This and That

President Obama walks with National Security Advisor Tom Donilon in the West Wing of the White House, July 11 (Pete Souza)

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Richard Adams (The Guardian): What will be overlooked in discussion of the booing of Mitt Romney is what he actually called healthcare reform: a “non-essential programme”.

Here’s the quote:

“I will eliminate all the expensive non-essential programmes I can find, that includes Obamacare”

Healthcare is “non-essential,” is it Mitt Romney? Maybe that’s what people were booing: the idea that federally-funded health provision for America’s poorest such as Medicaid was “non-essential”.

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ThinkProgress: To hear conservatives and Tea Partiers tell it, President Obama is a serial tax-raiser who has increased taxes on “millions of Americans.” But according to the latest data from the Congressional Budget Office, tax rates under Obama hit a 30-year low in 2009, in part because of the tax cuts he implemented in response to the country’s economic downturn…

More here

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ThinkProgress: In a vote of 244 to 185, the House of Representatives has repealed the Affordable Care Act — just days after the Supreme Court upheld its constitutionality.

This is the 31st attempt by Congressional Republicans to eliminate the measure. The GOP has spent an estimated “88 hours and 53 minutes” since January of 2011 trying to undo the reform, an analysis by Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) office finds, though this latest bill is expected to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

More here

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David Usborne (UK Independent): Mitt Romney received an embarrassingly rough reception from members of the NAACP, the country’s oldest black civil rights organisation yesterday, which erupted into boos and shouts of disapproval when he said he meant to overturn Barack Obama’s healthcare reforms.

His rocky ride at the NAACP convention in Houston came as he faced a wave of new assaults from the campaign of President Obama over his apparent failure fully to disclose the extent of and the reasons for his multiple holdings overseas, including now or in the past in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands.

The murkiness of his personal financial affairs is emerging as a potential drag for Mr Romney who so far has released tax returns for only 2010 and an estimate for 2011. Democrats are contrasting him with his father, George Romney, who, when he ran for the White House in 1967, released 12 years of returns.

…. The tax filings released during the primaries last winter forced Mr Romney to revise earlier financial disclosures, which had made no mention of some 20 newly revealed overseas holdings – a fact highlighted in a harsh New York Times editorial yesterday….

….Chip off the old block? No, his father divulged his wealth…

Read full article here

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ABC: Mitt Romney offered a slightly inaccurate version of his tax return history in an interview today, saying he’s released two years of tax returns and that he has released the “same level of information” as John McCain and John Kerry.

…. The presumptive GOP nominee has released one year of his returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns…

John McCain released two years, but John Kerry actually released more than that in his 2004 race, going back to 1999. He released many more returns as a United States senator, as many as twenty. McCain released a total of six documents, two for himself, two for his wife Cindy McCain, and two for the McCain Family Foundation.

…His father, George Romney, started the precedent of presidential candidates’ releasing returns when he released 12 years during his 1968 run for president, but Mitt Romney has so far resisted calls for to release more years. President Obama has released 12 years.

In the interview, Mitt Romney changed the subject in order to hit the president for the Fast and Furious gun-walking scandal…

More here

Rise and Shine

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Greg Sargent: …. Today Obama will try to go on offense on what Dems hope will be a defining issue of the campaign: Taxes on the rich. He will announce in a Rose Garden speech that he wants Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for those under $250,000.

Republicans are already bashing the move as a threatened tax hike on “small businesses.” (They said the same thing about proposed tax hikes on those over $1 million; they’ll make this claim no matter what the cutoff is.) But this is a fight the Obama camp wants. It goes directly to the way the Obama team hopes swing voters will perceive this election: As a battle over which side really has the middle class’s interests at heart.

Obama has said the single greatest obstacle to bipartisan compromise on how to move the country forward is the GOP refusal to entertain even a penny more in taxes from the rich, and has called on voters to break that “stalemate.” This move is designed to highlight the cause of this stalemate — to deepen this contrast with Republicans, by putting them in the position of opposing the middle class tax cut extension unless it’s paired with an extension of tax cuts for the rich, revealing whose interests the GOP is protecting.

More here

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Paul Krugman: Once upon a time a rich man named Romney ran for president. He could claim, with considerable justice, that his wealth was well-earned, that he had in fact done a lot to create good jobs for American workers. Nonetheless, the public understandably wanted to know both how he had grown so rich and what he had done with his wealth; he obliged by releasing extensive information about his financial history.

But that was 44 years ago. And the contrast between George Romney and his son Mitt — a contrast both in their business careers and in their willingness to come clean about their financial affairs — dramatically illustrates how America has changed.

More here

Thanks Dotster, I missed this yesterday

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Cagle

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11:50: President Obama delivers a statement calling on Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for lower and middle-income taxpayers

12:30: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jay Carney

2:00: The President is interviewed by regional television outlets

4:15: Attends a campaign event at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington, DC (Closed Press)

5:20: Attends a campaign event at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Washington, DC (Closed Press)

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Morning everyone 😉