House Dems Want 45% Taxes on $1M Incomes

breitbart

By Ben Shapiro 

On Thursday, House Democrats proposed a new bill that would create a minimum 45 percent tax rate on income more than $1 million, and a rate of 49 percent on income more than $1 billion. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) is the mastermind behind this notion; she calls it the Fairness in Taxation Act. “Our country faces an inequality crisis,” she said. “While the amount of earned income – and accumulated wealth – by the top one percent of earners continues its dramatic rise, most Americans have seen little or no gain in take-home pay for decades. We need increased revenue to eliminate the sequester.” Other sponsors of the bill include the most liberal members of the Congress: John Conyers (D-MI), Donna Edwards (D-MD), Luis Guttierez (D-IL), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Betty McCollum (D-MN), and John Yarmuth (D-KY).

Of course, the Obama administration rammed through a tax increase at the beginning of 2013, and focused largely on measures designed to redistribute income to low-income earners throughout President Obama’s first term. The result: the weakest and most lopsided recovery in American history. In California, where taxes have been consistently increased for years, more and more businesses and high-income earners are leaving the state for greener pastures.

Our country does not face an inequality crisis. It faces a growth crisis. Cuba has no inequality crisis, but the people are still miserable. The same holds true of most socialized societies, where income gaps are smaller but growth is similarly minute.

House Dems Want 45% Taxes on $1M Incomes

Obama's Debt Per Household Greater than Median Household Income

breitbart
By William Bigelow 

How exponentially has the national debt grown under Barack Obama? Since he took office, the annual amount of debt per household in the United States is greater than the annual median household income.

Since Obama took office, the federal debt has climbed $6,167,472,778,984.22 (at the time of this writing). Divided by the 115,031,000 households in the country, that means Obama has borrowed $53,616 for each household, compared to the latest recorded median household income of $50,502 (for 2011).

The federal debt on Jan. 20, 2009, was $10,626,877,048,913.08. On April 25, 2013, it was $16,794,349,827,897.30.

Obama's Debt Per Household Greater than Median Household Income

FAA Sequester: Is Obama Intentionally Delaying Flights to Teach America a Lesson?

Pajamasmedia

FAA Sequester: Is Obama Intentionally Delaying Flights to Teach America a Lesson?

Welfare Programs Now One-Sixth Of Federal Budget

breitbart

By Wynton Hall 

Federal welfare programs now account for one-sixth of the federal budget ($588 billion), a figure that does not even include unemployment benefits, Social Security, and Medicare, reports Bill Frezza of Forbes.

The bleak Obama economy, however, is only factor driving welfare's growth, says Frezza. Corporate cronyism that profits from poverty programs has helped fuel a welfare industry that uses taxpayer dollars to generate corporate profits in ways that grow government:

Today, agricultural interests are still among the biggest advocates for these programs, but other industries are learning that they too can make a buck by promoting America’s war on poverty… Details are hard to come by as they are not broken out in earnings reports, but a 2012 study from the Government Accountability Institute “Profits From Poverty” indicates that since 2004, 18 of the 24 states that contract with J.P. Morgan to provide welfare benefits have paid over half a billion dollars in fees. That may not sound like much relative to the size of some of these firms, but it provides a nice steady income for an industry happy to shower members of the House and Senate Agricultural Committees with annual campaign donations now exceeding $300,000 per year.

The result, says Frezza, is the distortion of genuine competition that drives free market capitalism.

“What could be better for the myriad civil servants and wing-tipped bankers who dole out benefits as ever more ‘clients’ join the ranks of the poor and unemployed?”

Welfare Programs Now One-Sixth Of Federal Budget

Ninety days of destruction from the Obama White House

Fox News

By Wayne Allyn Root 

The economic news in America has gone from bad to worse. 

First, we found out the jobs numbers are collapsing. Then retail sales figures were released- they show across the board contraction. 

Next, we found out U.S. business inventory figures were a disappointment. 

Finally, consumer confidence not only collapsed, but it was the largest miss from expectations in U.S. economic history. 2 words explain it all: "Ninety days."

Creating jobs in Obama's America is like trying to grow healthy plants in a nuclear blast zone.

