The Los Angeles Times reports:

It’s the service that is responsible for the candidates’ security, not the campaigns, said Max Milien, an agency spokesman. Any cost concerns should be directed to the agency.

Newport Beach City Manager Dave Kiff billed the campaigns of President Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney for police security at their separate fundraisers this year in the city.

Now that the Romney campaign paid its bill, the city is left in the awkward position of trying to collect from Obama. …

The Romney campaign paid its bill last week, about a month after the city sent its invoice. The Obama bill, on the other hand, was sent in May and has not been paid.

The Daily Caller has obtained a July 13 letter from Rep. Marsha Blackburn to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, in which the Tennessee Republican wrote that according to Internal Revenue Service data, FCC employees’ income tax delinquency rate rose from 2.74 percent to 3.88 percent from 2008 to 2010. During that same period, she added, unpaid federal income taxes owed by the agency’s staff rose from $544,917 to $1,084,544.

And according to a May 2 memo sent by FCC Chief Human Capital Officer Bonita Tingley to all agency employees, also obtained by TheDC, “the IRS reported that as of September 30, 2011, 3.59 percent of FCC employees had some type of Federal income tax delinquency.” That rate was down only slightly from the 2010 figure. […]

The FCC’s website discloses that it presently has 1,993 employees. In 2010 the business intelligence website Hoovers reported that the agency employed 1,930 people. That works out to 75 FCC staffers owing Uncle Sam an average of $14,483 each in unpaid income taxes.

The Boston Herald’s Joe Battenfeld reported (via Twitter) on Friday that after weeks of dodging the issue, Warren confirmed that she did not elect to pay a higher tax rate in Massachusetts.

The state’s tax return gives taxpayers the option of paying a higher rate of 5.85 percent, as opposed to the standard rate of 5.3 percent.

Warren has criticized her opponent, Sen. Scott Brown (R., Mass.), for his opposition to the so-called “Buffett Rule,” which would increase taxes on about 4,000 millionaires and raise about $4.7 billion per year in additional revenue.

A Harvard professor, Warren is worth an estimated $14.5 million.

Her fiery rhetoric on the politics of wealth in America has left many liberals, including the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, agog and trembling with delight.

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” she said, in one memorable rant caught on video. “Nobody.”

The Obama administration is emphasizing “fairness” over deficit reduction in its renewed pitch for the “Buffett rule” ahead of next week’s scheduled Senate vote.

Introducing a minimum 30 percent income tax on millionaires “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control,” Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. “This is not the president’s entire tax plan. We’re not trying to say this solves all our economic problems, all our budget problems.”

In September 2011, the president presented a more hopeful vision for the Buffett Tax at a DNC event:

What I’ve said is this is a very simple principle that everybody should understand: Warren Buffett’s secretary shouldn’t pay a lower [sic] tax rate than Warren Buffett. A teacher making $50,000 a year, or a firefighter making $50,000 a year or $60,000, shouldn’t be paying a higher tax rate than somebody making $50 million a year. And that basic principle of fairness, if applied to our tax code, could raise enough money that not only do we pay for our jobs bill, but we also stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade. And as I said when I made the announcement, this is not politics; this is math.

The Hill reports:

The big majority opted for a lower tax bill when asked to choose specific rates; precisely 75 percent said the right level for top earners was 30 percent or below.

The current rate for top earners is 35 percent. Only 4 percent thought it was appropriate to take 40 percent, which is approximately the level that President Obama is seeking from January 2013 onward.

The Hill poll also found that 73 percent of likely voters believe corporations should pay a lower rate than the current 35 percent, as both the White House and Republicans push plans to lower rates.

The new data seem to run counter to several polls that have found support for raising taxes on high-income earners. In an Associated Press-GfK poll released Friday, 65 percent said they favored President Obama’s “Buffett Rule” that millionaires should pay at least 30 percent of their income. And a Pew poll conducted in June found 66 percent of adults favored raising taxes on those making more than $250,000 as a way to tackle the deficit.