President Barack Obama visited a toy factory in Hatfield Township on Friday, citing it as an example of the type of business that would suffer if Congress does not act soon to prevent the country from running over the "fiscal cliff," a series of tax increases and cuts in spending that are due to come into effect at the beginning of the new year.
In remarks broadcast live on C-SPAN, Obama called Hatfield-based K'Nex, which makes kits of interlocking pieces that allow children to construct their own toys, "one of the few companies in the toy industry that has aggressively moved jobs back here [to the U.S. from overseas],"
The President said middle-class consumers will have money "to buy more K'Nex" if Democratic and Republican legislators can "get out of our comfort zones" to reach a compromise that would extend payroll tax cuts. Middle class families will pay an average of $2,200 more in taxes in 2013 if the tax cuts expire, Obama said.
Obama asked that people make sure their "voices are heard" by their local federal legislators.
"I need folks like you, the people here in Hatfield and in Pennsylvania, to get this done," Obama said.
Republicans, meanwhile, said the "massive spending spree" of Obama's "Democrat allies" in Congress was to blame for leading the country towards the "fiscal cliff." A statement sent to the media Friday by the Republican National Committee said Obama's proposal to raise taxes on small businesses and individuals earning more than $250,000 per year would cause the loss of an estimated 30,800 jobs in Pennsylvania.
Locally, a Perkiomen Township business owner served as the standard bearer for the Republican message. Jerry Gorski, owner of Gorski Engineering, starred in a video issued by House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA).
"This notion of $250,000 being the top two percent or the wealthy people in America ignores the way most small businesses work in America," Gorski said in the video.
About a half mile from the site of the President's visit, a group of anti-tax activists staged a protest along the shoulder of Route 309.
The President traveled from Philadelphia International Airport, where he landed shortly after 11:00 a.m., to Hatfield aboard the Marine One helicopter, which minimized the road closures that would have been associated with a traditional motorcade. Security was predictably tight in the vicinity of the K'Nex premises, as a network of law enforcement professionals from across Montgomery County coordinated to strictly control access the landing zone.
What right track are you referencing? We are the youngest and strongest Country in the world. It is freedom to compete that accomplished this. Not a bunch of bureaucrats limiting our freedom, or central planners talking nonsense about fairness! We are at a tipping point where there are too many takers and not enough producers. You cannot tax your way out of the Impending Fiscal cliff.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/biggest-holders-of-us-gov-t-debt.html China owns a small percentage of our debt. They're not going to stop buying our debt because they need our consumer spending. And Japan is going to soon pass China in terms of entities to which we owe debt. We the People are actually our own # 1 debtor / creditor. I hope the economic knowledge you accuse us of lacking will be increase with reading the link. In terms of spending, I'll join your call to reduce some spending. Instead of militarizing our national boundaries with Mexico, why don't we spend that money on finding, fining, and seizing the assets of employers who continue to employ illegal aliens. There will be less illegal crossings if there are few employers willing to hire illegals. Imagine the increased tax revenue from employers having to hire American workers at market rates, coupled with the reduced spending on dealing with illegal aliens. To go a step further, with comprehensive immigration reform, would grow our economy by leaps and bounds. http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj32n1/cj32n1-12.pdf We also spend far too much money on prisons. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/03/us/03prison.html?_r=0 Our continued failure of a "war on drugs" is also costly. http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/v32n6/cpr32n6-6.html Just some food for thought about cutting spending in several manners that raise revenue as well.
Going over the fiscal cliff on purpose is STUPID! All the cuts are on just 1/4 - 1/3 of the budget, not SS/Medicare/Entitlments/DebtSerice. I'm as Liberal as anyone, I voted for Obama, but I recognize that taxes will only ever be 10%-20% (at most) of the debt crisis solution. Those sitting the prettiest should pay some more taxes, but the rest of us will have to get less from the Govt. Obama said this himself. Boehner, the House GOP, TeaPartiers and the Norquist Zombies should just agree & get over it. THEN they can turn around & say "OK, WE put our money where our mouth is, now YOU DO THE SAME." and maybe we'll actually get someplace. Many of my fellow Liberals are dead-set against any entitlement reform, we need to get over it, too. Instead of the Ryan plan ("Here's a small voucher, now get lost you're on your own") we should allow the retirement age to gradually rise to 70-72 by 2035 or so. It's already going up to 67 by 2025.
This is pure partisanship. The only objective truth is that we have a debt problem. Yes, we must solve it with spending cuts more than tax increases, but our taxes are much lower now than during most all the past 8-9 decades, increases are a *very* reasonable part of the solution.
We had a few CIA in Benghazi. They took a whole 20-30 min to get moving.
Your first sentence may be true, in a purely arithmetic sense, but it is unfair. Rightwingers speak of Govt waste like it's their one true religion, but the fact is every large organization, pub or private, wastes money and the bigger it is the more they waste. Your second sentence is debatable, you are making a very partisan ideological assumption about where we are on the Laffer Curve, and not examining it at all. I see evidence that you are wrong. A good decade ago now Bush put in BIG tax cuts for everybody, that benefitted the rich the most. Then he cut Capital Gains in Half, almost exclusively a gift to the Rich, the so-called "Job Creators". Maybe you didn't notice, but we are NOT up to our necks in good highpaying jobs these days. What we DO have instead is unprecedented wealth concentration, unheard of since the 1920s. You give the wealthy a bunch of new money, and they do with it what they do best: Make more money for themselves. That's why they are the wealthy in the 1st place. Bully for them, but drop the "JobCreator" bullpoop.
Never in the history of this country has the office of the President been so horribly disrespected and we can start with a Supreme Court Justice who refused to have the Presidential Oath of Office in hand as has always been done and failed our newly elected President, of course their was the yelling of "you lie" during the Presidents speech by a Republican member of Congress. If all of that is not enough for you how about the photo of the man at a Romney rally wearing a shirt that said... Put the White back in the White House. "Win our freedom back." That's exactly what the majority of American's voted for in November. Of the people, by the people, for the people... not by multi-billion dollar corporations, the robber barons, and wall street elitists, who receive some of the biggest welfare checks, compliments of hard working taxpayers, known as "subsidies".
Republican=stupid
Republican=stupid
If you make 50k per year and spend 80k per year, putting the extra 30k on a credit card, how long will you survive? This is exactly what we do in the US. Interest rates are now at historic lows. We earn 2.2t and spend 3.5t. What will happen to our ability to service this debt when the artificlly low rates rise or when our credit rating is bumped down again? How is this responsible governance? How is this common sense? How is this good for the next generation? The drug dealers are in charge of the pharmacy. It's like you live in a parallel universe. Wake up.