Ninety days is all it took to put the U.S. economy into a coma, to destroy any chance of recovery. 90 days defined by the Obama "Axis of Evil” -- Taxation, regulation, unionization, litigation, IRS intimidation, demonization, and government strangulation. The last 90 days of this Axis of Evil have sealed our fate.

There are no new jobs. There will be no new jobs. Creating jobs in Obama's America is like trying to grow healthy plants in a nuclear blast zone. Obama has turned the U.S. economy into a “Hostile Work Environment.” I call it Obamageddon. 

Look at the toxic results of what has happened in the last deadly 90 days. Last month we added a miserable 88,000 jobs. 660,000 Americans dropped off the job rolls...in one month. 

Ninety million working-age, able-bodied Americans are no longer in the workforce. The workforce participation rate is the lowest since 1979. For men it’s the lowest since 1948 (when record keeping began). Disposable income in January was the lowest since 1959 (since record-keeping began). Under Obama we’re truly back to the future.

Twenty-percent of eligible adults are on food stamps. Fourteen million on disability. Record-setting numbers of Americans are breaking into their own retirement accounts just to survive. Student loan debt is a disaster -- with defaults up 36% from a year ago. 16.4 million Americans live in poverty…in the suburbs.

You’re on your own as the American economy descends into darkness, overwhelmed by debt and entitlements. 

Obama and the mainstream media have been blowing smoke for months, but the gig is up. No recovery is coming.

Let’s take a look at what Obama did to “save us” in the past 90 days:

- Federal income taxes went up dramatically on business owners (ie jobs creators). 

- Payroll taxes went up. 

- Exemptions and deductions were taken away. 

- ObamaCare taxes took effect. State and local taxes went up across the USA. 

- Gas prices went up drastically -- even as we learned Obama’s EPA wants new gas taxes.

- Grocery prices soared. 

- Health insurance soared. For many small businesses we learned it will double next year. 

- Electric rates went up -- as we learned that Obama’s EPA doubled biofuel taxes, while also trying to eradicate the coal industry and ban oil drilling. 

- IRS audits went up dramatically on business owners (which means higher accountant and legal bills).

Add it up: There’s no money left. Even “the rich” feel poor. The middle class is drowning. Small business is under attack. How can anyone spend if they have no money left after Obama's relentless taxes? Where is the money coming from to start a business?

But it gets even worse. In those same 90 days, the government created 6,118 new rules and regulations. That’s 68 per day. 

To produce that many job-killing regulations, Obama must have sweatshops populated with  slave labor, whipped and kept in chains, working in shifts 24 hours per day. Obama is literally killing the spirit of business owners and taxpayers.

Obama is like a drug addict with giant bills to pay and no income. He has to find a way to pay for his food stamps, disability and unemployment society. 

The bill to keep this Ponzi scheme going gets bigger by the hour. But with 90 million adults no longer working, and everyone who is willing to work being robbed to pay for a nation of deadbeats, who is left to jump-start the economy? Who is left to create jobs? The answer is…clearly…no one.

Even more shocking and depressing are Obama’s priorities. He claims we desperately need to raise all these taxes. 

Yet, our president had no problem giving away $250 million to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, $500 million to the Palestinians, $1.5 million in grant money to study why lesbians are fat (I’m not kidding), and billions of dollars in income tax credits to illegal aliens (who never paid income taxes in the first place). And you wonder why people are angry and disillusioned?

This has been 90 days for the history books. Ninety days that have made an economic collapse much more likely than a recovery. Ninety days that has put capitalism and American exceptionalism on life support.

Ninety days of the Obama "Axis of Evil” showcasing what one man, supported by a blind, adoring liberal-biased media, can do to snuff out ambition, drive, work ethic, creativity, inspiration and enthusiasm -- all in the name of equality, fairness and social justice.

Ninety days that will live in infamy. My book "The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide" is out today. Just in time -- because now it's a fight for survival.

Wayne Allyn Root is capitalist evangelist, entrepreneur, and Libertarian-conservative Republican. He is a former Libertarian vice presidential nominee. Wayne's latest book will be published on April 15: "The Ultimate Obama Survival Guide: Secrets to Protecting Your Family, Your Finances, and Your Freedom." For more, visit his website: www.ROOTforAmerica.com. Follow him on Twitter@WayneRoot.

