The Obama Record is a Record

[GWV5903]

Anytime you folks want to come back to reality and face facts please feel free to HONESTLY answer the following:

WHEN did this economic crisis begin?

We all know when it began.

Just wondering if this President plans on trying to end it

He doesn't know how, he is a fish out of water so to say...

You have to have been drinking the Kool Aid for years to defend this incompetent POTUS...

 

[Foxfyre]

I am not voting for Obama, but.....
If you take these statements, but refuse to look at cause, don't even actually blame Obama for them, simply state that they are true, why would that decide whether or not to re-elect him?

You are setting up a bunch of conditions that make the question seem ridiculous. You seem to be saying, "These things exist. Ignore why they exist or how they came to be, and then make your decision about whether Obama should be re-elected.". Is there a reason you want an answer without any deeper look into things? If you simply wanted people to list positive accomplishments of this administration, I'd think you would have said that, so I can only assume that isn't the case. Yet you seem unwilling to accept that some people, as evidenced by the replies on this thread, will not consider those statements either valid or the responsibility of the president. It sounds to me like you are trying to fix this so that there is only one possible response.

Every president inherits stuff from his predecessors,. As previously posted, GWB inherited the housing bubble from several of his predecessors and he was aware of it and in the last two years was sounding the alarm about it. But in his first term, he also continued policies that created it and he didn't push for any reforms when he had a GOP Congress that would have probably followed his lead.

So, the housing crash was absolutely part of his record and was absolutely a factor in whether he would have deserved to be re-elected had he been eligible.

Barack Obama inherited a lot of problems from the Bush Administration and he was not the cause of all the factors involved in all those 15 items. But he has had three and a half years now to address the problems, improve things, push for cvorrections, put us back onto a better road. For some time he had a super majority in Congress and strong majorities in both houses for the first two years.

Has he shown effective leadership to address those 15 items? Have the ideas he has pushed been effective in correcting the problems and makiing things better? Has he laid out a clear vision that makes people trust him and believe that he knows what he is doing?

Those who now expect to vote for Obama in November, why?

Again, I think you have set this up not to ask for honest opinions about why people will vote for Obama, but to express your dislike for his presidency. When you start with, "These things are bad. Whether they are caused by Obama or not, whether any other president can change them or not, they are true now, so Obama gets the blame for them.". Yes, I realize you said you aren't casting blame, but if he is not responsible, then your 15 points are mostly meaningless to the question of why someone would re-elect Obama.

You have tied anyone's response as to why they would vote for Obama to your 15 statements. That is unfair, especially when you seemingly won't accept anyone's reasons for disagreeing with their veracity or disagreeing that they are the responsibility of the president. I don't know if you aren't being clear enough with what you want as responses or if you don't see how tying your question to these points is very limiting on the possible responses, but it's not making for a good discussion.

Perhaps you could rephrase just what it is you are trying to accomplish? Do you simply want the question of why people will vote for Obama answered, or do you just want someone to try and refute your 15 points, or what?

The OP doesn't assume that Obama is to blame for or created the facts reported in the 15 statements. It doesn't suggest that there are not outside factors over which he had no control. It does not address the issue of whether things would be different if somebody else had been in office.

It is a simple statement of 15 facts of conditions that exist at this point in time which is three and one half years into the Barack Obama first term of office.

The question asked in the OP was that if the 15 statements listed are accepted as fact, why would anybody vote for Barack Obama this coming November?

So far mostly everybody has attacked the thesis of the OP and nobody seems to want to provide an answer. \

And I hoped to focus on the record and not make this yet another Obama bashing thread. Obama has been an effective leader in problem solving or he hasn't. His supporters should be able to show how he has been. Those who do not intend to vote for him in November should have a very clear and honest reason for how he has not been.

 

[zonly1]

Gentle Reminder. This thread is in the CDZ

The Obama record is his record no matter how much he and/or his supporters want to get around it. The fifteen items listed below are a summary of his record.

I took the list from Townhall which is by no means an objective source and it is a source I would not use to support a point of view. But the list is a good one to illustrate our President's record in his first term of office.

I wonder if his supporters can dispute that all fifteen items are legitimate? If so, please provide your rationale or legitimate source so we keep this honest.

Others may have some items that need to be added to the list.

