Geithner predicts Republicans will accept higher tax rates












WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner pressed Republicans to offer a plan to increase revenues and cut government spending, and predicted they would agree to raise tax rates on the wealthiest to secure a deal by year-end to avoid the “fiscal cliff.”


In a blitz of appearances on five Sunday morning talk shows, Geithner insisted that tax rates on the richest needed to go up in order to reach a deal, a step Republicans have so far resisted, and he dismissed much of the contentious rhetoric from last week as “political theater.”












“The only thing standing in the way of would be a refusal by Republicans to accept that rates are going to have to go up on the wealthiest Americans. And I don’t really see them doing that,” Geithner, who is leading the Obama administration‘s fiscal cliff negotiations, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”


The comments mark the latest round of high-stakes gamesmanship focusing on whether to extend the temporary tax cuts that originated under former President George W. Bush beyond their December 31 expiration date for all taxpayers, as Republicans want, or just for those with incomes under $ 250,000, as President Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats want.


Republicans, who control the House of Representatives but are the minority in the Senate, have expressed a willingness to raise revenues by taking steps such a limiting tax deductions, but they have largely held the line on increasing rates.


A handful of House Republicans expressed flexibility beyond that of their party leaders about considering an increase in tax rates for the wealthiest, as long as they are accompanied by significant spending cuts.


But most House Republicans refuse to back higher rates, preferring to raise revenue through tax reform.


“There’s not going to be an agreement without rates heading up,” Geithner said bluntly on CNN’s “State of the Union.”


The scheduled expiration of the Bush-era tax cuts and automatic reductions government spending set to take hold early next year would suck about $ 600 billion out of the economy and could spark a recession. The Obama administration and Congress are engaged in talks to avoid the fiscal cliff with a less-drastic plan to reduce U.S. budget deficits.


WHO SHOULD PAY?


Geithner’s Sunday interviews are part of a broader push to build public support for the Democrats’ position in the negotiations. Obama has made campaign-style appearances, including visiting a Pennsylvania toy factory on Friday where he portrayed Republicans as scrooges at Christmas time.


While breaking no new ground on the Obama administration’s position on Sunday, Geithner repeatedly urged Republicans to provide their own plan.


“They said they’re prepared to raise revenues but haven’t said how, or how much, or who should pay,” Geithner said on NBC.


In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Friday, the Republican leader in the Senate, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, asked Democrats to accept an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, impose higher Medicare premiums for the wealthy, and slow cost-of-living increases for Social Security.


At least one of those suggestions appears to have White House support. On CNN, Geithner said the administration‘s proposal included a modest rise in premiums for higher-income Medicare beneficiaries.


“What we can’t do is sit here trying to figure out what works for them,” Geithner said. “The ball really is with them now.”


The administration has said it is willing to find savings in the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs for the elderly and poor, but Geithner reiterated in an interview with ABC’s “This Week” that it would only be open to looking at changes in the Social Security retirement program outside of the context of a fiscal cliff deal.


(Reporting By Aruna Viswanatha; Editing by Eric Beech)


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Microsoft’s next-gen Xbox again said to launch ahead of 2013 holidays












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Italy votes for center-left candidate for premier












ROME (AP) — Italians are choosing a center-left candidate for premier for elections early next year, an important primary runoff given the main party is ahead in the polls against a center-right camp in utter chaos over whether Silvio Berlusconi will run again.


Sunday’s runoff pits a veteran center-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, 61, against the 37-year-old mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi, who has campaigned on an Obama-style “Let’s change Italy now” mantra.












Nearly all polls show Bersani winning the primary, after he won the first round of balloting Nov. 25 with 44.9 percent of the vote. Since he didn’t get an absolute majority, he was forced into a runoff with Renzi, who garnered 35.5 percent.


After battling all week to get more voters to the polling stations for round two, Renzi seemed almost resigned to a Bersani win by Sunday, saying he hoped that by Monday “we can all work together.”


