And I’m going to eliminate some programs that I think are duplicative and unnecessary…(such as) Amtrak subsidies, subsidies to PBS, subsidies to the endowment for the arts, to the endowment for the humanities. I’ve laid out eliminating Obamacare…and…reducing the federal payroll, linking pay to government, government workers.

New interview with Mitt Romney (via climateadaptation)

─ WORK Act Would Give Low-Income Moms The Same Option As Ann Romney (For 3 Years) ─

WASHINGTON — A handful of House Democrats, encouraged by the recent bipartisan agreement that stay-at-home moms should be considered just as hard working as anyone in the workforce, will introduce legislation to apply that standard to mothers on welfare as well.

Under current law, raising children does not count toward the required “work activity” that must be performed by recipients of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the federal program that emerged from the 1996 welfare reform. Some states make an exception for mothers with children less than a year old.

The Women’s Option to Raise Kids (WORK) Act, a copy of which was provided to HuffPost in advance of its introduction, would allow mothers with children ages 3 and under to stay at home with their children and continue receiving benefits.

The act was inspired by the recent kerfuffle, in which the political establishment, from President Barack Obama to Mitt Romney, took great umbrage at the suggestion by Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen that Ann Romney had not “worked a day in her life.”

“All moms are working moms,” Mitt Romney responded.

If that’s the case, then it’s unfair to apply a different standard to low-income women, reasoned Rep. Pete Stark of California, a top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee.

Read more

─ NY TIMES: "Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, made $27 million in 2010. They held millions of dollars in a Swiss bank account and millions more in partnerships in the Cayman Islands. His family’s trusts sold thousands of shares in Goldman Sachs that were offered to favored clients when the storied investment house first went public. The couple’s effective federal tax rate for the year worked out to 13.9 percent, a rate typical of households earning about $80,000 a year. Yet the hundreds of pages of tax documents released by Mr. Romney’s campaign on Tuesday morning did not readily reveal any elaborate financial legerdemain or exotic tax shelters. What Mr. Romney’s returns illustrated, instead, was the array of perfectly ordinary ways in which the United States tax code confers advantages on the rich, allowing Mr. Romney to amass wealth under rules very different from those faced by most Americans who take home a paycheck." ─

Unfortunately perfectly legal

(Source: inothernews)