Posted on 12/11/2012 6:05:24 AM PST by Kaslin
In the current debate over the lame duck deal, the focus seems to be solely on the issue of taxes. Raising rates or closing loopholes: which will it be? After all it’s essential that the federal government increase its revenues, right? Everyone knows the government has run out of money, and talk of another debt limit debacle is already surfacing.
Is the cause of the deficit declining federal revenues? Perhaps it's those pesky billionaires moving jobs and profits overseas? Or, there's always some way to blame oil companies or George W. Bush.
The reality is far less flattering for liberals like President Obama. In the last decade federal revenues from capital gains taxes have steadily increased thanks to lower rates. Because investors have a greater incentive to realize gains when faced with lower tax penalties, capital gains revenues jumped from $56.3 billion in 2003 to $110 billion in 2006. Those Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 - as usual with tax cuts - resulted in INCREASED tax revenues.
The problem is not that Americans aren’t paying their “fair share” to the government. Of the $2.3 trillion in revenue collected in 2011, approximately 46% came from individual income taxes. The uncomfortable truth for liberals: the federal government has a compulsive spending disorder. While revenues have remained steady, government spending has ballooned. Federal Government spending accounted for over 24% of the United States economy in 2011. To put that into perspective, in 2000 that percentage was only 18. Since 2000, the federal budget has grown by more than 53%, even after factoring for inflation. Since 2007 alone, federal baseline spending has increased by $1 trillion.
Now Uncle Sam must do what the rest of us do in lean economic times: cut back on spending. And we’re not talking about just Big Bird, although the government spent $10 million for a Pakistani “Sesame Street” according to Senator Tom Coburn’s Wastebook 2011 oversight report.
In last year’s deficit deal, Congress agreed to $109 billion in automatic cuts in January 2013. Now the President and the Leadership in both parties are backpeddling even from these modest spending cuts. Remember, we had a budget deficit of over $1 trillion this past fiscal year. Congress should keep its word to the American people and cut the $109 billion as promised. If the across-the-board cuts that affect defense are deemed to draconian for America’s security, equivalent spending cuts from elsewhere in the federal budget should be made.
Government bureaucracy is notorious for inefficiency. For anyone in doubt, last year the U.S. Office of Personnel Management continued to send $120 million in benefits checks to deceased federal employees. And of course, as everyone knows from the headlines earlier this year, there are the government organizations who organize lavish retreats and conferences on the taxpayer dime.
Even the vital defense department is not immune from wasteful spending. The Commission on Wartime Contracting informed Congress that wasteful and fraudulent contracting for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars alone accounted for anywhere from $31 billion to $60 billion.
While it was deeply disappointing to see Speaker Boehner and even Paul Ryan sign on for new tax increases and while we will aggressively oppose their efforts on this front, AFP does respect the Ryan Budget that the Speaker helped shepherd through the House for the last two years. Their budget does what President Obama and his liberal friends refuse to do. It reforms entitlement programs -- in effect saving Medicare and Medicaid by making them sustainable, more efficient and by giving actual choices to individual Americans.
Meanwhile, President Obama continues his venomous class warfare while demagoguing these honest GOP efforts to rein in entitlements.
President Obama addresses the spending problem in rhetoric only, and dismisses any substantive action on the problem. His primary focus is on an imagined mandate to raise taxes. On the contrary, nothing changed with the 2012 election; a few seats here and there, but there was no shift in the balance of power. In 2010, Americans overwhelmingly voted conservatives into a House majority, which remains in effect today. Now is the time for those members to follow through on their promise to the American people, and cut wasteful government spending.
Os not making that type of argument.
O’s argument is they cant cut any spending till they show those affected that the rich are taking a little pain first, its not economic its a ‘fairness’ argument targeting emotions, that seems to work.
Also you got the problem that Clinton raised taxes on the rich and Bush cut them and Americans were much happier in 2000 than 2008. So dems will always throw that out too.
its a shame that the taxes didnt go up at the end of 2010 (Dems in charge) when they expired and then O wouldnt have had “raise taxes on the wealthy” as a campaign issue this past year.
maybe Romney could have used it instead
IBD Editorials
Taxing The Rich More Will Backfire On The Middle Class
Posted 12/10/2012 06:50 PM ET
Taxes: How much can the U.S. government take from our most successful citizens? Theoretically, there might not be a limit. But the consequences for the less successful are huge, as one principled CEO points out.
Appearing on CNBC on Monday, Ex-New York Democratic state politician Richard Brodsky trotted out his party’s class-warfare-based fiscal cliff talking points.
“We’ve got to dig our way out” from under Bush policies, he contended. And “the president is saying that the wealthiest are most able to contribute” — after which Brodsky instantly admitted that raising taxes on the highest incomes “is not gonna dig us out alone.”
Debating Brodsky, Euro Pacific Capital CEO Peter Schiff provided a sorely needed dose of realism: The successful — all those miserable Scrooges who provide tens of millions of Americans with their livelihoods — are already taxed far, far beyond any sane definition of “fair.” Using himself as an example, Schiff pointed out:
F*ck Congress. Liars and thieves...
Peter Schiff is at his best when he explains the housing bubble. Why is he in that lib state anyway?
I keep posting that the economy better be seen as getting worse after those taxes go up next year, otherwise the R party will be ‘the nothing’ party:
1) Republicans saved the economy under Clinton
2) Democrats killed the economy under Bush
3)Obama raised taxes on the rich and left the economy in better shape than he got it, but it would have been even better if he didnt raise those taxes
Wont work.
*3* must not be that.
I still haven’t heard Obummer utter a single word about cutting. “Tax the rich” is the limit of his ongoing campaign message.
So where is the “balanced” approach to the budget crisis? Let’s see the cuts.
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