Bersani, a former transport and industry minister, seemed confident of victory as well, joking about Berlusconi’s flip-flopping political ambitions by asking “What time did he say it?” when told that the media mogul had purportedly decided against running.


Next year’s general election will largely decide how and whether Italy continues on the path to financial health charted by Premier Mario Monti, appointed last year to save Italy from a Greek-style debt crisis.


The former European commissioner was named to head a technical government after international markets lost confidence in then-Premier Berlusconi’s ability to reign in Italy’s public debt and push through sorely needed structural reforms.


Berlusconi has largely stayed out of the public spotlight for the past year, but he returned with force in recent weeks, announcing he was thinking about running again, then changing his mind, then threatening to bring down Monti’s government, and most recently staying silent about his political plans.


His waffling has thrown his People of Freedom party into disarray and disrupted its own plans for a primary — all of which has only seemed to bolster the impression of order, stability and organization within the center-left camp.


A poll published Friday gave the Democratic Party 30 percent of the vote if the election were held now, compared with some 19.5 percent for the upstart populist movement of comic Beppe Grillo, and Berlusconi’s People of Freedom party in third with 14.3 percent. The poll, by the SWG firm for state-run RAI 3, surveyed 5,000 voting-age adults by telephone between Nov. 26 and 28. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 1.36 percentage points.


It’s quite a turnabout for Berlusconi’s once-dominant movement, and a similarly remarkable shift in fortunes for the Democratic Party, which had been in shambles for years, unable to capitalize on Berlusconi’s professional and personal failings while he was premier.


But Berlusconi’s 2011 downfall and a series of recent political party funding scandals that have targeted mostly center-right politicians have contributed to the party’s rise as Italy struggles through a grinding recession and near-record high unemployment.


Angelino Alfano, Berlusconi’s hand-picked political heir, seemed again exasperated Sunday after a long meeting with his patron over Berlusconi’s plans. News reports have suggested Berlusconi might split the party in two and re-launch the Forza Italia party that brought him to political power for the first time in 1994.


“We have to work to reconstruct the center-right, and reconstructing it means having a big center-right party,” not a divided one, Alfano said.


He added that Berlusconi didn’t say one way or another if he would run himself. “It’s his choice,” he said. “If there are any decisions in this regard, he’ll be the one to say so.”


___


Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield


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Cargo plane crashes in Brazzaville, 3 dead












BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (AP) — A cargo plane owned by a private company crashed Friday near the airport in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, killing at least three people, officials said.


The Soviet-made Ilyushin-76 belonged to Trans Air Congo and appeared to be transporting merchandise, not people, said an aviation official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.












The plane was coming from Congo‘s second-largest city, Pointe Noire, and tried to land during heavy rain, he said.


Ambulances rushed to the scene in the Makazou neighborhood, located near the airport, but emergency workers were hampered by the lack of light in this capital, which like so many in Africa has a chronic shortage of electricity.


“At the moment, my team is having a hard time searching for survivors in order to find the victims of the crash because there is no light and also because of the rain,” Congolese Red Cross head Albert Mberi said.


He said that realistically, they will only be able to launch a proper search Saturday, when the sun comes up.


Reporters at the scene fought through a wall of smoke. Despite the darkness, they could make out the smoldering remains of the plane, including what looked like the left wing of the aircraft. A little bit further on, emergency workers identified the body of the plane’s Ukrainian pilot, and covered the corpse in a blanket.


Firefighters were trying to extinguish the blaze of a part of the plane that had fallen into a ravine. They were using their truck lights to try to illuminate the scene of the crash. Although the plane was carrying merchandise, emergency workers fear that there could be more people on board.


Because of the state of the road connecting Pointe Noire to Brazzaville, many traders prefer to fly the roughly 400 kilometers (250 miles).


Africa has some of the worst air safety records in the world. In June, a commercial jetliner crashed in Lagos, Nigeria, killing 153 people, just a few days after a cargo plane clipped a bus in neighboring Ghana, killing 10.


Africa News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Glen Campbell considering more live shows in 2013












NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Glen Campbell may be wrapping up a goodbye tour but that doesn’t mean he’s done with the stage.


