Numb fool. Payroll taxes have nothing to do with federal income taxes. Any time you want to pony up millions of your income to Uncle Sam in the same year you give 5 MILLION to charity. As to the 47% which you speak, it was the entire universe of voters who would not ever be swayed by any Republican message; folks like you who might vote to Obama even if he said the moon was made of bleu cheese to those who always vote the straight D ticket to the perennial "takers" so it would be useless to spend any advertising trying to sway them. Too bad the media did such a poor job of analyzing the statement rather than running with a sound bite.

Incomparable. the money lent to the BIG banks was paid back with $25 billion or more in interest to the Federal gov't. That element of the $700 billion was hardly a flush down the toilet like farm subsidy. People conveniently forget that. The ones who still owe are second tier home town banks. Congress intervened along with Obama and now out of that 700 billion we lent money to government agencies $160 billion which will never see again Fannie and Freddie and we own still a sizable chunk of General Motors, currently at 30 billion dollars (Some of which will never be repaid)

While I might agree in principle that this was an attempt to bring some parity to spending and taxation and ultimately some deficit reduction, it wasn't going to happen under any scenario. This was a Pyrrhic victory, at best. The next tax legislation offering to roll back the automatic tax increases set for Jan. 1 will have so much other lard attached to it, Republicans and other conservatives will have shot themselves in the foot (both feet). Don't vote to rescind the tax breaks on those under $250,000 or be subject to such witherin attaks they will not survive any attempt at reelection to fight another day.

Who got the loans? The guys the Feds asked to take them and are now being brow-beaten as though they had made them--- Bank of America. On;;y after BoA took the huge hit were some loans passed back to Fannie and Freddie, although their time for recourse to the originator had long passed by several years CountryWide and others were to have written loans which conformed to the the GSEs' guidelines in order to get the paid for guarantees. These loans were to have been sampled by the GSEs to assure themselves that they in fact did meet the necessary documentation and underwriting criteria. If not they were able at that moment to put that loan back to the originator. ( and as much as 6 months later for non-performance on the part of the borrower)

Interesting to note Pelosi in her remarks does not mention the way the constitution would need to be amended, seeming to think a simple stroke of the pen should take care of it.