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Nearly 7,000 people listened to a telephone town hall hosted by U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Menlo Park, on Tuesday night (Oct. 25), according to the congresswoman’s office.
Constituents from Atherton, Menlo Park, Woodside, Portola Valley, and La Honda took advantage of the opportunity to ask Ms. Eshoo, who was in Washington, D.C., about national issues that are having a local impact, such as unemployment, health care, and green jobs.
Ms. Eshoo spent about an hour fielding 12 questions. Agreeing with one caller, Helen from Woodside, who suggested that current environmental problems presented an opportunity for creating jobs, the Congresswoman said, “Unfortunately, it’s almost a form of torture for me to be in a Congress that’s as anti-environmental as this one is. They have cut and hollowed out the departments that are responsible for all of these policies.”
How to retain highly educated people who train in the United States but then return to a foreign country also came under discussion, thanks to a question from Casey, another Woodside resident.
Ms. Eshoo responded that she was proud to be a co-sponsor of President Obama’s DREAM Act, which would let illegal immigrants who arrived in the United States as children and completed high school or some college, remain in the country. “If someone graduates from one of our universities, they’re talented, and wants to stay and work in the U.S., their green card should be stapled to their college degree,” she said. The DREAM Act passed the House last year but failed in the Senate.
With students come student loans, and Ms. Eshoo praised the president for taking the first steps in providing relief for students saddled with educational debt by creating an executive order designed to cap monthly payments, provide easier loan consolidation, and forgive outstanding debt after 20 years.
When Patrick of Menlo Park turned the focus to national health care, Rep. Eshoo said that the Democratic Party had not gotten a convincing message across, despite working for decades to get a plan in place. She said that the framework for affordable health care would be set by 2013 anyway, and agreed with another Woodside caller that the private insurance industry still wielded a lot of power in Congress.
The telephone town hall wound down with a commentary on changes in campaign financing disclosure, with a recent Supreme Court ruling making it possible for corporations to anonymously donate millions, according to Ms. Eshoo’s analysis, and job creation.
Saying the Republican majority in Congress refuses to take up the President’s jobs bill because they put their dislike of the current administration ahead of the needs of the country, Ms. Eshoo ended on what she called a sad note, stating that it’s almost November, with no jobs bill in sight, and unemployment in the Bay Area rising.
I have noticed this is becoming a comfortable way of elected officials to hold their forums these days. Why do this? What HAPPENED to the good ol look in the eye,in person,Town Hall meeting? NOT A PHONE CALL PEOPLE!
oh i suppose the old phone in the shoe will come back also, GET SMART people don’t agree to this kind of BRUSH OFF
@Mark. Have you ever attended a Teabagger rally? That’s why.
“Why do this? What HAPPENED to the good ol look in the eye,in person,Town Hall meeting?”
Mark – haven’t been paying much attention, have you?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-23/Giffords-therapy/50884744/1?csp=34news
Could some of these calls be planted? Just wondering because it appears that campaign mode is in full force in Washington.
This town hall was a cross between an infomercial and talk radio. All calls were carefully screened and only callers who reinforced Eshoo’s Big Government theme were allowed to speak. Eshoo was very long winded in her answers and used her answers to promote the good of the “Nanny State”. At time she took great gusto in bashing conservative points of view and the jobs bill that the Republicans blocked in the Senate. What Ms. Pelosi did not state was that it was the Democrat defectors that caused the bill from being passed by the Senate.
This Town Hall had a decidedly left wing bias. While she did not have the venom of a Keith Olbermann her views pretty much aligned with his. She promotes illegal immigration, class warfare, and the tranfer of wealth from those who have already given most generously to those who are looking for easy street. Why should people work when they have liberals like eshoo doling at the pork so they can sponge of the people who work hard for a living.
I am very dissapointed in this medium because it shut out her conservative constituents completely. And I thought she represented all the residents of her Congressional District. How foolish of me. She only represents the most liberal of points of view and if you are not a far left liberal you will not be represented or even be given the time of day.