Ninety days of destruction from the Obama White House

The Obama Plan: More Spending + Tax Hikes + SS Cuts = Lots of Anger

foxnews

President Obama found himself weathering bipartisan broadsides Wednesday as he sent Congress his 2014 budget proposal, which in its effort to please both sides of the aisle has ended up angering both. 

The budget arrived on Capitol Hill Wednesday morning, delivered 65 days after the legal deadline. The $3.77 trillion spending plan, which is over 2,000 pages, tries to curb deficits by further raising taxes on top earners and reining in the growth of Social Security. 

But Republicans argue they already consented to increased taxes as part of the fiscal crisis deal and have expressed little interest in negotiating another hike. And liberal Democrats -- particularly powerful advocacy groups -- have launched a series of campaigns to oppose the changes to Social Security. 

The president's proposal being unveiled Wednesday includes an additional $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade, bringing total deficit savings to $4.3 trillion, based on the administration's calculations. It projects that the deficit for the 2014 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, would fall to $744 billion. That would be the lowest gap between spending and revenue since 2008. 

The president's plan tracks an offer he made to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, during December's budget negotiations, which Boehner ended up walking away from because of his opposition to higher taxes on the wealthy. 

The Obama budget proposal will join competing budget outlines already approved by the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-run Senate. 

The most sweeping proposal in Obama's budget is a switch in the way the government calculates the annual cost-of-living adjustments for the millions of recipients of Social Security and other government benefit programs. The current method of measuring increases in the consumer price index would be modified to track a process known as chained CPI. 

The new method takes into account changes that occur when people substitute goods rising in price with less expensive products. It results in slightly lower annual reading for inflation. 

The switch in the inflation formula would cut spending on government benefit programs by $130 billion over 10 years, although the administration said it planned to protect the most vulnerable, including the very elderly. The change would also raise about $100 billion in higher taxes because the current CPI formula is used to adjust tax brackets each year. A lower inflation measure would mean more money taxed at higher rates. 

In the tax area, Obama would raise an additional $580 billion by restricting deductions for the top 2 percent of family incomes. The budget would also implement the "Buffett Rule" requiring that households with incomes of more than $1 million pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. Charitable giving would be excluded. 

Obama's plan is not all about budget cuts. It also includes an additional $50 billion to fund infrastructure investments, including $40 billion in a "Fix It First" effort to provide immediate investments to repair highways, bridges, transit systems and airports nationwide. 

Obama's budget would also provide $1 billion to launch a network of 15 manufacturing innovation institutes across the country, and it earmarks funding to support high-speed rail projects. 

The president also is proposing establishment of program to offer preschool to all 4-year-olds from low- and moderate-income families, with the money to support the effort coming from increased taxes on tobacco products. 

The administration said its proposals to increase spending would not increase the deficit but rather are paid for either by increasing taxes or making deeper cuts to other programs. 

Among the proposed cuts, the administration wants to trim defense spending by an additional $100 billion and domestic programs by an extra $100 billion over the next decade. 

The budget proposes cutting $400 billion from Medicare and other health care programs over a decade. The cuts would come in a variety of ways, including negotiating better prescription drug prices and asking wealthy seniors to pay more. 

It would obtain an additional $200 billion in savings by scaling back farm subsidies and trimming federal retiree programs. 

Congress and the administration have already secured $2.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years through budget reductions and with the end-of-year tax increase on the rich. Obama's plan would bring that total to $4.3 trillion over 10 years. 

It is unlikely that Congress will get down to serious budget negotiations until this summer, when the government once again will be confronted with the need to raise the government's borrowing limit or face the prospect of a first-ever default on U.S. debt. 

As part of the administration's effort to win over Republicans, Obama will have a private dinner at the White House with about a dozen GOP senators Wednesday night. The budget is expected to be a primary topic, along with proposed legislation dealing with gun control and immigration. 