Campbell is considering scheduling more shows next year after playing more than 120 dates in 2012.












The 76-year-old singer has Alzheimer’s disease and has begun to lose his memory. He put out his final studio album, “Ghost on the Canvas,” in 2011 and embarked on the tour with family members and close friends serving in his band and staffing the tour.


Campbell’s longtime manager Stan Schneider said in a phone interview from Napa, Calif., where the tour wrapped for the year Friday night, that recent West Coast shows have been some of the singer’s strongest. Campbell will break for the holidays and if he still feels strong he’ll begin scheduling more shows.


___


Online:


http://glencampbellmusic.com


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South Africa makes progress in HIV, AIDS fight












JOHANNESBURG (AP) — In the early ’90s when South Africa‘s Themba Lethu clinic could only treat HIV/AIDS patients for opportunistic diseases, many would come in on wheelchairs and keep coming to the health center until they died.


Two decades later the clinic is the biggest anti-retroviral, or ARV, treatment center in the country and sees between 600 to 800 patients a day from all over southern Africa. Those who are brought in on wheelchairs, sometimes on the brink of death, get the crucial drugs and often become healthy and are walking within weeks.












“The ARVs are called the ‘Lazarus drug’ because people rise up and walk,” said Sue Roberts who has been a nurse at the clinic , run by Right to Care in Johannesburg’s Helen Joseph Hospital, since it opened its doors in 1992. She said they recently treated a woman who was pushed in a wheelchair for 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) to avoid a taxi fare and who was so sick it was touch and go. Two weeks later, the woman walked to the clinic, Roberts said.


Such stories of hope and progress are readily available on World AIDS Day 2012 in sub-Saharan Africa where deaths from AIDS-related causes have declined by 32 percent from 1.8 million in 2005 to 1.2 million in 2011, according to the latest UNAIDS report.


As people around the world celebrate a reduction in the rate of HIV infections, the growth of the clinic, which was one of only a few to open its doors 20 years ago, reflects how changes in treatment and attitude toward HIV and AIDS have moved South Africa forward. The nation, which has the most people living with HIV in the world at 5.6 million, still faces stigma and high rates of infection.


“You have no idea what a beautiful time we’re living in right now,” said Dr. Kay Mahomed, a doctor at the clinic who said treatment has improved drastically over the past several years.


President Jacob Zuma’s government decided to give the best care, including TB screening and care at the clinic, and not to look at the cost, she said. South Africa has increased the numbers treated for HIV by 75 percent in the last two years, UNAIDS said, and new HIV infections have fallen by more than 50,000 in those two years. South Africa has also increased its domestic expenditure on AIDS to $ 1.6 billion, the highest by any low-and middle-income country, the group said.


Themba Lethu clinic, with funding from the government, the United States Agency for International Development and the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is now among some 2,500 anit-retroviral therapy facilities in the country that treat approximately 1.9 million people.


“Now, you can’t not get better. It’s just one of these win-win situations. You test, you treat and you get better, end of story,” Mahomed said.


But it hasn’t always been that way.


In the 1990s South Africa’s problem was compounded by years of misinformation by President Thabo Mbeki, who questioned the link between HIV and AIDS, and his health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who promoted a “treatment” of beets and garlic.


Christinah Motsoahae first found out she was HIV positive in 1996, and said she felt nothing could be done about it.


“I didn’t understand it at that time because I was only 24, and I said, ‘What the hell is that?’” she said.


Sixteen years after her first diagnosis, she is now on anti-retroviral drugs and her life has turned around. She says the clinic has been instrumental.


“My status has changed my life, I have learned to accept people the way they are. I have learned not to be judgmental. And I have learned that it is God’s purpose that I have this,” the 40-year-old said.


She works with a support group of “positive ladies” in her hometown near Krugersdorp. She travels to the clinic as often as needed and her optimism shines through her gold eye shadow and wide smile. “I love the way I’m living now.”