Tommy: any facts, or all just your far right fringe opinion? “tranfer of wealth from those who have already given most generously to those who are looking for easy street.”
You detest her because she has different opinions about how to bring this country out of economic calamity.
Too bad. This area loves her and will reelect her.
Imagine if you were in Eric Cantor’s or Paul Ryan’s district and you tried to talk to them about jobs. They moved 7 votes forward on abortion this session, but none on jobs.
“if you are not a far left liberal you will not be represented or even be given the time of day”
Hyperbole much?
Even disregarding the hyperbole, again, imagine a liberal in Cantor’s district when he ignores the economy and pushes another vote on abortion.
Lastly: your paste and fill in the blanks hatchet job rant was poorly done. You confused the names Eshoo and Pelosi.
Pearl,
The top 10% pay over 70% of the federal taxes. The bottom 47% pay no taxes.
Obama has accumulated more debt than any other president in U.S. History and wants only to create Federal jobs when it is private industry that generates the tax revenue for which the federal bureaucracy feasts on. The Democrats are floundering because their flirtation with European style socialism has been disastrous.
Nothing is going to be done about Abortion. That has been settled. Republican Justice Harry Blackmun wrote tha majority opinion upholding a woman’s right to choose in Roe v Wade. Byron White, the Kennedy Democrat appointee wrote the dissenting opinion arguing against a woman’s right to choose.
Cantor has worked tirelssly to get the economy going. Obama has put this country into a Keynesian Coma. Cantor is trying to revive the patient. Liberalism is irresponsibility
“The bottom 47% pay no taxes.”
Demonstrably false. Almost every working American pays payroll taxes, sales taxes, property and/or state taxes.
“The top 10% pay over 70% of the federal taxes.” Duh. And we used to pay a LOT MORE. And what percentage of income do we represent?
Actually, your 70% tax figure is also false, though the top 10% earn 42% of all income:
“In fact, because of growing income inequality, the top 10% of American earners now earns 42% of the nation’s income, and when correctly calculated, pay about 50% of the federal income and payroll tax burden — not much larger than their share of earnings…”
So what effective RATE do we pay compared to yours?
“The average income for a tax return in the top 0.1 percent was $4.4 million in 2009, while the average amount of income tax paid was $1.07 million, indicating an average effective individual income tax rate of 24.3 percent.” http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/250.html
Do you pay an effective tax rate of higher or lower than 24%?
Are you with the flat taxers that want to raise taxes on the poorest half of Americans?
That’s quite the political strategy you have with Perry and Cain.
A real winner: “RAISE TAXES on the poorest half of America!”
“Tommy d’/Alessandro/Perry 2012!”
“Nothing is going to be done about Abortion.”
Then why has Cantor allowed 7 bills on the floor and wasted everyone’s time when they need to do REAL WORK on the economy?
America needs jobs. Pass a Jobs Bill, not tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans who are already paying just about the lowest rates ever for our class.
When have taxes on the wealthiest Americans ever been significantly lower? All those Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and we haven’t created jobs.
Pass a Jobs Bill and get America back to work, back to growing again.
Pearl,
You have been drinking the Obamarx Kool Aid. The United States Internal Revenu Service states:
The Top 0.1% of income pays 18% of all Federal Income Tax
The Top 1% of income pays 38% of all Federal Income Tax
The Top 5% of income pays 59% of all Federal Income Tax
The Top 10% of income pays 70% of all Federal Income Tax
The Top 25% of income pays 86% of all Federal Income Tax
The Top 50% of income pays 97% of all Federal Income Tax
The bottom 50% of income pays 3% of all Federal Income Tax
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/08inratesharesnapgraph.pdf
But you liberals want to bleed working Americans so you can pursue your nonsensical give away programs.
Where’s the graph that shows our share of actual INCOME and percentage of tax paid? Don’t want to show that one do you?
Showing taxes paid without showing our share of total income is only HALF the relevant data.