Early indications are that the budget negotiations will be intense. Republicans have been adamant in their rejection of higher taxes, arguing that the $600 billion increase on top earners that was part of the late December agreement to prevent the government from going over the "fiscal cliff" were all the new revenue they will tolerate. 

The administration maintains that Obama's proposal is balanced with the proper mix of spending cuts and tax increases. 

Obama has presided over four straight years of annual deficits totaling more than $1 trillion, reflecting in part the lost revenue during a deep recession and the government's efforts to get the economy going again and stabilize the financial system. 

The Obama budget's $1.8 trillion in new deficit cuts would take the place of the automatic $1.2 trillion in reductions required by a 2011 budget deal. That provision triggered $85 billion in automatic cuts for the current budget year, and those reductions, known as a "sequester," would not be affected by Obama's new budget. 

The budget plan already passed by the GOP-controlled House would cut deficits by a total $4.6 trillion over 10 years on top of the $1.2 trillion called for in the 2011 deal. The budget outline approved by the Democratic-controlled Senate tracks more closely to the Obama proposal, although it does not include changes to the cost-of-living formula for Social Security. 

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/04/10/obama-sends-congress-377t-spending-plan-riles-both-sides/#ixzz2Q4aMt7F1

The Obama Plan: More Spending + Tax Hikes + SS Cuts = Lots of Anger

What Sequester?!? Obama & Biden Live Like Roman Emperors on Public Dime

Pajamasmedia

What Sequester?!? Obama & Biden Live Like Roman Emperors on Public Dime

O'Reilly: Stupid government spending

O'Reilly: Stupid government spending

O'Reilly: Righteous anger

O'Reilly: Righteous anger

Rep. Paul Ryan previews his new budget

Rep. Paul Ryan previews his new budget

O'Reilly: The reason why Obama is not trying to solve the fiscal chaos

O'Reilly: The reason why Obama is not trying to solve the fiscal chaos

Jeb Bush talks sequestration, 2016 rumors

Jeb Bush talks sequestration, 2016 rumors

Boehner: ‘I don’t think anyone quite understands’ how sequester gets resolved

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By Tom Curry, National Affairs Writer, NBC News

In an exclusive interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner said there is no easy way to stop the budget cuts -- known as the “sequester” -- that began taking effect Friday night, and voiced uncertainty over how Washington can solve the overall fiscal problems that have consumed the nation’s politics for more than two years.

In an exclusive interview on Meet the Press, House Speaker John Boehner weighs in the economic impact of the sequester and whether or not it will hurt the country's economy.

“I don't think anyone quite understands how it gets resolved,” Boehner admitted in his interview with NBC’s David Gregory.

Boehner explained his strategy in the Republicans’ tax-and-spending standoff with President Barack Obama, saying that he didn’t want to “arbitrarily pull out a couple of tax expenditures” just to raise the revenue needed to avert $85 billion in spending cuts which are being made this year.

The president and many of his administration officials have warned of dire consequences to government services and national security if the sequester happens as planned.  But to avoid them and reach a deal, the president wants new tax increases, something Boehner and his fellow Republicans have insisted are off the table.

The spending cuts – which were intended to spur a bipartisan “grand bargain” on deficit reduction, entitlement reform and tax increases -- are part of the 2011 Budget Control Act which Obama signed into law.

Boehner voted for the law and urged his members to do likewise.

But now that the spending cuts are beginning, neither Boehner nor Obama wants them to continue. Yet they have been unable to reach an accord on an alternative measure.

More on nbcpolitics >>

Boehner: ‘I don’t think anyone quite understands’ how sequester gets resolved

Obama, Team Struggle With Accuracy When Explaining Impact of Cuts

foxnews

President Obama and top administration officials are struggling with accuracy in explaining the impact of billions in federal budget cuts known as sequester that kicked in Saturday morning  -- even getting called out by a Capitol Hill superintendent about furloughs for support staffers.

Carlos Elias, the Capitol Building superintendent, sent out a memo Friday reminding staffers that the current sequestration plan does not include “reductions in force or furloughs” and that “pay and benefit of each of our employees will not be impacted.”

Though not directly mentioning Obama by name, Elias also said in the memo that a “high-ranking official said employees that clean and maintain the U.S. Capitol will receive a cut in pay.”