Motsoahae credits Nelson Mandela’s family for inspiring her to face up to her status. The anti-apartheid icon galvanized the AIDS community in 2005 when he publicly acknowledged his son died of AIDS.


None of Motsoahae’s children was born with HIV. The number of children newly infected with HIV has declined significantly. In six countries in sub-Saharan Africa — South Africa, Burundi, Kenya, Namibia, Togo and Zambia —the number of children with HIV declined by 40 to 59 percent between 2009 and 2011, the UNAIDS report said.


But the situation remains dire for those over the age of 15, who make up the 5.3 million infected in South Africa. Fear and denial lend to the high prevalence of HIV for that age group in South Africa, said the clinic’s Kay Mahomed.


About 3.5 million South Africans still are not getting therapy, and many wait too long to come in to clinics or don’t stay on the drugs, said Dr. Dave Spencer, who works at the clinic .


“People are still afraid of a stigma related to HIV,” he said, adding that education and communication are key to controlling the disease.


Themba Lethu clinic reaches out to the younger generation with a teen program.


Tshepo Hoato, 21, who helps run the program found out he was HIV positive after his mother died in 2000. He said he has been helped by the program in which teens meet one day a month.


“What I’ve seen is a lot people around our ages, some commit suicide as soon as they find out they are HIV. That’s a very hard stage for them so we came up with this program to help one another,” he said. “We tell them our stories so they can understand and progress and see that no, man, it’s not the end of the world.”


Sexual Health News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Why Obama is pushing for stimulus in 'fiscal cliff' deal

How about a little government economic stimulus?


That may sound incongruous considering the budget deficit and the push from Republicans to cut government spending.


But President Obama’s first offer to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff" holds out the hope of at least some stimulus. This would include extending the 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut, boosting a tax incentive to businesses, establishing a $50 billion bank for long-term infrastructure projects, and extending unemployment benefits.


RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered


The total bill: about $255 billion out of the federal government's pocket – an amount the GOP would likely say needs to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.


The argument in favor of such stimulus? The tax measures, at least, could minimize the drag on the economy from Mr. Obama's proposed tax increases on the wealthy.


“The increases in the top two income tax brackets would put a drag on consumption, so I think, from the Obama point of view, the spending or tax cuts are designed to offset that drag to consumption,” says Michael Brown, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.


But to some budget experts, Obama’s list seems more like an opening round of negotiations, where he has asked for a lot more than he will get.


“It looks to me like these are bargaining chips,” says Pete Davis of Davis Capital Ideas, which advises Wall Street firms. “Even most Democrats had given up on the prospect of getting the payroll tax cut extended.”


Mr. Davis considers the odds of most of the stimulus proposals passing Congress “very low.”


What's needed most, say others, is just buckling down and negotiating an end to the fiscal cliff. “Cancelling the fiscal cliff is economic stimulus,” says Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications in Washington.


If Obama's stimulus were passed, however, here is a look at the impact the four elements might have.


SOCIAL SECURITY PAYROLL TAX CUT


The largest chunk of the Obama plan is the extension of the payroll tax cut. This is the money that comes out of an individual’s paycheck as a contribution to Social Security. Two years ago, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress decreased the individual contribution from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The employer’s contribution of 6.2 percent remained unchanged.


The Obama administration estimates extending the cuts would cost the government as much as $115 billion in revenue.


The argument for extending the tax cut is that it helps lower-income workers who live paycheck to paycheck. “The difference in the paycheck might be the ability to pay the electric bill for someone or the chance to go to a sit-down restaurant once a month,” says Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS in Lexington, Mass.


The argument against continuing the cut is that it is weakening the Social Security Trust Fund. In order to make up for the loss of contributions, the government taps the general tax revenues, says Pamela Tainter-Causey, a spokeswoman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.


“It sets up Social Security to compete for funding from the general fund,” she says. “It’s a perfect set up for people who are gunning for the program and claim we can’t afford it now.”


BUSINESS TAX INCENTIVE


The second largest program proposed by Obama would be the extension of accelerated depreciation for business, which would cost the US Treasury about $65 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.