The question is, if the list is valid and accepted as the record, why would anybody vote for a second term for Barack Obama?''

Here's the list:

1) Real median household income is down $4300 since Obama took office.

2) The percentage of unemployed workers who've been out of a job for more than a year is over 30%.

3) The country has had the longest streak of +8% unemployment since the Depression under Obama: 39 months and counting.

4) In 2011 under Barack Obama, nearly one out of every seven Americans was on food stamps. That's a 70 percent increase from 2007.

5) Fifty percent of new college graduates are underemployed or unemployed.

6) U.S. home ownership is at a decade long low. So is the number of Americans who say their home is worth more than they paid for it. Home prices are the lowest they've been since 2002.

7) Barack Obama ended NASA's manned space program.

8) Going into this election cycle, Barack Obama had raised more money from Wall Street than any President in history. He has also raised more money from Wall Street than all of the GOP presidential contenders combined in this election cycle.

9) Under Barack Obama's leadership, the last time Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats passed a budget was April 9, 2009.

10) Barack Obama's budget was defeated 414-0 in the House and 99-0 in the Senate.

11) When he was running for President in 2008, Barack Obama pledged not to raise taxes on families making less than 250,000 dollars per year. He broke that promise with the tanning salon tax and with Obamacare, which raises almost 500 billion dollars in new taxes, a significant portion of which would be paid by people making less than 250,000 dollars per year.

12) When Barack Obama took office, gas was $1.95 per gallon. Today gas is $3.72 per gallon.

13) In February of this year, the federal government had a 229 billion dollar deficit. That was the largest deficit in the history of the United States.

14) America lost its AAA credit rating (which it had held since 1917) on Obama's watch despite the fact that Timothy Geithner publicly said there was "no risk" of that happening.

15) Barack Obama added more to the debt in just 38 months than George Bush did in two full terms as President.
15 Facts That Even Obama's Biggest Supporters Should Be Able To Admit Are True - John Hawkins - [page]

There should be fact #16 &#17:
9 consecutive days of decline in the dow jones during the obama 1st term in orfice; only match by jimmey carter.

Claim to cut the deficit in half in his run in 2008 but merely added 50% to our budget at present. How does any American household balance there budget with this approach and still remain solvent?

 

[Montrovant]

Every president inherits stuff from his predecessors,. As previously posted, GWB inherited the housing bubble from several of his predecessors and he was aware of it and in the last two years was sounding the alarm about it. But in his first term, he also continued policies that created it and he didn't push for any reforms when he had a GOP Congress that would have probably followed his lead.

So, the housing crash was absolutely part of his record and was absolutely a factor in whether he would have deserved to be re-elected had he been eligible.

Barack Obama inherited a lot of problems from the Bush Administration and he was not the cause of all the factors involved in all those 15 items. But he has had three and a half years now to address the problems, improve things, push for cvorrections, put us back onto a better road. For some time he had a super majority in Congress and strong majorities in both houses for the first two years.

Has he shown effective leadership to address those 15 items? Have the ideas he has pushed been effective in correcting the problems and makiing things better? Has he laid out a clear vision that makes people trust him and believe that he knows what he is doing?

Those who now expect to vote for Obama in November, why?

Again, I think you have set this up not to ask for honest opinions about why people will vote for Obama, but to express your dislike for his presidency. When you start with, "These things are bad. Whether they are caused by Obama or not, whether any other president can change them or not, they are true now, so Obama gets the blame for them.". Yes, I realize you said you aren't casting blame, but if he is not responsible, then your 15 points are mostly meaningless to the question of why someone would re-elect Obama.

You have tied anyone's response as to why they would vote for Obama to your 15 statements. That is unfair, especially when you seemingly won't accept anyone's reasons for disagreeing with their veracity or disagreeing that they are the responsibility of the president. I don't know if you aren't being clear enough with what you want as responses or if you don't see how tying your question to these points is very limiting on the possible responses, but it's not making for a good discussion.

Perhaps you could rephrase just what it is you are trying to accomplish? Do you simply want the question of why people will vote for Obama answered, or do you just want someone to try and refute your 15 points, or what?

The OP doesn't assume that Obama is to blame for or created the facts reported in the 15 statements. It doesn't suggest that there are not outside factors over which he had no control. It does not address the issue of whether things would be different if somebody else had been in office.

