Blogs

A story in the New York times today, Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say, highlights the need for additional resources to be devoted to making higher education affordable.

The transportation bill before the House endorsed by House Republican leadership is wrong-headed. In diverting all funds to highways, providing no mandatory allocation for public transportation, and attaching unrelated provisions related to the oil and gas industry it illustrates two fundamental mistakes in substance and process, and why my Republican opponent Pete Session, who holds a leadership position in that process needs to be fired.

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Hi, I’m Walter Hofheinz.  I’m running for U.S. Representative for the 32nd Congressional District of Texas.

Why am I running?  I believe effective, responsible government can be part of the solution, not the problem. It’s my offer to work on a broader scope to leave the world a better place for those who come after me, with more opportunity, a better, more secure quality of life, and a fairer, more just society.

In an interesting and illustrative piece in the New York Time, "Paying Far More Than 13.9%: A Taxpayer’s Lament", the writer discusses his actual tax rate, taking into account all taxes:

"I paid 24 percent of my adjusted gross income in federal taxes and 37 percent in combined federal, state and local income taxes. I paid 49 percent of my taxable income in federal income tax, and 74 percent of my taxable income in combined federal, state and local income taxes. My totals include federal payroll and self-employment taxes.

Today I read an interesting piece in the New York Times: "I Just Got Here, but I Know Trouble When I See It" Each offers a thought-proving perspective on various problems we face.

Of particular interest is the section that begins "Why do many middle-class families now struggle to get by on two paychecks, whereas most got by on just one back in the 1950s and ’60s?" which offers the concept of the "toil index" — the amount needed for a family to afford median housing, read in conjunction with the section "A Tax Credit to Fix A Housing Mess."

A recent headline "Deficit committee locked in budget stalemate" highlights the need for new, effective membership and leadership in Congress.

Simplistic solutions to our long term fiscal problem, like simply cutting spending — most often focused on those items providing benefits to those unable to provide for themselves, such as social security and medicare — simply will not solve the problem. This is particularly true if one takes off the table any discussion of effective solutions to the elephant in the room: rapidly escalating health care costs.

At an event I was at recently, someone posed the question "What does Independent Democrat mean, anyway?"

I launched into a brief discussion of how beliefs and political parties no longer align well with what many people I run into believe. There are fiscal conservatives in both parties, those who believe in broader and narrower scope for government action in both parties, and those who believe in fundamental liberties in both parties. There are many who believe in fiscal responsibility coupled with government actions enhancing opportunity. There is a focus on "one side" or the "other side" winning, not how we solve the problems we face together.

As I reflected later, however, I'm not sure that I really answered the question in a meaningful way. What do I mean when I label myself as an "Independent Democrat" in this campaign?

This is a great baselinescenario blog about why relatively small increases in taxes make a big difference: http://baselinescenario.com/2011/10/11/bathtubs-for-beginners/?utm_sourc....

We should let the Bush (and now Obama) tax cuts expire, and enact fundamental changes in the tax code to enhance fairness.

I've been busy – I work for a living – so this is a little delayed.

How many times in listening to the news related to budgetary and fiscal matters have you heard someone say "leading to a savings (or shortfall) of [inserts huge number of trillions of dollars of your choosing here] over the next 10 years! Meanwhile, Congress has failed to enact a budget for the next fiscal year that begins this month, instead choosing to continue government operations under a short-term continuing resolution.

We hear these words all too often, even when the speaker can't identify particulars that make a difference.

In http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/opinion/sunday/runaway-spending-on-war..., referring to the report of the Commission on Wartime Contracting some aspects — constituting between 15% and 29% of expenditures — are actually identified in detail: