Now Mr. Sununu has slipped into Orwellian language. He wants to replace the obvious with camouflage. I won't bother with his incorrect arithmetic but the major thing he ignores is people's productivity is not rewarded in this country as it should be. The so called entrepreneurial class who make their fortune by sucking the life out of their labor force is the problem. If they can not get labor to agree to near subsistance wages they ship the jobs overseas. If they were paid enough to save for their pension or health care or shelter that is a solution. However Mr. Sununu is asking to screw people both ways. Don't pay them adequately to cover decent survival and then tax them on top of that. This is a cruel indecent man. Since the rich can afford it maybe they should be the pilot project. Tax them to barely livable levels and see if it suits them. It is absolutely appalling how reactionary Republicans do not understand their role is creating our present economic woes.

I was going to leave it alone but Mr. Sununu's remarks are so outrageously wrong that some comment is needed. Your Medicare is only partially by the payroll deductions, mainly Part A. The other parts B, C, and D come from general funds. Further Part B is partly funded also by real time participants according to their income. The Social Security trust fund is borrowed from to pay for other governmental expenses. Medicaid is a shared program for both state and federal programs so again through the states it is paid for by general taxes. In short none of these programs are fully funded by dedicated programs and become part of problem to figure out how we all pay for this and what are the solutions to do so. You can pay people more decently and have the taxpayers Mr. Sununu wants or make those who are holding on to un-needed cash put it to work to improve the prosperity of the nation.

Diminutional convenienly ignores that no taxes are paid on investment income which is the biggest welfare scam of all time he also ignored trillions in corporate welfare Sununu is just a slimly liar who doesn't speak all the truth. 

Mr. Sununu in politics there is stretching the truth and there is shading it.  Then when you know that something is factually false and say it anyhow people then say you're lying.  Seldom do I say a pol is lying having been involved in politics for so long.  However, in this instance.  You are lying.  You know exactly how the federal budget works and you know that your statements here are untrue.  In a way I marvel at the fact that people still interview you or let you write a column after all of these years of smart mouth, false information and outright lying.  You really need to find something new to do as you have lost all sense of dignity and propriety. 

Mr. Sununu's article is what misses the point here:

I am appalled not by Mr. Romney's use of numbers, but by his obvious hatred for those who are not in his own elite economic bracket.  I actually agree that the tax system should be simplified and adjusted so that more people pay in (and people like Mr. Romney are no long allowed to park their billions in island bank accounts!)

What disgusts me is the phrase "I'll never convince them to take responsibility and care for their lives." What makes this man unfit to hold any elected office is his belief that anyone who accepts government support is "irresponsible".  

What a schmuck. 

Mr. Sununu: THAT is the reason why the video should kill any hopes that this guy has of winning the Oval Office.

After his funny suggestion that Donald Rumsfeld never made political comments while on the clock, Sunnunu gets serious.  He asks, "Should we be bothered by the fact that nearly half of American taxpayers pay no income taxes at all?"  In the next paragraph, however, he concedes that if we take out the elderly and the working poor, Romney's 47% drops to about 24%.  Now, if he had also removed from that number those who pay no taxes because of the Republican supported child tax credit and had further knocked out those who benefit from the sorts of shelters that allow Mr. Romney to pay (at most--who really knows?) 15% of his gigantic income in Federal income tax, this number would drop to a number that could hardly shock even (the needless to say always entirely non-political, New Hampshirite) Sunnunu. 

It's pretty simple really--if more people should have "skin in the game" then taxes should be increased.  It is the Republicans who generally oppose policies of that sort.  And they continue to do so, even while hollering about the deficit and sniffing about how few people pay taxes.  What they obviously want are poll taxes.  Everybody, rich or poor, pays exactly $10,000 in income taxes.  No more, no less, regardless of age, income, disability, inherited wealth, whatever.  That, in a nutshell, is the Republican notiion of "fairness."

Sununu is spot on; the press tends to give Obama a pass while it plays up Romney's every little stutter. The sad fact is that Obama is like the affirmative action hire at the office. Everyone knows he's incompetent, but no one dares say it out loud, and his considerable failings are simply ignored. Romney obviously isn't the perfect candidate, but he's a good man who has been highly successful in business, raised five boys, paid his taxes and gave millions to charity. When did we Americans become so shallow and pathetic as to demonize a man of great accomplishment while glorifying a man with little other than his skin color to distinguish him?