It is a simple statement of 15 facts of conditions that exist at this point in time which is three and one half years into the Barack Obama first term of office.

The question asked in the OP was that if the 15 statements listed are accepted as fact, why would anybody vote for Barack Obama this coming November?

So far mostly everybody has attacked the thesis of the OP and nobody seems to want to provide an answer. \

And I hoped to focus on the record and not make this yet another Obama bashing thread. Obama has been an effective leader in problem solving or he hasn't. His supporters should be able to show how he has been. Those who do not intend to vote for him in November should have a very clear and honest reason for how he has not been.

You are still tying your 15 points to Obama. That means that, however you might claim otherwise, you are at the very least implying that he's either at fault for them, or responsible for not fixing them. If someone believes that some of those points have nothing to do with the presidency, that whatever Obama did or did not do would have no direct effect on them, how do they answer? If someone believes some of those points would have been worse with another president, is that not an answer? And why do you need to start off with those points if you are just trying to find out why people think they should vote for Obama? You could have started the thread simply by asking that. Instead you have started with 15 negative points, said they are true and strongly implied that Obama should have been able to fix or improve them.

I don't understand why you would think this was other than an Obama bashing thread when that was pretty much the basis of the OP.

 

[Foxfyre]

Again, I think you have set this up not to ask for honest opinions about why people will vote for Obama, but to express your dislike for his presidency. When you start with, "These things are bad. Whether they are caused by Obama or not, whether any other president can change them or not, they are true now, so Obama gets the blame for them.". Yes, I realize you said you aren't casting blame, but if he is not responsible, then your 15 points are mostly meaningless to the question of why someone would re-elect Obama.

You have tied anyone's response as to why they would vote for Obama to your 15 statements. That is unfair, especially when you seemingly won't accept anyone's reasons for disagreeing with their veracity or disagreeing that they are the responsibility of the president. I don't know if you aren't being clear enough with what you want as responses or if you don't see how tying your question to these points is very limiting on the possible responses, but it's not making for a good discussion.

Perhaps you could rephrase just what it is you are trying to accomplish? Do you simply want the question of why people will vote for Obama answered, or do you just want someone to try and refute your 15 points, or what?

The OP doesn't assume that Obama is to blame for or created the facts reported in the 15 statements. It doesn't suggest that there are not outside factors over which he had no control. It does not address the issue of whether things would be different if somebody else had been in office.

It is a simple statement of 15 facts of conditions that exist at this point in time which is three and one half years into the Barack Obama first term of office.

The question asked in the OP was that if the 15 statements listed are accepted as fact, why would anybody vote for Barack Obama this coming November?

So far mostly everybody has attacked the thesis of the OP and nobody seems to want to provide an answer. \

And I hoped to focus on the record and not make this yet another Obama bashing thread. Obama has been an effective leader in problem solving or he hasn't. His supporters should be able to show how he has been. Those who do not intend to vote for him in November should have a very clear and honest reason for how he has not been.

You are still tying your 15 points to Obama. That means that, however you might claim otherwise, you are at the very least implying that he's either at fault for them, or responsible for not fixing them. If someone believes that some of those points have nothing to do with the presidency, that whatever Obama did or did not do would have no direct effect on them, how do they answer? If someone believes some of those points would have been worse with another president, is that not an answer? And why do you need to start off with those points if you are just trying to find out why people think they should vote for Obama? You could have started the thread simply by asking that. Instead you have started with 15 negative points, said they are true and strongly implied that Obama should have been able to fix or improve them.

I don't understand why you would think this was other than an Obama bashing thread when that was pretty much the basis of the OP.

Well some may draw the conclusion that a strong, effective leader would indeed have pushed for legislation and policy that would have improved at least some of the 'facts' by three and a half years into his first term of office. We would at least have some idea that he had a comprehensive and workable plan to improve things.

Tied to Obama? Do you think the 15 items should not be attached to the record of the Obama Administration? If we cannot look at these indicators as related to an administration's record, what is appropriate to use to evaluate whether a high level leader has or has not been effective in his job?

You consider evaluation of the President's job performance to be bashing?