Hours before the memo was released, the president, in what appears to be the administration’s attempt to maximize the potential impact of the cuts, said at a press conference: “Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.”

The cuts were proposed by the president and agree upon by Congress in 2011 after Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a more measured way to reduce the deficit. The $85 billion in cuts in 2013 to the Defense Department and domestic program will be more like $45 billion when pro-rated this year.

Last weekend, Education Secretary Arne Duncan told CBS “there are literally teachers now who are getting pink slips, who are getting notices that they can’t come back this fall." However, Duncan appeared to backpedaling Wednesday, coming up with just one example, a West Virginia county, and the disclaimer that “whether it’s all sequester-related, I don’t know.”

Officials in the state’s Kanawha County told The Washington Post that “transfer notices” were sent to at least 104 educators and they had more to do with how West Virginia allocates federal dollars designated for poor children.

PolitiFact, the Tampa Tribune’s fact-checking operation, has also reviewed officials’ sequester claims, concluding much has been “doomsday” and “worst-case-scenario” rhetoric.

The newspaper’s Pulitzer Prize-winning group found that Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s recent warning that air travel will be delayed because of Federal Aviation Administration cuts is just mostly true.

"Flights to major cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco and others could experience delays of up to 90 minutes during peak hours because we have fewer (air traffic) controllers on staff,” LaHood said  last week.

Thought sequester requires across-the-board cuts with no shifting of money between agency departments, there appears to be some flexibility in make the cuts, including $600 million from the FAA, experts told PolitiFact.

Rough one-third of FAA employees are controllers, so furloughs are possible. But agency Chairman Michael Huerta recently suggested cuts might start on the midnight shifts or at smaller and low-traffic facilities, which would at least in the short term spare the major airports.   

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2013/03/02/obama-his-team-struggling-with-accuracy-when-explaining-impact-sequester-cuts/#ixzz2MQ2GyUC8

Obama, Team Struggle With Accuracy When Explaining Impact of Cuts

Obama: Sequester 'not going to be an apocalypse'- blames ’dumb’ cuts on GOP

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read on firstread >>

Obama: Sequester 'not going to be an apocalypse'- blames ’dumb’ cuts on GOP

Boehner on sequester: Obama doesn't have a plan to replace it

 

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Read on nbcpolitics >>

Boehner on sequester: Obama doesn't have a plan to replace it

Romer and Hennessey on the Economics of Healthcare

ForaTv

Christina Romer and Keith Hennessey, former leading economists for the Obama and Bush Administrations, respectively, debate the economic impacts of healthcare reform and the sources of increasingly higher medical costs.

Romer and Hennessey on the Economics of Healthcare

Obama's cynical sequester strategy

foxnews

By Peter Morici 

President Obama has taken the middle class hostage in a thinly veiled bid to hike their taxes.

Having refused to work with Congress to reduce spending by $1.2 trillion over ten years, as he agreed to do when drafting the Budget Act of 2011, the president must now implement $85 billion in across-the-board cuts to defense and non-entitlement government spending.

House Republicans have offered to ease the burdens on the public—by increasing administration flexibility in implementing those cuts in the continuing resolution to keep the government funded past March 27—but the president wants no part of that.

Mr. Obama talks like President Truman but taxes like King George.

Instead, he is campaigning across the country, painting the dire consequences sequestration will impose on all of America if new taxes are not imposed on the wealthy. That is a cynical ploy—Mr. Obama talks like President Truman but taxes like King George.

Taxes imposed at his insistence on January 1 have eliminated 80 percent of the benefits of tax deductions—mortgage interest, state income taxes, local property levies, and the like—for wealthier households. Any substantial gains from further tightening deductions, as President Obama proposes, must come from similarly limiting their use by middle-class taxpayers.

Already, by hiking payroll taxes, the majority of $150 billion in additional revenue obtained on January 1 was extracted from the working poor and middle class families, and federal revenues share of GDP will now substantially exceed its average for the last 40 years.

President Obama is also unwilling to acknowledge government spending is completely out of control. Over the last five years, outlays are up by $1 trillion—three times the amount required by inflation—and tax revenues are short because high rates and burdensome regulations are choking economic growth and jobs creation.