Also: claims like “The Top 10% of income pays 70% of all Federal Income Tax” don’t pass the smell test for a number of reasons, not just that you don’t list what percentage of actual income for our group. For example: “This statistic presents a deeply misleading picture of the actual federal tax burden because (1) it fails to include payroll taxes, which every worker pays, and which fall disproportionately on the middle class, and (2) because it doesn’t reflect that high-income Americans earn a disproportionate share of income.”
I missed your answer to this: “When have taxes on the wealthiest Americans ever been significantly lower?”
Pearl,
The facts speak for themselves. When you have 47% of the people paying no taxes at all and 10% of the people paying 70% of the tax burden–that is more than equitable.
According to the tax policy Center
http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/
Households making more than $1 million will pay an average 29.1% of their income in federal taxes.
Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15% of their income in federal taxes
46% of all Households will pay no federal taxes at all.
Quit your complaining.
Quit running from the question: “I missed your answer to this: “When have taxes on the wealthiest Americans ever been significantly lower?” ”
“In 2007 the top 400 taxpayers had an average income of $344.8 million… Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006” http://www.tax.com/taxcom/taxblog.nsf/0971609221721415852572ac0067c130/e822d2fe6320f6e6852577ae0051d873/$FILE/Chart-1.pdf
“46% of all Households will pay no federal taxes at all.” Again: demonstrably false as you wrote it. Many of those households pay federal taxes such as payroll taxes.
I missed your answer to this: “When have taxes on the wealthiest Americans ever been significantly lower?”
Dear Pearl,
It was lower in the 1920s when the top tax rate was 25%. But Roosevelt’s “Raw Deal” saw income tax rates skyrocket in the first failed experiment with Socialism. The nation’s wealthiest are still paying far more than their fair share. Please get off the socialist income redistribution scheme. If you like socialism so much then please move to Danmark.
Tommy: Correct. You just put two and two together. “It was lower in the 1920s when the top tax rate was 25%.”
A time of great economic upheaval and until now, our country’s greatest wealth inequity. A time of poor, elderly and jobless depending on soup kitchens to literally stay alive.
Or as Tommy thinks of it: “the good ol’ days”
But “good times Tommy” thinks since then it’s been a mess, a big ol’ stew of socialism. Of course, with America coming together after Hoover’s disastrous policies, our country recovered, fed and employed our people, and went on to lead the world for many decades afterwards, with a middle class that was the envy of the entire world.
A middle class built in the thirties, forties, fifties and on. A middle class that built the world’s greatest power. A middle class that manufactured the world’s products. A middle class that had the best life of any on our planet.
A middle class that was the envy of the entire world.
Tommy’s calls it a “socialist income redistribution scheme”
A middle class that was the envy of the entire world.
Or as “good times Tommy” thinks of America in the 20th Century: a “failed experiment”
Tommy wants a tax and economic system that takes us from this Great Republican Recession back to his good ol’ days of the First Republican Great Depression.
Tommy – there was a reason that so many kitchens in middle class America for decades had a picture on a wall of FDR. He saved this country. Not only did he save the middle class, his policies allowed it to grow beyond the world’s wildest imagination.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Freedoms_%28Norman_Rockwell%29
Tommy: why do you hate the success of 20th Century Americans?
Dear Pearl,
Treasury Secretary Andrew Melon (1920s)said
“The history of taxation shows that taxes which are inherently excessive are not paid. The high rates inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw his capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities or to find other lawful methods of avoiding the realization of taxable income. The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up; wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people.”
So what happened in the roaring twenties when the tax rate dropped. The tax burden on the wealthiest Americans (those making $50,000 +) climbed from 44.2% in 1921 to 78.4% in 1928. So Pearl please blame your soup kitchens on someone else.
When President Kennedy dropped the top tax rate 20 percentage points tax revenues increased 62% from $94 Billion in 1961 to $153 Billion in 1968.
Now Pearl stifle this scream because your hero President Kennedy said
“Our true choice is not between tax reduction, on the one hand, and the avoidance of large Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget just as it will never produce enough jobs or enough profits… In short, it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now”.
