Obama’s 2011 Tax Returns Show 20.5 Percent Rate

U.S. President Barack Obama

President Obama paid an effective tax rate of 20.5 percent in 2011, according to tax returns he and first lady Michelle Obama released today. That makes the president’s tax rate lower than Warren Buffett’s secretary, who pays upwards of 35 percent and whom Obama often cites on the campaign trail as justification for increasing taxes on millionaires like Buffett.

But at 20.5 percent, the president paid a markedly higher percentage of his income to the federal government in 2011 than his Republican rival Mitt Romney reported paying in 2010. Despite earning more than $21 million in 2010, Romney’s effective tax rate was a mere 14 percent.


President Obama reported earning about $790,000 last year and paid $162,000 in total taxes. He and the first lady donated $172,000 to charity, or about 22 percent of their adjusted gross income, according to their tax returns. The majority of the first family’s donations went to the Fisher House Foundation which provides scholarships to veterans’ children.

Obama has pushed hard the so-called “Buffett Rule” in campaign speeches this week. The proposed tax reform would require people earning more than $1 million to pay a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent.

With an income less than $1 million, Obama would not see his tax rate increase under the rule. Romney, on the other hand, would see his rate from 2010 more than double.

The likely GOP nominee has yet to release his tax returns for 2011, a fact the Obama campaign was quick to criticize him for today after the president released his own returns.

“Governor Romney has yet to provide tax returns from the period in which he made hundreds of millions as a corporate buyout specialist, or as governor of Massachusetts, the experience he says qualifies him to be president,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a statement. ” What does he have to hide?”

Romney’s spokesman Andrea Saul said the former Massachusetts governor will release his 2011 return “when it is filed.”  She knocked Obama for trying to “distract” voters from his economic record by putting the focus on taxes.

“It’s no surprise with the worst job creation record in modern history that President Obama would try to distract Americans from the real issues with a series of sideshows,” Saul said.

News by ABC

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Obama Urges Congress To Extend Payroll Tax Cut

Barack Obama, President of U.S.

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama pressured Republicans in Congress on Monday to extend a payroll tax cut, saying the economic recovery is "still fragile" and middle class families need the money.

"My message to Congress is this: Keep your word to the American people and don't raise taxes on them right now. Now's not the time to slam on the brakes. Now's the time to step on the gas," Obama said at the White House. He said despite a decline in the unemployment rate to 8.6 percent in November, "our recovery is still fragile" and the nation's economy could be hurt by economic turbulence in Europe.

The president has been seeking an extension and expansion to the payroll tax cut that will expire at the end of the year. The White House says taxes on the average family would increase by $1,000 if the cuts are not extended.

To make its point, the White House went so far as to put up a countdown clock during spokesman Jay Carney's briefing to show when middle-class taxes would go up "if Congress doesn't act."

Some Republicans in Congress support the extension but the parties have been split on how to pay for it. Obama noted that House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell have expressed support for the extension, adding, "I hope the rest of their Republican colleagues come around."

Brendan Buck, a Boehner spokesman, said there was widespread support for extending the payroll tax cuts but if "the president wants to make progress he should insist that Senate Democrats remove the job-killing small business tax hike from their partisan proposal."

Senate Democrats have rolled out a compromise that would drop Obama's proposal to award the tax cut to employers, bringing the cost of the plan down.

Obama also said for Congress to end its work this year without extending unemployment insurance would be a "terrible mistake" and leave "1.3 million Americans out in the cold."

The White House has called for an extension of benefits that can cover up to 99 weeks for the long-term jobless. State unemployment insurance programs guarantees coverage for six months, but Congress approved additional benefits in 2008. Expiration of those payments would mean an average loss of nearly $300 in weekly income for more than 1 million households in January.

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U.S. ambassador turns salesman in China

U.S. President, and Ambassador to China

(Reuters) - Businessmen in sober suits leapt to their feet, jostling with cameras and mobile phones to snap a quick shot as the new U.S. ambassador to China strode to the podium at a hotel ballroom in Jinan, in coastal Shandong province.

Nine hours later, after a speech on energy cooperation, signing ceremonies for deals of a few million dollars each, and dinner with the governor, he was back on the train to Beijing.

This is how Gary Locke, the first Chinese-American ambassador to Beijing and a local celebrity, is trying to raise U.S. sales in China -- deal by deal, ballroom by hotel ballroom, in cities most Americans have never heard of.

While every U.S. ambassador has put in a plug for American goods and services, Locke takes the effort to a new level. The former commerce secretary has hit the pavement in six provincial cities to try to narrow the trade deficit that gives his boss, President Barack Obama, political heartburn.

"Certainly these trips can help publicize the great products and services made in America that could help meet the needs of China but at the same time create jobs in America," Locke told Reuters as the train sped through fields of winter wheat.

"You may not get immediate sales, or the amount of sales from these initial transactions might be small. But really you need to track the growth of these sales, these exports by these American companies over the next several years."

The effort is needed, say U.S. businesses, which often complain about China's opaque markets and the difficulty of selling to the Chinese government and state-owned businesses.

"I'm not aware that previous ambassadors have actually led trade missions organized in the U.S. around China," said Christian Murck, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. "It reflects a personal commitment."

