country. We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit, or somebody else has to make up the difference – like a senior on a fixed income; or a student trying to get through school; or a family trying to make ends meet. That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right. They know that this generation’s success is only possible because past generations felt a responsibility to each other, and to their country’s future, and they know our way of life will only endure if we feel that same sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit. That’s an America built to last.
9:00 PM: So audience participation allowed for this one?
9:01 PM: Seriously worried that someone might call their response speech a post-buttal.
9:04 PM: My take on where we are going into this speech.
9:11 PM: The heart of the President’s speech, putting the Buffett Rule into effect — makes you wonder what Mitt was thinking releasing his tax returns on this day of all days.
As we head into the President’s third State of the Union speech, it’s worth stepping back and looking at the broad swath of events over the last year.
Over the last year and especially after the debt ceiling debacle of late summer, the White House has been trying to refocus the national debate away from budget cutting and retrenchment toward job creation and tax equity. The Buffett Rule, the endlessly repetitive hawking of the president’s Jobs Bill (legislatively futile, politically powerful), welcoming a fight with the Republicans over an extension of the payroll tax holiday. We can see them all of a piece, staking out a policy agenda and converging on early 2012 as a platform to set the terms of the national debate. Read More
A few days ago I published a post on Newt Gingrich’s extreme unpopularity with the general electorate. Almost no prominent national politician approaches Gingrich territory. But these aren’t great times for Mitt Romney either. Just a short time ago he was the only Republican contender for president who had a net favorable rating with the public. But just over the last month or so he’s ballooned to an almost net -16 point negative rating.
Check out the chart after the jump … Read More
Mitt Romney got tripped up with a tax issue when he ran for governor in 2002 too.
We’ve got a fourth poll of Florida out this morning. And it has Romney up by 2 points over Gingrich, 34% to 32%. The first three had Newt up by either 9 or 5 points.
We’ve got the first report about Romney’s 2010 taxes. His effective tax rate was 13.9%, just below the 15% he estimated last week. Here are the initial details.
Key passage from Reuters story …
Romney advisers stressed that the holdings in the Caymans — along with those in a Swiss bank account that was closed in 2010 after an investment adviser decided it could be politically embarrassing to Romney — were reported on tax returns and were not vehicles to avoid taxes.
My quick take on this is that there’s a lot here that’s fairly damaging for Romney in political terms, largely for the reasons I set forth earlier in this post. Beyond that there’s a lesson about the consequences of losing control of events. For a man running for president in 2012 it’s damaging stuff. But now everything in these documents comes with a preface that reads “We really wanted to keep this secret. But that didn’t work out.”