“The Federal Government already collects nearly 3 trillion dollars a year from us and they spend a trillion and a half more than that. State and local governments collect another 3 trillion dollars a year from us. This is a grand total of six trillion dollars in taxes per year,” Limbaugh said.

With this much tax revenue, Limbaugh concluded, the government can afford to make the nation’s infrastructure luxurious:

“Why isn’t six trillion dollars a year enough to fix potholes and bridges and the sort?! We ought to be able to fill ‘em up with diamonds and platinum for that money! When you look at the property tax that has to be collected per city block in New York, the roads ought to be paved with gold! Every school ought to be a palace!”

President Obama on Monday proposed a deficit reduction plan that calls for about $3 in new tax increases for every dollar in additional spending cuts as he seeks to put his imprint on the ongoing talks with Congress over reducing the government’s staggering debt.

In a plan his advisers described as his ideological vision rather than a compromise offer to Hill Republicans, Mr. Obama also threatened to veto any plan Congress sends him that makes changes to Medicare benefits without also raising taxes on the wealthy, which he argues is central to a “balanced” approach.

“This is not class warfare, it’s math,” Mr. Obama said in the White House’s Rose Garden as he laid out the outlines. “The money’s got to come from some place.”

The White House argues his plan totals $4.4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next 10 years, though $1.1 trillion of that comes from savings on war-fighting expenses that all sides agree were going to happen anyway as the U.S. missions in

Drawing a bright line with congressional Republicans, President Barack Obama is proposing $1.5 trillion in new tax revenue as part of his long-term deficit reduction plan, according to senior administration officials.

The president on Monday will announce a proposal that includes repeal of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers, nearly $250 billion in reductions in Medicare spending, $330 billion in cuts in other mandatory benefit programs, and savings of $1 trillion from the withdrawal of troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the officials said.

The plan includes no changes in Social Security and does not include an increase in the Medicare eligibility age, which the president had considered this summer.

President Barack Obama on Monday proposed paying for his jobs plan by eliminating $467 billion in tax breaks for wealthier Americans and corporations, meeting immediate resistance from Republicans in Congress.

The White House objective is to put lawmakers in a tight spot: Support Obama's jobs package or risk being portrayed as doing nothing to improve the economy heading into presidential and congressional elections in November 2012.

The U.S. economy, the world's largest, is mired in 9.1 percent unemployment and flirting with another recession [cnbc explains] as Europe's debt woes weigh down the global economy. U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner will attend part of a meeting of euro zone finance ministers on Friday in Poland.

Obama, who pushed through an $800 billion economic stimulus package in 2009, stepped up his campaign to sell his new proposals to American voters as he prepared to send the jobs bill to lawmakers later on Monday.

"We've had too much talk the last few days of Republicans as early as this morning, Republican leaders in the Senate saying there will be no revenue. That's not going to happen. Otherwise, the trigger is going to kick in. The only way we can arrive at a fair arrangement for the American people with this joint committee is to have equal sharing. It's going to be painful. Each party if they do the right thing, it's going to be painful for them because to be fair, we have to move forward. There has to be equal spending cuts, there has to be some revenue that matches that," Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV) said on the floor of the Senate right before voting started on the debt deal.

Increased revenue from taxes was not included in the debt compromise.

Stays true to the President’s commitment to shared sacrifice by preventing the middle class, seniors and those who are most vulnerable from shouldering the burden of deficit reduction. The President did not agree to any entitlement reforms outside of the context of a bipartisan committee process where tax reform will be on the table and the President will insist on shared sacrifice from the most well-off and those with the most indefensible tax breaks.

With no debt deal done and both sides racing an Aug. 2 deadline, Democrats and Republicans on Sunday readied separate backup plans to try to raise the government’s borrowing limit and cut spending.

House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican, pitched his colleagues on a plan to raise the borrowing limit by about $1 trillion and match that with similar sized spending cuts — enough to last through the rest of the year, and leaving for later the heavy lifting on taxes and bigger spending items.

Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he is working on a plan to raise the debt limit by $2.7 trillion, coupled with an equal reduction in projected future spending. In a concession to Republicans, he said that plan would not include tax increases, but that the new debt level would last through the 2012 elections.

That date has become a critical marker for Democrats — so much so that President Obama’s advisers said he would veto any bill that doesn’t last that long.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Tuesday revived an ambitious budget plan that could provide new ideas for breaking the impasse in Congress over raising the nation's credit limit by August 2.

President Barack Obama threw his support behind the proposal by the "Gang of Six" senators, saying it was broadly consistent with his approach on reducing debt and deficits.

