Taxes

President Barack Obama and congressional leaders seeking to negotiate a deal to increase the legal limit on the federal government's debt, would need to agree to increase that debt by $615.865 billion between now and Sept. 30, just to keep the government going at current spending levels, according to the CBO's latest estimate of the fiscal 2011 deficit and the Treasury Department's latest…

At a White House press conference today, President Barack Obama said that "professional politicians" understand the debt crisis better than "the public." 

In an interview with Tim Pawlenty on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, host David Gregory cited New York Times columnist David Brooks slamming Republican opposition to tax increases in debt ceiling negotiations as "fanaticism" and proclaimed: "There is this purity test which is no tax increases, no revenue increases at all." Pawlenty responded by pointing out Brooks's liberal leanings: "Well,…

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was the featured guest on both CBS's "Face the Nation" and NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. For some reason, hosts Bob Schieffer and David Gregory didn't ask the most important question every person in the world currently following the debt ceiling is dying to know the answer to:

In their Sunday evening coverage of the Minnesota government shutdown, Associated Press reporters Steve Karnowski and Amy Forliti failed to mention any form of the word "tax," failed to mention "spending" in the context of government outlays, and fretted that a prolonged shutdown might cause a "brain drain" from state government. The failure to bring up taxes is clearly the item's most…

David Gregory decided to have a very fair and balanced roundtable discussion at the conclusion of Sunday's "Meet the Press" exclusively with the perilously liberal Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson and the equally left-leaning Chuck Todd of NBC News. With the subject being Newsweek's new cover story about former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, Todd mysteriously made the case for how slim…

As you've watched and read media reports concerning the debt ceiling, have you gotten the feeling the press have given Republicans a pass for standing strong in their pledge to not raise taxes? CNN's Howard Kurtz thinks they have, and said so quite often on Sunday's "Reliable Sources" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Democrat strategist and ABC contributor Donna Brazile on Sunday predictably blamed the current debt ceiling impasse on Republicans and their refusal to raise taxes. This led George Will to state what would be obvious to all media members if they weren't so in the tank for Barack Obama, namely that he and his Party have been kicking the deficit can down the road so long they're guilty of "can…

Given the opportunity to directly relay the two sentences of House Speaker John Boehner's statement on the status of debt-ceiling and budget negotiations tonight, the Associated Press's Andrew Taylor and Jim Kuhnhenn, in their 9:29 p.m. report (saved here at my web host for future reference, fair use and discussion purposes) disgracefully cut the Speaker's statement off after its first sentence…

Bill Maher on Friday proudly equated the Casey Anthony verdict with Republican thinking. Unfortunately for him, conservative author Ann Coulter was present, and when she got the chance to respond during the internet-only Overtime segment of HBO's "Real Time," she nicely exposed some of the host's most delicious hypocrisies (video follows with transcript and commentary):

It's one thing to report dishonestly. It's another to proudly display it. The front page of the ABC "World News" website now contains a "Countdown to U.S. Debt Default' clock:

You knew when you saw conservative author Ann Coulter was pitted against far-left MSNBC contributor and Nation magazine editor Christopher Hayes on HBO's "Real Time" sparks were going to fly. Such occurred when Hayes told the panel that his mother works for the government prompting Coulter to respond, "She is a drain on society" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Amid all of the spurious talk about "tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires" (defined incongruously by the left as anyone with income of over $200,000), the Obama administration and its media lackeys are trying to raise support for an increase in taxes on corporate jets. It's well-known that the amount of money that potentially would be raised by closing this loophole is miniscule, it'd…

MSNBC Morning Joe contributor Mike Barnicle repeated the Democrat mantra that repealing Republican tax cuts doesn't constitute a tax increase that he also spouted yesterday on Morning Joe. "The idea that reverting back to a tax rate that existed that people paid into, calling it now a tax increase, I just think that's politics at its worst," said Barnicle.