GENEVA, SWITZERLAND - A proposal to the US Congress to end the citizenship-based tax system used by the United States was unveiled Monday by a Geneva-based international group, American Citizens Abroad (ACA). The proposal follows a series of meeting between congressional leaders in Washington and Jackie Bugnion, ACA director, with ACA pushing the argument that the current system is making the US less competitive.
Bugnion met with Democratic and Republican staff of the Senate Finance Committee and the House Ways and Means Committee as well as staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.
The US is the only industrialized country in the world to base taxation on citizenship rather than residence, rules that apply to individuals as well as companies. Congress is already considering changing the law for companies, and ACA is pushing for it to include individuals. “Changing to residence-based taxation would be good for Americans overseas,” says Marylouise Serrato, the group’s executive director, “but also good for the entire US economy.”
ACA will be systematically contacting all Congressional offices on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means Committee to get issues concerning Americans residing overseas included in legislation on fundamental tax reform,” Serrato notes.
“Misguided” Fatca legislation part of the problem
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – A US congressional “super committee” of 12 is fighting its way through proposals to cut the nation’s budget by $1.3 trillion, but its negotiations appeared “near collapse” Friday, according to Reuters in an article that looks at the impact of the cuts on states. The states have been negotiating the cuts with the bipartisan committee, which has until next Wednesday 23 November to strike a deal that would reduce the nation’s debt, which reached $15 trillion last week. Failure to do so would result in budgets being reduced automatically, part of the deal that Congress and President Barack Obama reached last summer.
“Congress is already facing rock-bottom approval ratings after a year of down-to-the-wire budget battles, and failure to reach a deal would likely incite further disgust among voters as the 2012 election season heats up,” reports the National Post.
The BBC, in an unrelated story, offers a useful guide to what countries owe what money to other countries, based on BIS (Bank for International Settlements), IMF and World Bank data. It shows the US gross foreign debt, which is about $16.8 trillion at the end of the second quarter of 2011 according to World Bank Quarterly External Debt Statistics.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – California’s efforts to extend its planned high-speed rail line from San Francisco to Anaheim won’t have funding from the federal government in 2013, but the High Speed Rail Authority in the state says this won’t have an immediate impact, since the programme assumes no federal funding in 2012. The $8 billion cut from the 2012 federal budget 18 November by a congressional committee is just the first slice of a $61 billion package for California that is part of President Obama’s plans for a national bullet train line, reports KQED in California.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US lower house of Congress, the House of Representatives, voted overwhelmingly Wednesday 2 November in favour of a resolution reconfirming the country’s motto, “In God we trust”. The motion is non-binding, reports CNS news. “The resolution approved Tuesday not only reaffirms the national motto, it also supports and encourages its public display in all public buildings, public schools and government institutions,” it reports.
Republican Randy Forbes of Virginia was behind the resolution, approved 396-9, with 8 Democrats and 1 Republican opposing it.
The motto was adopted in 1956, but it had been used on coins since 1864.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – US President Barack Obama told congressional leaders Monday 11 July that they will have to meet for daily talks to resolve the impasse over the US budget, as he pushes for a long-term agreement with Republicans that would raise the national debt ceiling. The budget has already overshot the ceiling of $14.3 trillion and the US is currently running an annual budget deficit of $1.5t.
Republicans are unhappy with Obama’s call for tax increases and his fellow Democrats are unhappy with his insistence on cutting social welfare programmes. But Obama told reporters in Washington Monday that he won’t back off on his demand for a longer term deal rather than a quick fix to the ceiling issue before 2 August. If the budget is not passed by then, the day the budget runs out, the US will risk defaulting on its debt.
Meanwhile, as the budget debate heats up, 15 states in the Midwest are under heat wave advisories, meaning temperatures are expected to rise above 105F (41C), coupled with high humidity in some areas, such as Kansas City and St Louis, Missouri. CNN cites specialists who recommend that people avoid caffeine and alcohol in these areas.
Links to other sites: BBC, CNN, Washington Post
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee late Tuesday 28 June authorized the use of limited Nato air strikes in Libya, but said no to the use of ground troops. The Senate remains divided over the legality of President Barack Obama’s call for the US to actively participate in Nato’s Libyan campaign and the committee’s 14-5 vote is now likely to prompt a full debate in the Senate this week. At issue: whether the president needs the permission of Congress, under a 1973 law, the War Powers Resolution, that requires a president to obtain permission from Congress for hostilities lasting more than 60 days.