Obama urged Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a fellow Democrat, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell to start "talking turkey" about it.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, one of the six Democratic and Republican senators who have been working since December on a deficit-reduction plan, said the proposed $3.75 trillion in savings over 10 years contains $1.2 trillion in new revenues.

"You have 80% of the American people who support a balanced approach. 80% of the American people support an approach that includes revenues and includes cuts. So the notion that somehow the American people aren't sold is not the problem. The problem is members of Congress are dug in ideologically."

Speaker John Boehner told a closed meeting of the House Republican Conference that he was not going to provide them many details about his talks with President Barack Obama on a debt ceiling increase, but said tax hikes were “off the table,” even as he considers a variety of ways to increase revenue.

In their first meeting since returning from a week-long July 4 recess that included secret talks between the speaker and Obama, Boehner said he thought the White House’s new, more aggressive debt-reduction plan was a test balloon to see how Democrats reacted to serious tinkering with the nation’s entitlement structure. Obama is considering options to cut as much as $4 trillion in government spending over the next 10 to 12 years, including changed to Medicare and Social Security.

Talks imploded Thursday between DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican legislative leaders in the final hours before a midnight deadline, and Minnesota began a historic government shutdown.

"This is a night of deep sorrow for me," Dayton said in an address at 10 p.m. that was punctuated by jeers and hisses from Republicans, including some lawmakers.

The governor said his last offer would have raised income taxes only on those earning more than $1 million a year -- an estimated 7,700 Minnesotans, or 0.3 percent of all taxpayers, according to the Revenue Department.

Republicans rejected the proposal, Dayton said, because they "prefer to protect the richest handful of Minnesotans at the expense of everyone else."

Republican leaders made their own statement, saying Dayton's proposal for dealing with the projected $5 billion deficit would cause irreparable harm to the state's economy for generations.

New U.S. claims for unemployment benefits fell less than expected last week, a government report showed on Thursday, suggesting the labor market was struggling to regain momentum.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits edged down 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 428,000, the Labor Department said.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast claims dropping to 420,000. The prior week's figure was unrevised at 429,000.

It was the 12th straight week that claims have been above 400,000, a level that is usually associated with a stable labor market. Employment stumbled badly in May, with employers adding just 54,000 jobs -- the fewest in eight months.

Increasing federal debt will be a growing burden on government action, crowding out lawmakers’ ability to adopt tax and spending priorities in good times and reducing flexibility during recessions, all while making a fiscal crisis more likely and hindering long-term growth, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

In the annual Long-Term Budget Outlook, the legislature’s budget scorekeepers said that the ratio of debt to GDP this year will be 69 percent, 7 percentage points higher than last year. In 2021, the CBO predicts debt will reach 76 percent of GDP, but under a more dire—and more likely—scenario, the public debt will be 101 percent of GDP 10 years from now, well into the economic danger zone of 90 percent or more.

Last year, that worst-case scenario predicted a debt-to-GDP ratio of 87 percent in 2020, demonstrating that the public debt picture has worsened considerably, in part due to a bipartisan tax deal last year that reduced expected revenue.

The chairman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee harshly attacked on Tuesday proposed new rules from the National Labor Relations Board designed to drastically shorten the period workers have to consider a vote to join a union.

Rep. John Kline, Minnesota Republican, who is the panel’s chairman, said in a statement that the NLRB, now dominated by appointees of President Obama, “continues to push an activist agenda at the expense of our nation’s workforce.”

“Not only will this misguided proposal to expedite union elections undermine an employer’s lawful right to communicate with his or her employees, it will cripple a worker’s ability to make an informed decision,” Mr. Kline warned.

Labor unions long have complained that management has used delay and other tactics in an effort to thwart union organizing efforts.

Chicago, IL. -- A drink at the bar, a fast-food meal and back-to-school shopping are among those things about to get a bit more expensive in Illinois.

Early Saturday, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger struck a deal with board members, who approv

A Grand Island lawn care company owner has pleaded guilty to harboring illegal immigrants and manipulating financial transactions to avoid reporting them. David Wortman turned himself in for arrest last month, one day after U.S. Immigration and Customs En

Mr. Bush changed positions last April, embracing a path to citizenship, and in this new deal dropped his insistence on illegal aliens paying back taxes.

Laura Capps, a spokeswoman for Kennedy, said a provision for requiring back taxes was in Kennedy's original bill and that Chertoff called for it to be removed. "Chertoff thought it would be too challenging to accurately determine the amount of an applican