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.
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.
9:48 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
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.
Mitt Romney just said on NBC that President Obama raised corporate tax rates. But that is simply false.
Well, in some respects I have to compliment the president on adopting a whole series of ideas that I’ve been speaking about for the last several years. If you want to get the economy going, lower corporate tax rates. He’s raised them.
In the land of 30 second commercials you could probably fudge and said that parts of health care reform raised fees on corporations. But Romney specifically says rates, which is just demonstrably not true. Our Brian Beutler caught it when he said it.
Has anyone heard Romney say precisely this before?
President Obama’s State of the Union turns into point-by-point refutation of Mitt Romney.
Gabby Giffords resigns from Congress today. Watch her entrance into the House chamber for the State of the Union address last night: Read More
Evan McMorris-Santoro on how the professional left is reacting to the fundraising prospects of Newt Gingrich winning the GOP nomination. Money quote: “We all think it’s funny as shit, but I don’t see anyone believing it could actually happen.”
Walker starts out ahead against Dems in the upcoming recall election.