Two years ago, business was allowed to accelerate the write-off of 100 percent of its spending on certain capital equipment. Capital spending on equipment and computer software soared by 18.3 percent in 2011.


Then, this year, the benefit to business was cut in half to 50 percent. Capital spending sank in the third quarter by 2.7 percent compared with the same quarter the prior year. With business interest in using the tax break diminishing, economist Gregory Daco of IHS says “it’s a goner.”


INFRASTRUCTURE BANK


Obama has also proposed a $50 billion infrastructure bank. The idea is to fund roads, bridges, tunnels and other large projects that last for a long period of time. “At the moment the funding is done on a cash basis – you have to pay for it as you build it,” says Mr. Collender.


Democrats have been trying to get Congress to fund the bank for the past 10 years, he says. “It does not have a chance of getting through the House," which is controlled by the Republicans, says Mr. Collender.


UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS


And, finally, Obama wants to extend unemployment benefits, which would cost about $30 billion.


Under current law, if Congress does nothing, the maximum number of weeks in which an individual could receive jobless will drop to 26 from the current 73 weeks for states with unemployment over 9 percent and 63 weeks for states with unemployment over 7 percent.


If Congress does nothing about the program during the lame-duck session, some 2.1 million jobless will lose their benefits in the first week of January, says Judy Conti, a federal advocacy coordinator at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in Washington. By the end of the March, she says, another 900,000 people will lose their benefits.


“Forty percent of the unemployed are long term unemployed,” she says. “They have been out of the workforce for over six months.”


RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered



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Katie Holmes in “Dead Accounts”: what did the critics think?












LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – With her marriage to Tom Cruise firmly ensconced in the rearview mirror, Katie Holmes has returned to Broadway to star in Theresa Rebeck‘s “Dead Accounts.”


But the “Dawson’s Creek” actress who will forever be synonymous with one mega-star’s epic Oprah freakout, got credit from many critics for giving it the proverbial college try – although most reviewers savaged the production.












Dead Accounts” centers on a hotshot Wall Street-type (Norbert Leo Butz) who returns to his Cincinnati home with a dark secret. Holmes plays his sister who is still living at home and nursing their father through a kidney stones attack. It marks her second appearance on the Great White Way after a tepidly received turn in a 2008 revival of Arthur Miller‘s “All My Sons.”


Dead Accounts,” which also stars Josh Hamilton and Jane Houdyshell, premiered Thursday at the Music Box Theatre.


In the New York Times, Ben Brantley was surprisingly gentle in his treatment of Holmes even as he dripped acid over Rebeck’s attempt to say something profound about America’s post-Recession doldrums.


“Let me assure you that Ms. Holmes, who was a tad unsteady in her Broadway debut four years ago in Arthur Miller‘s ‘All My Sons,’ appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of Mr. Butz,” he wrote. “Gamely unkempt and lumpen, Ms. Holmes suggests what might have happened to Joey Potter, the ultimate girl-next-door she once portrayed on TV in ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ had she never found true love or left town.”


His overall assessment of the action onstage was far more dire, faulting it for devolving “…into a limp chain of anticlimaxes.”


Also declaring “Dead Accounts” D.O.A. was New York magazine, which, in an unbylined piece, compared Rebeck to Tyler Perry for white people (sorry, “Madea Goes to Jail” fans, it’s not a compliment). However the critic was charitable in assessing the third Mrs. Cruise.


“Holmes is insanely miscast but sunnily game in the role of a ground-down never-was with body image issues and a crater where her confidence should be,” the reviewer wrote.


Those relatively benign notices aside, some critics were clearly sharpening the kitchen-ware for Holmes. In the New York Post, Elisabeth Vincentelli took a cleaver to the actress and the play.


“She’s got one note – shrill, impatient – and yells it at top volume, making a vein bulge on her slender neck. (A recurring joke about Lorna going on a diet falls flat.),” Vincentelli wrote.


