Obama Threatens to Veto GOP Plan to Screw Middle Class and Give More Huge Tax Breaks to Corporations

Congress has nearly reached bipartisan agreement on a tax bill that would retroactively renew tax breaks that expired at the end of last year, making them permanent. But President Obama has said that he will veto the bill if it reaches his desk because it heavily favors business while ignoring middle and lower-income families.

“The president would veto the proposed deal because it would give permanent tax breaks to help well-connected corporations while neglecting working families,” said White House Spokeswoman Jennifer Friedman.

The deal negotiated by aides to Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Republicans would lock in tax breaks that have been renewed on a short-term basis year after year, making them permanent. Supporters of the bill say that this would give businesses more certainty in making investments, but Democrats say that they negotiated the best bill they could before the Republican takeover in January.

Not everyone agrees that this bill would benefit the country.

“It’s somewhat ironic they’re willing to just proceed here, unpaid for, leave the middle class behind and include a lot of things that I think wouldn’t benefit our economy,” said Jason Furman, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

The president and Denis R. McDonough, the White House chief of staff, responded to the news that an agreement was reached by personally calling Democratic lawmakers to elicit support to sustain a veto as did Shaun Donovan, the White House budget director, and Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew.

Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also made a round of calls to make sure that she had the votes in the House to sustain a veto.

7 disturbing facts about the Koch brothers’ civil rights history

Charles and David Koch are notorious for amassing a business empire well-known for destroying the environment and hijacking the political process to ram their privatization and business agenda on the country. But what is equally egregious about their political activities are their efforts to dismantle years of civil rights progress. The Bridge Project, a non-profit organization devoted to “opposing the conservative movement’s extremem ideology and exposing its dishonest tactics,” recently released a 16-page report on the Koch brothers’ funding of groups that have been accused of suppressing minority voter turnout, destroying unions (particularly in Wisconsin) and attempting to get rid of Social Security.

Here are seven jaw-droppers from the report:

1. Kochs’ union-busting efforts hurt African American mobility.

Though unions have been known to increase the economic mobility of African-American workers, Koch-funded organizations have been very active in destroying anything that’s left of them. Koch-backed organizations like Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Reason Foundation have long viewed public sector unions with disdain. In 2011, collective bargaining was ended in Wisconsin after the state legislature passed Act 10.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the passage of the law earlier this year, after unions in the state filed a lawsuit, claiming the law violated workers’ right to free assembly and equal protection. The Koch-backed entities helped finance Gov. Scott Walker’s election campaign—the most profile political leader in the state to lead anti-union efforts.

2. Koch brothers’ secret billionaire summit hosts known racist.

According to the Nation, the Koch brothers hosted a secret summit on June 16 at the St. Regis Monarch Bay resort, in Dana Point, Calif. Besides a number of notable Republican politicians in attendance, one of the most controversial men giving “dinner remarks” was Charles Murray, a co-author of The Bell Curve, a book which argued that blacks and Latinos have lower IQs than Asians and whites.

BRYAN FISCHER: THE POOR SHOULD BE 'KISSING THE GROUND' ON WHICH THE RICH WALK

American Family Association spokeshater Bryan Fischer, responding to a recent Wall Street Journal article reporting that the top 1% of Americans account for nearly 30% of all federal tax revenue, had this to say on his radio program:

So rather than the poor, the low-income, and the middle class being resentful of [the rich], they should be kissing the ground on which they walk. Who’s paying for the EBT cards? Who’s paying for food stamps? Who’s paying for the women and infant children program? Who’s paying for subsidized housing? Who’s paying for Medicaid? It is the top 1% So they ought to be given ticker tape parades once a week in all of our major cities to thank them for funding welfare for everybody.