tax cuts

Former President Bill Clinton offered up some wide-ranging prescriptions for curing the nation's ailing economy in a speech at the National Retail Federation's annual convention Monday, from investing in new sectors for job growth to cutting taxes on business.

With the 2012 election season looming, the retail sector is getting vocally political for the first time. The National Retail Federation has launched "Retail Means Jobs," a year-long, $10 million advocacy campaign designed to push for retail-friendly policies in Washington.

America has always had a love/hate relationship with its wealthiest citizens, and the Great Recession has only made it worse. The trouble is, while everybody knows that "the rich" are the enemy, it's hard to determine where exactly the line lies between salt-of-the-earth members of the middle class and the bloated plutocrats.

Getting even a tentative handle on the multi-trillion dollar federal budget is no easy matter. Still, as the debate surrounding U.S. spending, taxes and the looming debt ceiling continues, it's worth asking: Exactly how does America spend all that cash, and what do the choices being debated really mean?

Americans are earning and spending more, but a lot of the extra money is going down their gas tanks. Gas prices have drained more than half the extra cash Americans are getting this year from a cut in Social Security taxes.

The S&P 500 has nearly doubled from its post-crash lows, and small investors are finally getting off the sidelines again. Normally, that would be a danger sign for a correction, but right now, all signs point to the upward stock market trend continuing in 2011. Here's why:

Goldman Sachs drew some undeserved ire when it recently pointed to proposed cuts in federal spending as a key near-term risk. While the proposed cuts are modest, they could still undermine the rebound at a critical time.

It took about 10 years of decisions for the federal budget to get more than a trillion dollars out of whack, and it's going to take at least five years to balance it again. The only way to do it is piece-by-piece, with equal sacrifices from both Republicans and Democrats.

U.S. companies added $26.5 billion to dividend payments in 2010 -- a far cry from 2009's $42.4 billion decline -- and analysts predict an even better year for dividends in 2011, a windfall to investors that could lift equity markets higher.

After months of "will they or won't they?" Congress finally committed. On December 16, 2010, the House pushed through H.R. 4853 -- The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010 -- virtually without changes. President Obama signed it into law the next day. The...