Of the play, the Post critic said it should be back to the drawing board; “With its cardboard characters and implausible developments, ‘Dead Accounts‘ feels like a rough first draft.”


Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune was far kinder when it came to Rebeck’s writing, admiring her for taking on weighty topics, even as he complained she often fell flat in her execution. His views on Holmes were harder to decipher. Though never pejorative, Jones seemed to feel that Holmes’ tabloid past interfered with her stage work.


Still, he was intrigued by the way her own Midwestern background intermingled with that of her character.


“‘Dead Accounts’ hints at the very worthwhile notion that two Americas have grown up alongside each other, one in the thrall of religion, the other of money,” Jones wrote. “Holmes, one suspects, knows a good deal more about that kind of stuff than her character ever gets to say here.”


People Magazine’s Tom Gliatto praised Holmes’ for doing what she could with an underwritten role. He didn’t exactly make her seem Tony bound, but he argued that the fault rests more with the script than the actress.


“Holmes gets her moments in the second act: Lorna is given a simple, tender monologue about planting a tree when she was a child, followed by a full-throttle, over-the-top tirade against money, banks and fiduciary wickedness,” Gliatto wrote. “Holmes gets a big laugh there, but you have the nagging realization that the little memory about the tree slipped by without registering emotionally – that it was a lot more meaningful than the tirade, and that Holmes should have been directed to dig deeper. Or that Rebeck, creator of NBC’s Smash, should have written deeper.”


Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News


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Why Obama is pushing for stimulus in 'fiscal cliff' deal

How about a little government economic stimulus?


That may sound incongruous considering the budget deficit and the push from Republicans to cut government spending.


But President Obama’s first offer to avoid going over the "fiscal cliff" holds out the hope of at least some stimulus. This would include extending the 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut, boosting a tax incentive to businesses, establishing a $50 billion bank for long-term infrastructure projects, and extending unemployment benefits.


RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered


The total bill: about $255 billion out of the federal government's pocket – an amount the GOP would likely say needs to be offset by spending cuts elsewhere.


The argument in favor of such stimulus? The tax measures, at least, could minimize the drag on the economy from Mr. Obama's proposed tax increases on the wealthy.


“The increases in the top two income tax brackets would put a drag on consumption, so I think, from the Obama point of view, the spending or tax cuts are designed to offset that drag to consumption,” says Michael Brown, an economist at Wells Fargo Securities in Charlotte, N.C.


But to some budget experts, Obama’s list seems more like an opening round of negotiations, where he has asked for a lot more than he will get.


“It looks to me like these are bargaining chips,” says Pete Davis of Davis Capital Ideas, which advises Wall Street firms. “Even most Democrats had given up on the prospect of getting the payroll tax cut extended.”


Mr. Davis considers the odds of most of the stimulus proposals passing Congress “very low.”


What's needed most, say others, is just buckling down and negotiating an end to the fiscal cliff. “Cancelling the fiscal cliff is economic stimulus,” says Stan Collender, a budget expert and partner at Qorvis Communications in Washington.


If Obama's stimulus were passed, however, here is a look at the impact the four elements might have.


SOCIAL SECURITY PAYROLL TAX CUT


The largest chunk of the Obama plan is the extension of the payroll tax cut. This is the money that comes out of an individual’s paycheck as a contribution to Social Security. Two years ago, in an effort to stimulate the economy, Congress decreased the individual contribution from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent. The employer’s contribution of 6.2 percent remained unchanged.


The Obama administration estimates extending the cuts would cost the government as much as $115 billion in revenue.


The argument for extending the tax cut is that it helps lower-income workers who live paycheck to paycheck. “The difference in the paycheck might be the ability to pay the electric bill for someone or the chance to go to a sit-down restaurant once a month,” says Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS in Lexington, Mass.


The argument against continuing the cut is that it is weakening the Social Security Trust Fund. In order to make up for the loss of contributions, the government taps the general tax revenues, says Pamela Tainter-Causey, a spokeswoman for the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.


“It sets up Social Security to compete for funding from the general fund,” she says. “It’s a perfect set up for people who are gunning for the program and claim we can’t afford it now.”


