the bill isn’t about statehood, and i don’t think biden would veto statehood, or sign something denying statehood. i don’t know enough about the bill or the sentencing penalties, but apparently it lowers them for some violent crimes, and biden isn’t doing it on a lark, but helping the mayor in this instance. while taking a political cost of course.
if dc was already a state, and they didn’t have this mechanism to overrule city council, do you think it would become a DoJ/District Court issue? i would think so.
If there was a major US city that voted 95% MAGA Republican and didn’t have voting rights, can you imagine how hard Republicans would be going to make it a state? Democrats are just incompetent at the basic fundamentals of politics. Literally not a single potential Biden voter is worried about carjackings in DC.
In a statement, Manchin criticized Sohn for “her years of partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and work with far-left groups.” Manchin didn’t provide any examples of Sohn making “inflammatory statements.” The “work with far-left groups” may be a reference to Sohn being on the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
I don’t know why they flushed 2.5 years of a majority on the FCC in the hopes that Manchin would come around on her. Should’ve cut bait a long time ago.
Second, let’s ask the wealthiest to pay just a little bit more of their fair share, to strengthen Medicare for everyone over the long term. My budget proposes to increase the Medicare tax rate on earned and unearned income above $400,000 to 5 percent from 3.8 percent.
I think the point is that those people already have a high tax burden relative to the people above them. A lot of those households are also a core Dem constituency of technocrat professionals. It would be better policy and better politics to at least combine this kind of tax on affluent professionals with serious efforts to tax the wealth of the aristocracy. Its not that the proposed tax is bad in a vacuum, it’s that it’s bad in context.
A doctor making $800,000 in California is paying something like $350,000 in taxes.
An heiress worth $80,000,000 could easily be paying $0. And the person that left that wealth to the heiress probably never paid any taxes either. I’ll leave it to the reader to ponder how such a system could possibly persist.
I agree the billionaires need to pay significantly more taxes but I would be thrilled with the $800k a year doctor paying an extra $6k a year in taxes if it keeps SS and or Medicare solvent without raising retirement ages.
Yeah it’s obviously bullshit that billionaires don’t pay enough in taxes.
But I don’t have it in me to be pissed off (or even mildly annoyed) by the idea of a doctor/lawyer/etc making over 500k to be paying an extra few thousand bucks a year.
Right but it’s not an either/or. A functional government could easily do both. And of course, a bunch more taxes on billionaires could be used to expand and improve SS and Medicare instead of just letting billionaires not pay taxes so the existing programs just barely hang on.
Mr. Biden will propose changes the White House says would extend the solvency of Medicare’s hospital-insurance fund by at least 25 years. That would involve raising Medicare taxes to 5% from 3.8% for people earning more than $400,000 a year and effectively expanding the reach of the tax so it applies to business income as well as investments, wages and self-employment income. Mr. Biden would also redirect some existing taxes from the government’s general fund to a Medicare fund.
Lol why isn’t “business income” subject to this tax already?
The president will also propose raising taxes on wealthier people and corporations to help pay for his proposals, reviving ideas that didn’t become law while Democrats controlled the House and Senate. For instance, the budget is expected to include a plan to impose minimum taxes on very wealthy Americans, who often pay little in taxes if they don’t sell their investments and realize income. That tax would be 25%, up from last year’s 20% proposal.
He has said he would call for quadrupling the 1% tax on stock buybacks that took effect in January, which the White House has said would encourage companies to invest in their growth instead of boosting shareholders. Other tax-increase proposals include new limits on wealthy people’s tax-advantaged retirement accounts, higher levies on oil-and-gas companies, and higher tax rates on private-equity managers’ carried-interest income.
As he has before, Mr. Biden will propose raising the top individual tax rate to 39.6% from 37%, raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, taxing top earners’ capital gains at higher rates and increasing taxes on U.S. companies’ foreign profits.