The Senate’s actions come a few days after the House refused to support Obama’s Libya programme.
Links to others sites: AFP, Times of India, Washington Post
©2011 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Budget deal not worked out by Thursday evening, shutdown looms for midnight Friday
“I’m not yet prepared to express wild optimism,” a cautious President Barack Obama told reporters late Thursday 7 April, after talks with House and Senate leaders at the White House, in an attempt to avoid the US government shutting down at midnight Friday. The key issue is a spending bill that Congrress has not managed to pass because of differences over what the NY Times calls “only a few billion dollars . . . a relatively small gap in a $3.5 trillion budget.
Abortion funding and environmental protection projects are two of the key issues, with Republicans insisting on spending cuts for projects Democrats are determined to fund.
Republicans were behind a stopgap bill that would provide one week of funding for most government agencies and one year of military funding, but Obama has said it is a “distraction” and he will veto it.
Federal departments are reportedly preparing to lay off workers and shut down services if a bill is not passed Friday.
Links to other sites: Fox, New York Times, NPR
The Republican-dominated US House voted 240-185 Friday 18 February to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, which says it received $363 million in federal aid in 2010. The organization provides contraceptive counseling and aid, but also abortions, and it has long been a target of right-wing politicians.
The Washington Post reports that the “vote on Friday is a victory for anti-abortion forces led by Indiana GOP Rep. Mike Pence. He says taxpayer money should not go to groups that provide or promote abortion.”
Fox News folded news of the vote into a story on the overall “defunding” of President Obama’s healthcare reforms, an amendment with multiple facets but designed to cripple the new US healthcare programme. It notes that “the overall bill is the first step in an increasingly bitter struggle between Democrats and Republicans over how much to cut federal agencies’ funding over the second half of the budget year that ends Sept. 30. Current funding runs out March 4 and a temporary spending bill will be needed to avoid a government shutdown.”
CBS News shows “a moment that commanded solemn attention on the House floor”:
Two days after US President Barack Obama gave his State of the Union address reactions remain varied, with praise for his oratory and mixed reactions to his success at inspiring, clouded by doubts about the president’s ability to push through his programmes in a Congress where a stronger Republican presence is likely to halt any spending increases. Several liberals asked where the programme is, in the face of an Obama who may be moving more to the centre, with some complaining that the speech was too vague. Fox New’s Kevin McCullough predictably called it a “sorry state of the union” speech.
Ian Fletcher, Huffington Post, talks about bipartisan economic cluelessness while Larry Greenemeier at Scientific American says the Sputnik mentality of 50 years ago that Obama mentioned is not there today. Greenpeace looked for remarks on the environment while Iowans, in the heart of US corn country, looked for hints on biofuels policy.
ABC news doublechecked Obama’s facts “to see if they are true” while the New York Times ran the whole transcript. The San Francisco Examiner suggests he reads the New York Times too often which is why he would use a term like “working class”, which the Des Moines Register in Iowa doesn’t use much. The Des Moines Register asked its readers in this Republican state to rate the speech, however, and 40 percent of the 845 by Thursday morning gave him an “A” or top rating out of five options, with the other grades all 13-17 percent.
The president has other fans as well, who found the speech “inspiring”, including a senator from North Dakota, says the local paper and a student at Vassar, writing for the school paper.
NPR takes a look around at the mix of reactions.
, 25 January 2011
Taxpayer money that is spent on comic books on the history of printing ($30,000), the many empty ruined buildings that the Veteran Affairs Administration owns and spent $175m in 2010 to maintain, the $2.2m that the Department of Energy could save by turning off the lights in its buildings; these are are some of the things the US government spends taxpayers’ money on, says US Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma in his Wastebook 2010.
Coburn argues that the US government is spending more than $1 trillion more than it is collecting in taxes, and Congress should take the lead in cutting wasteful spending. He says government borrowing is equal to $44,000 per person.
Links to other sites: ABC News, Chicago Sun-Times, NewsOK
Americans, unlike other nationalities, file and often pay taxes in the country where they reside as well as to the US
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The US Congress next Sunday, 21 November, has a tax debate scheduled, and worried Americans who live overseas are struggling to get the attention of lawmakers on several key points. Top of the list is serious miscalculations that could encourage Congress to eliminate a crucial deduction for overseas Americans, the foreign earned income exclusion (FEIE), say some Americans. Their hardest job may be getting the attention of Congress as the fight heats up over whether or not to extend several Bush-era tax cuts, indefinitely, temporarily or not at all.
