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The first commenter is right; we need a revenue neutral carbon tax to raise the price of carbon based fuels, thereby imposing the greatest cost on those firms and forms of energy that produce the most emissions. It would also avoid the evasion and market manipulation that plague a cap and trade system and provide powerful incentives for the development of new, climate-friendly technologies. www.climatetaskforce.org

# 3:

The answer is:

The top % of people/corporations in this country
and I mean THE TOP percentages.

Pay little or NO taxes.

The solution? It's simple. I call it the MMT, or the Minimum Millionaire Tax.
See HERE: where i proposed it LAST SUMMER..
http://sos-newdeal.blogspot.com/2008/08/topic-of-week-this-week-tax-reform-tax.html

AND look HERE:
the 400 richest americans made 263 million dollars, and paid only 17%???

I say, MY new mInIMUM tax is 1% of GROSS income...(if you made over a million dollars...)

Disappointing conversation! It's more of the same

Can Brian and David Sanger explain to us where is the 'permanent' spending in this bill?
The only permanent spending I see is the tax cuts.

The Republican strategy is an electoral strategy. They hope the economy continues to tank so that they can say the Obama plan was a failure during the 2010/12 elections.

Sadly, The WH is playing ball with these self-interested insurgents. Instead of crafting the best recovery plan, with aid to workers, homeowners, and the poor, there are tons of stupid tax breaks for corporations sucking money out of the economy at what economists agree is a negative ROI.

This is supposed to get Obama some sort of bipartisan support. It won't get him that, and it won't get us out of this recession, either. . . a loss for America. . . and a victory for the Republicans. Bipartisan that.

The private sector is reducing jobs and contracting because of fear and because consumers have reduced their spending and will not be consuming at the levels they had been consuming for the next 5 years. As a result, it is important for the government to step in and stimulate the economy by spending on investements that have been neglected for decades.
This is not bate and switch as Brian states. This is about getting the government to step in where the private sector has failed.
We need to invest in our future. We will not be a modern country if we don't have roads or electricity or a somewhat modern infraestructure

I believe we need a stimulus, but am very wary of being told the sky is falling and this must be pushed through without hearings or debate--much like Paulson's TARP, which was an utter failure. We need to do this right--it's a huge amount of money, which we will be paying for far into the future. No more blank checks!

The poorest Americans are already so low on the economic ladder that they pay little or no tax anyway. So how is any tax cut going to help them? How is a tax cut going to help anyone who has been unemployed for 6 months? Non-existent income cannot be taxed!

Meanwhile, Bloomberg wants to _raise_ regressive sales taxes. And none want to raise taxes on those _most_ able to pay and who have benefited most from the Ponzi scheme that was American financial marketplace.

Brian,

Please ask all your Republican guests to explain how lowering taxes will stimulate the economy now when we just had tax cuts in 2001, 2003 and 2005.
Please ask your guests to site one peer reviewed study which shows how lower taxes actually "trickle down" to lower income Americans. I, for one, have never been able to find one. Please don't let them off the hook without answering how tax cuts will stimulate the economy and create jobs.

Thank you,
Neal

I've heard a few interviews from Sanger's book tour so far, and he seems intent on peddling the Bush trope that the Bush Admin had bad intelligence going into the Iraq war--don't let him get away with it. There was plenty of info telling all who cared that Iraw had no WMDs and that they're nuclear & bio weapons programs were moribund. The WH fixed the intel to match their desire to invade. It was not that they couldn't trust the information; it's that they didn't care about the truth.

Why isn't the revenue neutral carbon tax in this bill? If you want to stimulate green jobs, green technologies, and green manufacturing that's your ticket.