Instead, the president threatens America with the dire scenario of furloughed meat inspectors, food shortages and streets without police. His cabinet secretaries threaten three hour waits in airport security lines, reduced embassy protection and border patrols. The list goes on and on.

Appropriation legislation does limit President Obama’s ability to allocate the cuts among departments. However, even without additional legislation, he has considerable discretion in allocating the 10 percent spending cuts within departments, but he has refused to entertain options that would limit the pain in his pursuit of higher taxes.

For example, the Agriculture Department has one of the largest staffs of economists in the world—surely, safe food is more important than yet another dull research paper. Military bands could also stand down to maintain Marine guards at embassies.

Repeatedly, President Obama has proclaimed that if Congressional Republicans don’t cooperate, spending cuts now could derail our hard won economic recovery. It puzzles why he believes $85 billion in spending cuts could make such a difference, when avoiding those cuts through higher taxes would not.

Whether a second recession occurs is already baked in the cake. Mr. Obama’s $150 billion January tax hikes, and similar rate increases imposed by Democratic governors from Maryland to California, have forced consumers to trim purchases. Retailers and wholesalers are reporting weaker sales traffic and are trimming inventories. Corporate leaders have announced plans to cut new investments and hiring owing to weak demand and more burdensome health care costs and regulations.

When Americans can’t get hamburger at the supermarket and unemployment rises this spring, President Obama will place the blame squarely on Republicans for permitting sequestration, but it is the American people who will bear the burden of his inflexibility, his disregard for the facts and his neglect in undertaking the responsibilities of his office.

Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, and widely published columnist.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/02/26/obama-cynical-sequester-strategy/#ixzz2M1rKjgE7

Obama's cynical sequester strategy

Get 'off your ass': Boehner blasts Senate Democrats

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

firstread

By Carrie Dann, NBC News

House Speaker John Boehner addresses the ongoing sequester standoff on Capitol Hill.

Echoing the frustration of lawmakers throughout Washington hoping for a last-minute swerve to avoid impending budget cuts, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, used some PG-13 phraseology Tuesday to urge the Senate to action. "We have moved a bill in the House twice," Boehner said at a press conference Tuesday. "We should not have to move a third bill before the Senate gets off their ass and begins to do something." The refrain of urging Senate action comes from Boehner just four days before the sequestration cuts are slated to kick in. President Barack Obama will travel to Newport News, Va. this afternoon to highlight the cuts' effect on the region's shipbuilding community. He will be joined by the area's Rep. Scott Rigell, a Republican. The White House's road trips to warn of the sequester's impact have drawn criticism from foes. "He has traveled over 5000 miles the last two weeks, and we challenge him travel a mile and half and come to Capitol Hill," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rogers of Washington on Tuesday. "Sit down with Harry Reid and urge the Senate Democrats to take action."

Boehner said Obama's event this afternoon will reduce the nation's military to a campaign "prop."
"I don't think the president is focused on finding a solution to the sequester," he said. "The president has been traveling all over the country, today by going down to Newport News in order to use our military men and women as a prop in yet another campaign rally to support his tax hikes."

Get 'off your ass': Boehner blasts Senate Democrats

Washington's sequester standoff drags on: 'Mr. President, you got your tax increase'

By Michael O'Brien, Political Reporter, NBC News

The nation’s capital was enveloped in a familiar kind of gridlock late Monday, as Republicans again demanded that President Barack Obama and Senate Democrats act first to put off $85 billion in automatic cuts slated to take effect on Friday.

“The president says we have to have another tax increase to avoid the sequester,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said of the hefty and indiscriminate spending cuts. “Well, Mr. President, you got your tax increase. It's time to cut spending.”

Related: Obama to govs: Push Congress to avert cuts

As Congress returned to work following a weeklong recess, the Obama administration and lawmakers appeared no closer to resolving the automatic spending cuts before their Friday deadline. While both Democrats and Republicans bemoan the cuts as potentially catastrophic for the economy and the national defense, both sides have been locked in a virtual staring match over the sequester.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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Washington's sequester standoff drags on: 'Mr. President, you got your tax increase'