BUSINESS TAX INCENTIVE


The second largest program proposed by Obama would be the extension of accelerated depreciation for business, which would cost the US Treasury about $65 billion in fiscal year 2013, according to the Congressional Budget Office.


Two years ago, business was allowed to accelerate the write-off of 100 percent of its spending on certain capital equipment. Capital spending on equipment and computer software soared by 18.3 percent in 2011.


Then, this year, the benefit to business was cut in half to 50 percent. Capital spending sank in the third quarter by 2.7 percent compared with the same quarter the prior year. With business interest in using the tax break diminishing, economist Gregory Daco of IHS says “it’s a goner.”


INFRASTRUCTURE BANK


Obama has also proposed a $50 billion infrastructure bank. The idea is to fund roads, bridges, tunnels and other large projects that last for a long period of time. “At the moment the funding is done on a cash basis – you have to pay for it as you build it,” says Mr. Collender.


Democrats have been trying to get Congress to fund the bank for the past 10 years, he says. “It does not have a chance of getting through the House," which is controlled by the Republicans, says Mr. Collender.


UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS


And, finally, Obama wants to extend unemployment benefits, which would cost about $30 billion.


Under current law, if Congress does nothing, the maximum number of weeks in which an individual could receive jobless will drop to 26 from the current 73 weeks for states with unemployment over 9 percent and 63 weeks for states with unemployment over 7 percent.


If Congress does nothing about the program during the lame-duck session, some 2.1 million jobless will lose their benefits in the first week of January, says Judy Conti, a federal advocacy coordinator at the National Employment Law Project (NELP) in Washington. By the end of the March, she says, another 900,000 people will lose their benefits.


“Forty percent of the unemployed are long term unemployed,” she says. “They have been out of the workforce for over six months.”


RECOMMENDED: 'Fiscal cliff' 101: 5 basic questions answered



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Top 10 Rules for a Flat Belly












For all the effort you’ve put into toning it–and for all the cupcakes you’ve given up to maintain it–your midsection should be as rock-hard as a diamond and just as much fun to show off. So why does it seem like your quest for a sexy stomach always hits a bump…right about belly-button level?


You’re not alone in feeling frustrated: Sixty-two percent of women say the body part they’re most self-conscious about is their belly. But don’t give up hope–just change your thinking. Turns out, some of the old food advice you’ve been following for years may actually be working against you, says Alan Aragon, a nutritionist in Westlake Village, California. The latest research is full of new culinary strategies for shrinking your stomach (and slimming down all over). After wading through the data to answer your most common questions, Aragon presents his core counsel.












The No-Crunch Ab Workout


Will eating smaller meals curb my hunger?


Contrary to what you’ve heard, the five-small-meals-a-day mantra doesn’t work for everyone. The new thinking? You’ll eat healthiest if you eat your way–meaning, if you prefer substantial meals fewer times a day, there’s no reason to force yourself to do the opposite, says Aragon. But while the number of meals doesn’t matter, their size does.


According to Purdue University researchers, the biggest problem with our noshing behavior is that snacks have become meals, and meals have become feasts. In the past 30 years, snack sizes have increased from 360 calories to a whopping 580! When you consider that the average woman snacks twice during each workday, you’re looking at almost 500 extra calories a day. In just two weeks, these oversize bites–no matter how “healthy” they are–can contribute to an extra pound of fat. The takeaway: However many times you eat, always make sure that you’re keeping an eye on your portions.


7 Ways to Stop Food Cravings


***


More from Women’s Health:


8dd32  img bullet bluedot Top 10 Rules for a Flat BellyAvoid the Foods That Make You Do Bad Things


8dd32  img bullet bluedot Top 10 Rules for a Flat BellyTransform Your Whole Body


8dd32  img bullet bluedot Top 10 Rules for a Flat BellyStomach Cures From Top Doctors


8dd32  img bullet bluedot Top 10 Rules for a Flat BellyBest Foods for Flat Abs


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