Taxes

The math seems pretty simple. But apparently it's too rigorous for many Republican politicians. To avoid raising taxes and still balance the books in Sacramento, you'd have to virtually shut down state government. Some politicians are in denial. Some are demagoguing. Some are just ducking. Scared. The scared are rather pathetic.

California's proposed budget contains a major provision that would weaken air pollution regulations while saving the construction industry millions of dollars. The measure, largely overlooked in a public debate focused on taxes, would delay requirements for builders to retrofit bulldozers, scrapers and other soot-spewing equipment, slashing by 17% the emissions savings that health advocates had hoped to achieve by 2014. "There are people who will die because of this delay," said Mary D.

After five years as governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger came full circle on Friday: The film star who promised to rescue California from its fiscal wreckage without raising taxes signed into law $12.5 billion in tax hikes. With that, the Republican governor broke one of the few bonds left between his shrunken party and California's mainstream voters, marring its hard-won image as a guardian against higher taxes. "Their last gasp has been taken from them," said Larry N.

Making good on populist rhetoric he has employed since he was a candidate, President Obama plans to begin paying for a healthcare overhaul with $634 billion in new taxes on wealthy Americans and by changing the way the government pays for some health services, administration officials said Wednesday.

President Obama's $3.55-trillion budget proposal includes tax cuts for some and increases for others. More details are expected in April. Here's a first look. Who would get a tax cut under the plan? The budget would make permanent the Making Work Pay tax credit for low- and moderate-income earners. Single taxpayers are eligible for a $400 credit; married couples filing jointly are eligible for double that.

From front to back and on nearly every page, President Obama's new budget plan delivers a stark message: It's time for the rich to lighten the load on the middle class. In education, healthcare and an array of other proposals, the budget focuses more benefits on middle-class and lower-income Americans and looks to the affluent to help pay for them. The change is meant to reverse a long-running trend in the opposite direction.

"Class warfare" comes in many flavors. There's the variety practiced by feudal overlords upon their serfs, and the variety waged by the Jacobins of the French Revolution against the monarchists. Then there's the variety that Republicans claim to find in President Obama's proposed budget -- a taking from the rich to reward the undeserving poor.

The government will deduct $165 million in proposed aid to bailed-out American International Group Inc. to recoup the cost of bonuses paid to employees of the giant insurer last week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Tuesday. In a letter sent to congressional leaders, Geithner said he persuaded AIG Chief Executive Edward M.

The American International Group Inc. employees who received big bonuses and now could face a 90% tax bill may feel they have been singled out for unfair punishment by angry lawmakers. But they are not likely to win a court challenge if the legislation becomes law, because courts have given legislatures broad leeway to raise and lower taxes without running afoul of the Constitution, legal experts said Thursday.

As Washington's anti-bonus zeal intensified Friday, alarm spread across Wall Street that the government's sudden taxation fervor could ensnare thousands of workers and affect every major financial firm. Although the fast-moving legislative campaign was born of frustration with the bonuses paid to workers at ailing American International Group Inc., employees at comparatively healthy investment banks fretted about the steep tax hikes they could face if the legislation became law.