A round-up of coverage and commentary on the Obama Administration’s budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2012…

Aric Newhouse, senior vice president, National Association of Manufacturers, NAM statement:

Unfortunately, President Obama’s budget plan … contains higher taxes for virtually all manufacturers – a direct threat to growth and manufacturing jobs. Increased income taxes on companies with worldwide operations, increased energy taxes and income taxes for small and medium-sized companies will make manufacturers less competitive.

Jack Gerard, president, American Petroleum Institute, “Administration tax hike will hurt jobs, cut government revenue“:

It’s no surprise the administration is proposing yet again to raise taxes on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.  But it’s still a bad idea and comes at one of the worst times in our economic history.  The administration continues to ignore the fact this industry is among the nation’s largest job creators and delivers enormous revenues to government at all levels.  The industry pays income taxes, royalties and other fees totaling nearly $100 million every day and pays income tax at an effective rate far higher than most other industries.

 Besides eliminating thousands of new potential jobs, the increases, over the long term, would actually lower revenue to the government by many billions of dollars as a result of foregone revenues from projects the tax hikes would prevent going forward.

Dean Zerbe, Forbes, Capital Tax blog, “Obama’s Budget Proposal and Taxes: Lots of Regifting“:

The tax proposals in the administration’s FY 2012 budget released today is a combination of regifting (lots of old and cold proposals that didn’t go anywhere even when the Democrats ran the whole show) and some new proposals that will take a good deal of energy to get moving in this Congress. (continue reading…)

Fun juxtaposition of page one stories in USA TODAY today. There’s the ominous one about government overtaking the private sector as the driving force in the U.S. economy, “Private wages fall in historic pay shift.”

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

But the dominant story on Page One is a more cheerful piece, “Twitter Power: Learning from ourselves, in real time.”

That Twitter has succeeded isn’t a shock; a time-pressed global culture was bound to pounce on the free service’s 140-character haiku format, and 114 million users have signed up to date, 40% of them Americans. What generates awe is the speed with which Twitter has taken a seat alongside Google and Facebook at the tech world’s grown-up table.

Once derided as a peddler of infantile missives (“My latte is cold!”), the service has revealed itself to be an accurate barometer of mass culture. Today, if something isn’t tweeted, did it happen?

“Twitter has become the world’s water cooler,” says Adam Ostrow, editor of the social media blog Mashable. “It’s a place where you can hear what millions are saying and feel, unbiased and in that moment.”

Thank you to Kathy Snyder, President and CEO of the Maryland Chamber of Commerce, for inaugurating what we intend to become regular reports on state issues from business and trade association leaders. We’re adapting the early blog category, “Report from America,” for these interviews and soon, we hope, podcasts.

We turn first to Annapolis. The Maryland General Assembly adjourned a week ago Monday, completing a legislative session that avoided tax increases and other additional government spending and programs that could have damaged the state’s business environment. In this 12-minute interview, Kathy highlights key developments during the sessions, such as a compromise that kept the state’s unemployment fund solvent while not adding permanent new costs to business. Another top issues included relief from new storm-water management rules that were unnecessarily burdensome.

Given the state’s slowly recovering economy and the upcoming elections, lawmakers were on good (restrained) behavior, the Chamber President reported. The concern is that 2011 may be different, and the Chamber is already working to prevent a new rush to taxes in the next session of the General Assembly.

The Chamber has posted its legislative recap here. You can also follow the association’s work at its blog, here.

And again, the interview is here, a 12-minute .mp3.