Then tax revenues nearly doubled (99.6% increase) under Reagan due to his tax cuts. People in the top 10% of income earners saw their contribution rise from 48% of the total taxes paid to 57.2% in the period from 1981 to 1988. During the same period people in the top 1% of incomes saw their contribution to the total taxes paid rise from 17.6% to 27.5%.
Since the Reagan days the taxes paid by the wealthiest 10% in terms of income have risen even more to 70% of total taxes paid. So please take your socialist income redistribution schemes somewhere else. We are tired of you, the Move-on.org crowd, and George Soros trying to dismantle the greatest economy in the world.
“When President Kennedy dropped the top tax rate 20 percentage points tax revenues increased 62% from $94 Billion in 1961 to $153 Billion in 1968. Now Pearl stifle this scream because your hero President Kennedy said”
No scream, but thanks for the concern. While I never declared Kennedy a hero as you claim, certainly a LOT of Americans love Kennedy. Good observation on your part. Re-writing history on the First Republican Great Depression, on the other hand, is a pretty lame exercise on your part.
Kennedy closed a lot of loopholes and cleaned up the code, which accounted for the increase in revenue. Glad you want to see us go back to the Kennedy rates!!
I have no problem with the Kennedy rates. The Nixon rates. The Reagan rates ( except he raised taxes 7 times, including the largest middle class tax HIKES in history when he doubled payroll taxes.)
I have no problem with the Clinton rates, where he took the Bush 1 deficit and turned it into a surplus.
It’s the Bush 2 tax cuts for the wealthy that have helped put this country in a serious hole. Tax cuts for the rich do NOT create jobs.
Clinton raised the upper bracket and created 23 million jobs. Bush slashed cap gains and the top bracket and was losing over a half million jobs a MONTH when he left.
And Bush doubled the national debt while he was destroying the economy.
Since you agreed taxes on the wealthy are at a near century long low, it’s time to balance things out and get America growing again to compete in the world economy as we have been for the last century, with a fair, balanced progressive tax system on all Americans.
Dear pearl,
You need to study up on Price elasticities in a basic economics text. When the prices are too high the volume falls disproportionately resulting in less total revenue.
The Federal Income Tax elasticity has been far greater than 1 for people with the highest incomes resulting in lower tax revenues. When the USG drops the tax rates to 1 or slightly above it will receive the greatest revenues. For example when the Capital Gains tax is too high the rich simply don’t sell unless there is an offset loss.
So the Government gets greedy and gets less because you have strident leftist ideologues in Congress who consistently cut off their nose to spite their faces.
“So the Government gets greedy ”
But it hasn’t – you’ve already admitted taxes on the wealthy are at their LOWEST IN A CENTURY.
It appears that we as the wealthy are the ones getting greedy, as the income inequality is at it’s widest gap IN A CENTURY.
Every time taxes on the wealthy get this low and the income inequality soars – our economy, our country, our people suffer. The majority of Americans take the hit – not the wealthy that you cry for, but middle class and the poor, the jobless – REAL AMERICANS.
Try to hide it behind a retail price theory or any other mumble-jumble. Once a tax cut for the wealthy is in effect a couple years, revenues drop. The first year or two, they all rush to sell under a reduced rate, and then revenues drop.
Mark Twain had a phrase about your mumble-jumble: Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Depression loving Tommy, crying for the po’ wealthy and their lowest tax rates IN A CENTURY.
Pearl,
You must be confused. Tax rates are the lowest in over 80 years not a century. However Tax Revenues from the wealthiest are at the highest levels ever in the history of the United States of America!
Remember what JFK said
“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now”.
“However Tax Revenues from the wealthiest are at the highest levels ever in the history of the United States of America!”
As they are for the everyone, in actual dollars. It’s called inflation. As for actual percentages and rates, you can’t deny: “you’ve already admitted taxes on the wealthy are at their LOWEST IN A CENTURY” when you agreed “It was lower in the 1920s…”
Po’ Depression Lovin’ Tommy.