 

[Trajan]

#9 ------

and that budget was just a continuing resolution really since Pelosi and Reid would not pass a budget in October 08 for 2009 which the were duty bound to do, becasue they thought they would get the WH back and they did, since then not a thing........

 

[Foxfyre]

#9 ------

and that budget was just a continuing resolution really since Pelosi and Reid would not pass a budget in October 08 for 2009 which the were duty bound to do, becasue they thought they would get the WH back and they did, since then not a thing........

Given trillion dollar deficits, the huge jump in the national debt--George Bush was soundly condemned for the deficits and the increase in the national debt during his administration--you would think all Americans would be concerned with a Congress and President spending our money with no restraints from any budget of any kind. And for not just one year but now three and no indication they plan to pass one for 2013 either. Their only restraint is the debt ceiling which they did pass with an automatic increase should it be needed. For those of us who are fiscally conservative, that is absolutely unconscionable.

Shouldn't this factor into an evaluation of the President's job performance? Of Congress's job performance? The President and Congress together generally are considered to make up an 'administration'.

 

[saveliberty]

The left just claims obstructionism from the right. Very doubtful Obama can gain both houses of Congress., so gridlock prevails for four more years with Obama. That what we need or want?

Anybody want an obstructionist claim validation?

 

[Foxfyre]

The left just claims obstructionism from the right. Very doubtful Obama can gain both houses of Congress., so gridlock prevails for four more years with Obama. That what we need or want?

Anybody want an obstructionist claim validation?

For the first two years of his first term of office, Obama enjoyed first a super majority and then a near super majority in Congress and passed essentially every piece of legislation he wanted passed in those two years. That is a fact.

He has had tougher sledding with a GOP majority in the House, but with a Senate refusing to even allow the huge majority of bilsl from the House to even be debated, much less brought to a vote, it is really sort of amusing in a sick sort of way that it is the Republicans that are accused of creating the gridlock.

So in Obama/Democrat speak, whatever good happened during the Clinton admnistration was Clinton's policy and doing and the GOP Congress who passed the legislation gets no credit at all. And despite the Democrats having both houses of Congress for the last two years, the Republicans and George W. Bush still get all the credit for anything bad that happened during that administration. And despite the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House for the first two years of this Administration, George Bush and the Republicans continue to get all the credit for anything bad that is happening during this administration.

So again I ask and refer to those 15 items. Is it not fair game to evaluate a President's job performance based on the conditions that exist three and a half years into his first term of office?

 

[saveliberty]

Absolutely, he owns everything at this point. There should also be clear plans and budgets layout as to what we can count on in the second adminstration.

 

[Foxfyre]

Absolutely, he owns everything at this point. There should also be clear plans and budgets layout as to what we can count on in the second adminstration.

It is fair to acknowledge that Obama inherited a very shaky and unstable bad economy. I have no problem with that.

It is also fair to evaluate Obama on what he has accomplished to improve that very shaky and unstable bad economy over the last three and a half years. If it appears that his administration has done little or nothing to make things better or allow things to get better, then why should we vote for him for a a second term?

 

[saveliberty]

Something about forward...

 

[Zander]

Something about forward...

Leading from behind.....??

 

[Vidi]

Absolutely, he owns everything at this point. There should also be clear plans and budgets layout as to what we can count on in the second adminstration.

It is fair to acknowledge that Obama inherited a very shaky and unstable bad economy. I have no problem with that.

It is also fair to evaluate Obama on what he has accomplished to improve that very shaky and unstable bad economy over the last three and a half years. If it appears that his administration has done little or nothing to make things better or allow things to get better, then why should we vote for him for a a second term?

What you consider little or nothing I call the stimulas package, the GM loan, the lilly ledbetter act, the Affordable Care Act, the ending of the Iraq war, The Reconsiliation Bill, the Credit Card Bill of Rights and the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...and thats just SOME of the economic legistlation hes signed.

But hey, I understand how that could be considered little to nothing when seen through the propagandized lens of his opponents.

 

[Wiseacre]

Absolutely, he owns everything at this point. There should also be clear plans and budgets layout as to what we can count on in the second adminstration.

It is fair to acknowledge that Obama inherited a very shaky and unstable bad economy. I have no problem with that.