Geneva-based American Citizens Abroad (ACA), a non-profit non-partisan group, wrote a sharply worded letter to the US Commission for Responsible Federal Budgets 10 November, “protesting the use of impossible statistics in the document ‘Let’s Get Specific: Tax Expenditures’ published in October 2010,” says the ACA in a statement.
The commission estimates that eliminating the FEIE “would bring in $6 billion in additional tax revenues, while ACA calculates that this would not only bring in far less, well under $1b, but it would also be a disaster from the point of view of jobs for Americans.”
The foreign earned income exclusion allows Americans to deduct $91,400 of income earned abroad before double taxation kicks in. If they deduct the taxes they pay in their country of residence they may not take the FEIE.
©2010 Chappatte, distributed by Globe Cartoon. More cartoons on Chappatte’s web site. Geneva-based Patrick Chappatte works for the International Herald Tribune, for Geneva newspaper Le Temps, and for NZZ am Sonntag. All cartoons reproduced with permission.
Jose Manuel Zelaya, who was deposed as president of Honduras in a coup 28 June, says he will not participate in a presidential election slated for 29 November and that he has asked his supporters to renounce it. His announcement came in a published letter explaining his case to US President Barack Obama. His decision is a blow to hopes for a negotiated settlement that arose when he and Roberto Micheletti, who pushed him from power, signed a US-brokered agreement in October that called for a unity government until the election. It also called for Congress to decide if Zelaya should be returned to power, but Congress has opted to hand that decision to the country’s highest court. The elections are causing problems for Honduran citizens outside the country, who are unsure where and how to vote: in Florida the Honduran consulate says citizens should vote there, but the Honduran government says the consulate no longer has the authority to authorize this.
The dispute is the latest in a series of diplomatic tussles involving Hondurans. The Honduran ambassador to the UN was expelled from the UN Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva 14 September after the group’s president, Alex van Meeuwen of Belgium, decided that Delmer Urbizo, the Honduran ambassador, was not the legitimate representative of the government of Honduras. Van Meeuwen made his decision after various points of order called by a group of Latin American countries who questioned the Honduran’s credentials and the legitimacy of the government he represents. Argentina, Brazil, Cuba and Mexico argued that the UN General Assembly had called on organizations not to recognize the interim government of Honduras. But Urbizo has told GenevaLunch there is no Honduran government in exile under former President Zelaya, and therefore the Honduran people is being deprived of its legitimate right to be represented in international forums.
Links to other sites: CNN, Miami Herald
The US House of Representatives passed its version of a US health care reform Saturday 7 November and less than a day later President Barack Obama in a speech at the White House turned up pressure on the US Senate to quickly approve its own version of the bill. The House bill would cost $1.1 trillion and provide health care benefits to some 36 million Americans who are currently uninsured. If the Senate passes its bill, the two houses of Congress will then negotiate a final version of the bill, which will become law. The vote in the House was close and mostly along party lines: 220-215, with only one Republican voting yes. The Senate fight is expected to be even tougher, with two bills merged into one and the overall cost not yet clear.
Links to other sites: Financial Times, New York Times, NPR
The agreement between the two rival sides in Honduras’ four-month constitutional crisis will be decided by the Congress, which is in recess, after taking into consideration an opinion of the country’s Supreme Court.
The agreement would allow Manuel Zelaya back into the presidential palace to serve out his term at the head of a national unity government to be installed by 5 November, would lift international sanctions on the country, establish a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate the events of the past four months, and sets the stage for elections to be held 29 November whose outcome will be accepted and recognized by the rest of the world.
The Supreme Court in June voted to oust Zelaya for attempting to change the constitution in favour of a second term for himself. Congress then installed interim president Roberto Micheletti. Commentators say it is unlikely the Supreme Court will reverse itself. Congress may decide to vote in favour of the agreement in the interests of ending the strife. The opposition Nationalist party candidate is currently leading the polls. Reuters India, Reuters South Africa, Wall Street Journal
US President Barack Obama told the US Wednesday that the time for bickering over healthcare reform is over, as he stepped directly into the fight after weeks of leaving it mainly to Congress, to push for his plan for a non-profit public insurance plan. His appearance on prime time television was aimed primarily at the American middle class, says NPR, and he took pains to reassure those who like their insurance plans that these would not be affected. The speech comes as his public ratings have been sliding. BBC, Fox News, The Globe & Mail, Canada, Huffington Post
Obama has faced harsh critics over healthcare reform, but another battle has been grabbing public attention, over US troops in Afghanistan. Growing public resistance to building troops, which Obama’s advisors have been warning him about, came into the limelight with the publication by Associated Press of photos of a dying soldier, despite the family’s wish for them to remain private. Guardian, UK, MSNBC
US President Barack Obama says that he “wants to get something done this year” about health care reform, and will address Congress in a major speech 9 September to clarifiy his ideas about the best way to move forward. He promises to “make sure that Democrats and Republicans understand that I’m open to new ideas, that we’re not being rigid and ideological about this thing, but we do intend to get something done this year”, he said in an ABC news interview 8 September.