Arguing he’s right because I rounded up to a century from 80 or 85 years. So let’s appease the poor fella:
“Depression loving Tommy, crying for the po’ wealthy and their lowest tax rates IN A CENTURY/85 years.”
Dear Pearl,
Even adjusted for inflation the Wealthiest Americans are paying the greatest amount of taxes. Not hard considering 47% of income earners pay no taxes at all and some even get money from other taxpayers.
That’s two different statements:
“However Tax Revenues from the wealthiest are at the highest levels ever ” (wrong, when adjusted for inflation)
and
“the Wealthiest Americans are paying the greatest amount of taxes” (“greatest” as in “highest”, greater proportions, or what?)
What are you trying to say?
Keep defending us, Tommy D, and throwing middle class Americans under the bus.
Tommy “return of the robber barons” D., defender of wealth!
“47% of income earners pay no taxes at all ”
Again: factually incorrect – they pay payroll taxes (doubled under Reagan) sales taxes, property taxes, etc…
According to Pete Sepp, vice president of communications for the National Taxpayers Union
“The top one percent of earners in America pay almost 40 percent of all federal income taxes, yet they account for about a 20 percent slice of the earnings. That means they’re pulling about twice their share of the tax load relative to what they earn.”
The Bottom Line: The top one percent earn 20 percent of the nation’s wealth, but pay 38.2 percent of the total taxes.
The top 10 percent and they pay about 70% of all the federal income taxes paid.
Compare that to the bottom 50 percent.
“The bottom half of income-earners in America account for about 13 percent of the earnings but less than three percent of the federal income taxes,” according to Sepp
“The statistics show that the federal tax system is already sharply skewed toward the wealthy paying more,” Sepp pointed out.
Po’ Tommy. You’ve already admitted the wealthy pay the lowest taxes they have paid in the last century.
Po’ Tommy will take any twisted statistics he can to try and give us ANOTHER tax break and raise taxes on the poor and middle class.
So now he’s back to the disingenuous statistics.
Sigh. So sad.
Po’ Tommy. We should take away your membership card to our Top 10% Club. Or take away your card to Top 1% Club, if you’re up here with the rest of us “well heeled” in the area.
So here goes again, Tommy. Maybe read it this time?
” Claim: The top 10 percent wealthiest Americans pay 70 percent of federal income taxes.
Fact: This statistic presents a deeply misleading picture of the actual federal tax burden because (1) it fails to include payroll taxes, which every worker pays, and which fall disproportionately on the middle class, and (2) because it doesn’t reflect that high-income Americans earn a disproportionate share of income.
* Payroll taxes account for 34 percent of federal revenues. They only apply to income earned on the job – not income from capital gains on investments, which make up a much greater share of the income of the top 10 percent. And payroll taxes for Social Security are capped at $106,800.
* For both of these reasons, wealthier Americans face a disproportionately lower burden from payroll taxes. According to the independent, non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the wealthiest 10 percent only pay 25 percent of all payroll taxes.
* Counting both payroll and income taxes, the top 10 percent only pay about 50 percent of that tax burden – not much larger than their share of our nation’s income (around 42 percent).
* The top 10 percent (households earning an average of nearly $400,000) has been earning a larger and larger share of our nation’s income. Twenty years ago, they accounted for 34 percent of our nation’s income. In the past twenty years – as tax rates have fallen for the highest earners – the income share of the top 10 percent has grown to 42 percent of our nation’s earnings.
* This aggregate figure also masks the fact that certain high-income Americans pay far less than others—and less than the middle class. That’s what the Buffett Rule is meant to address.”
Po’ Tommy. I know that was hard reading all that, so here’s the “take-away”:
“* Counting both payroll and income taxes, the top 10 percent only pay about 50 percent of that tax burden – not much larger than their share of our nation’s income (around 42 percent).”
Raising it a couple percent by repealing Bush’s disastrous tax policies (that took a surplus and gave America it’s first trillion dollar deficit) isn’t going to hurt us.
Do it for America, Tommy.
We need to do it for our country.