It is also fair to evaluate Obama on what he has accomplished to improve that very shaky and unstable bad economy over the last three and a half years. If it appears that his administration has done little or nothing to make things better or allow things to get better, then why should we vote for him for a a second term?

What you consider little or nothing I call the stimulas package, the GM loan, the lilly ledbetter act, the Affordable Care Act, the ending of the Iraq war, The Reconsiliation Bill, the Credit Card Bill of Rights and the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...and thats just SOME of the economic legistlation hes signed.

But hey, I understand how that could be considered little to nothing when seen through the propagandized lens of his opponents.

She said his admin has done little or nothing TO MAKE THINGS BETTER, which is true for most of that stuff. But hey, I understand how that could be considered making things better when seen through the propagandized lens of his supporters.

 

[Foxfyre]

Absolutely, he owns everything at this point. There should also be clear plans and budgets layout as to what we can count on in the second adminstration.

It is fair to acknowledge that Obama inherited a very shaky and unstable bad economy. I have no problem with that.

It is also fair to evaluate Obama on what he has accomplished to improve that very shaky and unstable bad economy over the last three and a half years. If it appears that his administration has done little or nothing to make things better or allow things to get better, then why should we vote for him for a a second term?

What you consider little or nothing I call the stimulas package, the GM loan, the lilly ledbetter act, the Affordable Care Act, the ending of the Iraq war, The Reconsiliation Bill, the Credit Card Bill of Rights and the establishment of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau...and thats just SOME of the economic legistlation hes signed.

But hey, I understand how that could be considered little to nothing when seen through the propagandized lens of his opponents.

And if you trust consensus of the more acceptable polling organizations, most Americans believe most or all of these things have not made things better, but rather have contributed to things not getting better.

If they were positives, why so we still have the 15 items in the OP?

 

[Old Rocks]

Gentle Reminder. This thread is in the CDZ

The Obama record is his record no matter how much he and/or his supporters want to get around it. The fifteen items listed below are a summary of his record.

I took the list from Townhall which is by no means an objective source and it is a source I would not use to support a point of view. But the list is a good one to illustrate our President's record in his first term of office.

I wonder if his supporters can dispute that all fifteen items are legitimate? If so, please provide your rationale or legitimate source so we keep this honest.

Others may have some items that need to be added to the list.

The question is, if the list is valid and accepted as the record, why would anybody vote for a second term for Barack Obama?''

Here's the list:

1) Real median household income is down $4300 since Obama took office.

2) The percentage of unemployed workers who've been out of a job for more than a year is over 30%.

3) The country has had the longest streak of +8% unemployment since the Depression under Obama: 39 months and counting.

4) In 2011 under Barack Obama, nearly one out of every seven Americans was on food stamps. That's a 70 percent increase from 2007.

5) Fifty percent of new college graduates are underemployed or unemployed.

6) U.S. home ownership is at a decade long low. So is the number of Americans who say their home is worth more than they paid for it. Home prices are the lowest they've been since 2002.

7) Barack Obama ended NASA's manned space program.

8) Going into this election cycle, Barack Obama had raised more money from Wall Street than any President in history. He has also raised more money from Wall Street than all of the GOP presidential contenders combined in this election cycle.

9) Under Barack Obama's leadership, the last time Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats passed a budget was April 9, 2009.

10) Barack Obama's budget was defeated 414-0 in the House and 99-0 in the Senate.

11) When he was running for President in 2008, Barack Obama pledged not to raise taxes on families making less than 250,000 dollars per year. He broke that promise with the tanning salon tax and with Obamacare, which raises almost 500 billion dollars in new taxes, a significant portion of which would be paid by people making less than 250,000 dollars per year.

12) When Barack Obama took office, gas was $1.95 per gallon. Today gas is $3.72 per gallon.

13) In February of this year, the federal government had a 229 billion dollar deficit. That was the largest deficit in the history of the United States.

14) America lost its AAA credit rating (which it had held since 1917) on Obama's watch despite the fact that Timothy Geithner publicly said there was "no risk" of that happening.

15) Barack Obama added more to the debt in just 38 months than George Bush did in two full terms as President.
15 Facts That Even Obama's Biggest Supporters Should Be Able To Admit Are True - John Hawkins - [page]

The Obama record hardly matchs the record of the Bush Administration, that is true.