American exports to China rose by nearly a third to $91.9 billion in 2010, reversing a fall in sales the previous year, according to the U.S. Department of Commerce. But they are still dwarfed by Chinese exports to the United States of $365 billion.

FROM COFFEE TO CHEMICALS

Even before he arrived in China, Locke made a splash. A photo of him wearing a backpack and buying a coffee in the airport Starbucks drew enthusiastic online comments from Chinese used to seeing their own officials flanked by guards and aides.

Locke, who does not speak Mandarin, has turned his celebrity to promoting everything from machines to energy-saving lights.

The wares displayed at folding tables under the Jinan Hotel's crystal chandeliers were nothing a consumer could touch. While American stores are filled with goods made in China, the companies accompanying Locke to Jinan included specialty chemicals and equipment makers, with products designed to upgrade China's inefficient and polluting energy sector.

Small firms in particular find it hard to meet the right person or figure out when tenders are issued, let alone sell products that are often pricier than the Chinese competitor.

But Locke retains the salesman's optimism. "Everyone that has exported to China reports that what may have started off small builds over time, such that we've seen phenomenal increases in exports from the United States to China," he said.

Trade missions like these are very much Chinese affairs, with the local representatives of the American firms greeting clients effusively in Mandarin. The signing ceremony, as always, was replete with hostesses in red, a champagne toast and piped music on endless repeat.

The buffet lunch featured dishes like kelp with garlic, lotus root with ginger and pork lung in spicy sauce.

Locke's presence meant the Shandong governor was there, and the chance for a meal with both drew many of the hard-to-reach bosses of state-owned companies.

"Lots of our customers are refineries in Shandong, and it's hard to meet them. Heads of state-owned enterprises are hard to access," said X.D. Hu, China managing director for specialty chemicals maker Albemarle Corp.

Two of his major clients showed up after the Shandong government sent out invitations for the event.

"They care less about the U.S. ambassador, but the chance to meet the Shandong governor is very exciting for them."

Shandong, one of China's largest provinces in terms of both population and economy, is famously business-oriented. But with its private factories hit hard by the global slowdown, more sales growth has to come from the state-owned sector.

The Jinan trip is the first of five trade missions, each focused on a specific industry, that Locke has pledged to lead.

On the train back to Beijing, embassy staffers were already planning how to make the next one bigger and better.

"Too often U.S. ambassadors get stuck in the geopolitics, things like nuclear negotiations," said James McGregor, senior consultant for APCO Worldwide in Beijing.

"But they should be out promoting American business. That's what the Europeans and Japanese do."

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Obama administration launches $1 billion healthcare drive

Barack Obama

(Reuters) - The Obama administration on Monday said $1 billion of federal funds allocated in last year's health reform law will go toward innovation programs designed to boost jobs and improve patient care.

The announcement is the administration's latest attempt to show that it is working outside of a deeply divided Congress to create jobs.

The administration will award grants in March to people who come up with the best ideas to lift care and save money for those enrolled in the federal healthcare programs Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

However, the administration did not say how many jobs the measure would create.

Don Berwick, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said a good example includes the Baylor Heart Hospital in Dallas which has worked to lower readmission rates for congestive heart failure.

"With the healthcare innovation challenge, we're going straight to the source," Berwick said during a news conference for the announcement.

"We want to find them, we want to help them, we want to spread what they know and what they've learned."

The $1 billion of awards will cut into the $10 billion that Congress set aside in the Affordable Care Act to fund a new CMS Innovation Center. The center is meant to promote better care and health at reduced costs by identifying, testing and spreading new models of care and payment.

To get a grant, projects must start within six months and the program will concentrate on those ideas that spur the most hiring and workforce training, the Department of Health and Human Services said.

Awards will range from around $1 million to up to $30 million and be spread over three years. Applications are open to providers, payers, local government, community organizations and public-private partnerships.

Separately on Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to decide the legal fate of Obama's healthcare law, with an election-year ruling due by July.

JOB POLITICS

President Barack Obama has been aggressively promoting programs that hold potential to boost hiring, amid 9 percent U.S. unemployment which will hurt his re-election chances next year unless job creation improves.

Republican lawmakers have held up passage of most of a $447 billion jobs bill that Obama proposed in September, and which Democrats want funded by a tax on millionaires.

So far, only two modest proposals in the package have been approved by the Senate with Republican support.

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have meanwhile passed a number of measures to boost jobs, but these have yet to be taken up by the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Asked how many jobs the grants would create, Dr. Rick Gilfillan, acting director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, said: "This is not about a specific number. This is about recognizing that there are going to be more people involved in healthcare" as the population ages.

"The question is what are they going to be doing," he said, adding that the program would help identify high-value jobs in healthcare and help train people for them.

Some Republicans have questioned the innovation center's approach.

"We are concerned that at a time of significant uncertainty for the fiscal health of the U.S. government, funds are being expended by the Innovation Center with little to no actual value provided," three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee wrote to Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week.

Senators Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the committee, Mike Enzi and Tom Coburn said the innovation center received $10 billion in federal funding but has not yet produced recommendations or implemented any reforms.

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