Dear Pearl
If Obamarx didn’t spend money like a drunken sailor on shore leave in Olonagapo we would be fine. We don’t have a tax revenue problem we have a huge spending problem and the Democrats are addicted to taxes and income redistribution.
“Democrats are addicted to taxes and income redistribution”
No. You are wrong. Provable so by a little thing called history. Republicans are the party of fiscal irresponsibility – the party of borrow and spend.
Clinton balanced the budget and left a surplus. Here’s a quickie: who’s the last republican to do that?
Reagan tripled the national debt. GW Bush doubled the national debt. He took a surplus and gave us America’s first trillion dollar deficit at the same time he gave America job losses of 750,000+ PER MONTH. http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-05/wall_street/30088805_1
Obama is still trying to clean up from the Bush economy/spending spree that gave us this recession, and he has to do it without the GOP’s help, because history shows they don’t know how to get out of either recession or depression. It’s a simple solution – jobs.
Job losses. http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/
The Wall St Journal called Bush: “Bush On Jobs: The Worst Track Record On Record”
Clinton gave America a SURPLUS and 23 million new jobs. Bush gave America a trillion dollar deficit, job losses of 700,000 per month and our worst recession in a century.
Republicans are bad for America. History proves it.
Take our tax and spending levels back to Clinton rates.
Pass a huge jobs act, get America working, rebuild our infrastructure so that when the recession is over we can compete with any country.
Employed Americans pay taxes – that’s the quickest way to balance the budget.
Democrats tax and spend, which is the fiscally responsible action. Republicans BORROW and spend, which got us into this mess.
Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP never fell lower than 17.3% under Reagan with the Reagan tax cuts
Tax revenues as a percentage of GDP was an aenmic 14.5% of GDP under Obama.
Federal Budget Deficit under Reagan as a % GDP which is the truest measure:
1982 4%
1983 6%
1984 4.8%
1985 5.1%
1986 5.0%
1987 3.2%
Federal Budget Deficit under Obama as a % GDP which is the truest measure:
2009 9.9%
2010 10.0% estimate
The GDP CAGR under Reagan was 4.3%
The GDP CAGR under Clinton was 3.55%
The GDP CAGR under Obama is 1.5%
The economy grew robustly under Reagan and fairly well under Clinton; but nevertheless the economy grew under Reagan over 21% better than under Clinton. And as far as a comparison of Reagan to Obama the economy grew under Reagan over 286% better than under Obama.
For the first 9 economic quarters that Obama has been in office (, real annual growth in GDP has been just 1.5 percent. That’s less than half the annual GDP growth during the 1940s, 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. Even more striking is that the rate of growth under Obama has been only slightly higher than during the 1930s — the decade of the Great Depression. In the 1930s, real annual GDP growth was 1.3 percent — just 0.2 percent less than under Obama.
Source Bureau of Economic analysis
http://www.bea.gov/
Pearl your comparison of Bush with Obama with regard to job creation is like looking a 9 inning baseball game where Obama outscores Bush in one inning but Bush wins the game. You have to score all innings. And on that account the score is:
Bush + 1.08 Million Jobs
Obama – 3.3 Million Jobs
Bush crushed Obama in Job Creation. It was a runaway victory for Bush. It really tickles me how liberals tend to rationalize their failures as successes.
Bush vs Obama job loss – http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-05/wall_street/30088805_1 – nice try, Tommy.
Bush job record = WORST EVER according to Wall Street Journal: http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2009/01/09/bush-on-jobs-the-worst-track-record-on-record/ again – nice try.
Reagan tripled the national debt from something like .9 trillion to 2.7 trillion.
You didn’t deny it, you just avoided it and shifted over to percentages of GDP.
Again, nice try.
You missed this one: who’s the last republican to balance the budget? who’s the last republican to leave a surplus?
Democrats are the fiscally responsible tax and spend party, Republicans are BORROW and spend (borrow from China, Saudi, Japan, Iran, etc…)
Thanks, Tommy, for providing statements in your arguments that are backed by statistics,facts,and solid logic!