Health care reform has been bogged down in both houses of Congress, where Obama’s Democrats have solid majorities, by recalcitrance on a “public option”, a public health insurance system alongside the private system.
Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the House in the 1990s says in an interview 8 September with NPR, that his advice to Obama is to break health care reform up into five or seven manageable bills, each addressing a separate issue. “I think if they would take — and this is what I suggested to Mrs. Clinton (in 1993, when Hilary Clinton tried to introduce health care reform, ed. note)— if they would take five to seven smaller bills, take one on litigation reform to lower the cost of defensive medicine and to save billions of dollars; take one on fixing Medicare and Medicaid so we are not paying billions to crooks who are not delivering services; have one on prevention and wellness; have one on better practices. You could pass five to seven bills and, collectively, they would add up to an enormous amount of change.” BBC, NPR, Reuters
US President Barack Obama held a meeting 29 July in a supermarket in Bristol, Virginia to sell his plans for a health care plan for Americans. Surrounded by members of the public and store employees, Obama explained the need for reform of the US health care system. The House Democratic leadership has found common ground with some conservative members, known as blue dogs, who balked at the expense of extending health care to all Americans. Some of the Republican senators who are key to getting a vote passed declared recently that a vote before the August recess was not possible. CNN, NPR, TriCities.com
The number of questions is growing about former US Vice-President Dick Cheney’s orders to the CIA to hide some of their activities from Congress. By law, congressional subcommittees must be informed of covert activities but CIA Director Leon Panetta testified to the Senate and House intelligence committees that he had been directed by Cheney to withhold information. Diane Feinstein, who chairs the Senate committee, confirmed Sunday 12 July on Fox News that Panetta had testified, CNN reports in its latest update on the unfolding story, which was broken late last week by the New York Times. Cheney has not been available for comment. Bloomberg
French President Nicolas Sarkozy dived into a festering debate on the use of the burka in France when he addressed the French congress Monday 22 June at Versailles. He said “the problem of the burka is not a religious problem, it’s a problem of liberty, of dignity of women.” Last week a group of parliamentarians led by Communist André Gerin called for an investigation into the use of the burka in France. The issue is fraught because France is home to the largest Muslim population in Europe, widely estimated to be five million people. The burka is a head-to toe covering worn by women in central Asia, notably in Afghanistan. BBC, Libération (Fre)
[Ed. note: the number of Muslims in France has been disputed, with some statisticians saying it is smaller: l"Express, 2003]
Reuters looks first at the tone, then the content of the US president’s major address to the US Congress Tuesday 24 February and concludes that the “yes we can!” spirit is back, after a few weeks of “maybe we can’t” messages. The Financial Times looks first at his rhetoric about more money needed to bail out US banks, then comments that “White House officials had earlier promised that Mr Obama would strike a “Reaganesque” note of optimism after mounting criticism that his gloomy rhetoric was undermining public confidence. The president has spent recent weeks making increasingly dire warnings about the consequence of inaction as he sought to drum up support for the $787bn fiscal stimulus.” The New York Times, looking at the politics of the speech, noted that “After eight years under President George W Bush, Americans tuned in on Tuesday night to a scene that put the new Democratic cast front and center.”
A US Senate seat won by a Republican, Saxby Chambliss, in Georgia has ended Democrats’ hopes of a “super majority”: 60 seats would have put them in a position to stop any Republican use of a filibuster to block legislation. The Democrats now have 58 seats in the Senate, with only one race still to be decided, in Minnesota, but they needed 60 for a super majority.
Detroit’s three big automakers went to Washington Tuesday to convince the US Congress to bail out the ailing companies with an injection of $25 billion they say is necessary to avoid bankruptcy. But lawmakers appear not to have been convinced enough to move quickly on the request. CNN