We are not fighting wars that are not on the budget. We are not letting those that kill Americans go scot free, as Bush did with Bin Laden. We have not invaded another nation on the basis of lies, then proceeded to lose 4500 American lives, and run up a three trillion dollar bill. Remember Cheney stating that Iraq would pay the bill for the war?

We are not losing 750,000 jobs a month, as we were at the end of the Bush Admin. The Stock Market has recovered most of it's value, not dropped to half the value, as it did after the GOP killed Glass-Steagal.

Jobs are slowly coming back, and manufacturers are beginning to return to this nation. Unlike the record of the Bush Admin.

There is no way that we want to return to the policies that led to the crash, yet this is exactly what the GOP is still promoting.

The Wealthy pay less percentage of their income than do working Americans. And the GOP says that is just. The wages of working Americans has declined over the last 30 years, and the GOP endorsed that. Cannot let any damned unions demand a fair wage!

All the other industrial nations have a universal health care system that covers all their citizens at half the cost, with far better results than we do. Yet the GOP says that it is only fair that the very wealthy make a bundle off of the people in this nation that are ill, and the fact that over 750,000 families go bankrupt every year in the US because of medical bills, is just proof that our system works. After all, look at how cheaply the wealthy can pick up the assets of those people.

 

[Katzndogz]

The wealthy pay more of a percentage of their income in taxes than working Americans, that's why it's a progressive tax system.

The wages of working Americans declined in the last four years, and the democrats are just fine with that because it may mean that rich people lost their companies.

 

[Foxfyre]

Spoken like a true and dedicated leftist Old Rocks And we could derail the thread by going back to the Bush administration 'sins' for sure. But just looking at the Glass Steagall issue alone, trying to pin that one on the Republicans alone is pretty hard to do. And the issue also tracks all the way into the Obama record.

I'm using Wiki because of the pretty exhaustive research somebody has done on the subject and because it fits pretty close to what I understand of the whole history of the Glass Steagall issue. . . .

. . . .just to keep it honest

President Bill Clinton’s signing statement for the GLBA summarized the established argument for repealing Glass-Steagall Section’s 20 and 32 in stating that this change, and the GLBA’s amendments to the Bank Holding Company Act, would “enhance the stability of our financial services system” by permitting financial firms to “diversify their product offerings and thus their sources of revenue” and make financial firms “better equipped to compete in global financial markets.”[353]

On January 4, 1995, the new Chairman of the House Banking Committee, Representative James A. Leach (R-IA), introduced a bill to repeal Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32.[287] After being confirmed as Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin announced on February 28, 1995, that the Clinton Administration supported such Glass-Steagall repeal.[288] Repeating themes from the 1980s, Leach stated Glass-Steagall was “out of synch with reality”[289] and Rubin argued “it is now time for the laws to reflect changes in the world’s financial system.”[288]

(Keeping in mind that the House and Senate were controlled by Democrats in 2009)

During the 2009 House of Representatives consideration of H.R. 4173, the bill that became the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) proposed an amendment to the bill that would have reenacted Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32 and also prohibited bank insurance activities. The amendment was not voted on by the House.[411]

On December 16, 2009, Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced in the Senate the “Banking Integrity Act of 2009” (S.2886), which would have reinstated Glass-Steagall Sections 20 and 32, but was not voted on by the Senate.[411][412]

Before the Senate acted on its version of what became the Dodd-Frank Act, the Congressional Research Service issued a report describing securities activities banks and their affiliates had conducted before the GLBA. The Report stated Glass-Steagall had “imperfectly separated, to a certain degree” commercial and investment banking and described the extensive securities activities the Federal Reserve Board had authorized for “Section 20 affiliates” since the 1980s.[413]

The Obama Administration has been criticized for opposing Glass-Steagall reenactment.[411][414] Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner testified to the Joint Economic Committee that he opposed reenacting Glass-Steagall and that he did not believe “the end of Glass-Steagall played a significant role” in causing the financial crisis.[415]

Glass

 

[Old Rocks]

The wealthy pay more of a percentage of their income in taxes than working Americans, that's why it's a progressive tax system.

The wages of working Americans declined in the last four years, and the democrats are just fine with that because it may mean that rich people lost their companies.

Really? I paid more on the 100,000 plus that I made than did Romney on the millions that he made.