Great column John.  It is truly surreal to see the press ignore the many foibles of this preisdent, and stand ready to pounce anc arve up Mitt for any words he speaks that they can declare is a "gaffe".  Sebelius breaks the law?  No story-we are focussed on Mitt insulting the people who pay no taxes!!  Obama apologizes for America ?  No story-Mitt spoke too soon in being critical of the Presient!!

We are once again seeing the press act as competentant as replacement referees.  They have a narrative, and they will stick to it.  The power they wield is significant, and they are pulling out all the stops to keep this president in office.  One can only hope that the debates will force the press the fully examine the president's incompentence.  But doubt it.  They will be the cheerleaders for the man destroying our country, and will hoist him on the shoulders, as he explains why he derserves to keep his job, as our country slides off the cliff.

Remember when one decent job could support an entire family?  Families are working twice as hard these days for far less. But their bosses are hoarding their wealth offshore and refusing to invest in the American workforce.  Increase taxes on capital gains and refuse to "repatriate" those offshored spoils, and maybe they'll hoard less and invest more of their money here.  Pay workers a decent wage with benefits (remember benefits?!) and maybe they'll have enough income to pay the federal income tax.  Romney's money made FAR more money last year than I have made from working my entire life.  

What Governor Romney actually said, when he wasn't lazily lumping half the GOP base in with "those people", was that people who aren't paying income taxes can't be swayed by tax cuts. This suggests that Romney can't think of a way to reach out to voters except by offering what amounts to a bribe.

35% of people did not pay taxes in the 1990s. That increased to almost 50% because of the Bush tax cuts  The tax credits, especailly the tax credits for having children, pushed this number up dramatically. Even time the Republicans complain about the 50% number, they should remember that they are the ones who drove the number up. Note that Sununu talks about the fact that the number went up, but failed to mention why.

more people are on disability/food stamps then the number of jobs that have been created under O. But, vote obama.

Those who are assessed payroll taxes for Medicare and Social Security do pay for all those tanks and airplanes in a Pentagon budget conservatives refuse to cut, as John Sununu surely knows despite what he says about FICA taxes being dedicated to those "entitlement" programs along. It's been the weekly contributions of the little people into the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds that has provided the "surplus" out of which the government has been able to borrow for the lion's share of government -- letting the top 1% get off scot free with their Bush tax cuts while also getting an investment opportunity when they buy T-bills to finance the government so that we have to pay them interest instead of them paying taxes to us to keep the government running. And now that it's time to pay back all that money the government has had to borrow after forgoing all that revenue from the rich since 2001, conservatives like Sununu want to claim that Social Security has gone broke with nothing but "worthless IOUs" in its bank account (i.e. Treasury notes) and so are demanding that we cut "entitlement" benefits so that the rich don't have to pay back all those loans the government was taking while the rich were enjoying their 12 year "tax holiday."

"This is not a question of taxing the elderly or working poor. Set aside these groups, and more than half of the non-income-tax-paying public remains.  The argument isn’t that everyone in this group should pay high taxes; it’s that many should be paying something."

I went and read the WP article linked there; I guess Sununu was removing the elderly and very poor (income under 20%).  The 28.3% who pay payroll tax but not income tax are working, and I guess they're poor enough to qualify for EITC (as pointed out by many others, a program that was expanded and touted by Republicans) or other similar benefits, but not poor enough to be part of the "working poor" as Sununu defines it.

With Romney's comment about not taking responsibility for their lives, we are supposed to get this picture of the millions of freeloaders who aren't working at all, just taking handouts.  But those 28.3% are working, if they're paying payroll tax.

Spoken like a true surrogate for Mitt Romney. Clearly, Mr. Sununu hasn't looked at the Herald recently -- hard to find anything posing as news that isn't slanted towards the GOP.

That 47% happens to include my mother and mother-in-law (elderly, living on SS), my brother-in-law (disabled)and my daughter (mother of two, working 2 jobs and still having a tough time). Trust me, these are only 4 people and they are NOT slackers. My daughter works very, very hard; works all the overtime she can and cuts corners on food, clothing, you-name-it. It does not help Mr. Romney's image when he sneers at others. He was fortunate enough to be born with quite a bit of money, most Americans do not have that luxury.

It's true that too few Americans are paying income tax. The Bush tax cuts should be rolled back for everyone. But that isn't what Romney said. Romney said those who don't pay income tax see themselves as victims and they are the ones who vote for Obama. Actually Romney gets a lot of support and will get a lot of votes from working class and poor white Americans whom he has apparently written off. In addition, the rich, like Romney, are among those who do not pay income tax. Romney appears to see himself and the rich as victims even though he and they have profitted from twenty-five years of redistribution from tax reforms that favored them.