Posted on 11/12/2007 6:14:13 AM PST by MNJohnnie
Talk may be cheap, but the cost to keep promises made by Democratic candidates could top $700 billion and push individual tax rates above 50 percent for the first time since the 1986 Reagan tax reform, fiscal experts warn.
In fact, a Democratic sweep in 2008 could push America’s tax burden up to 7th highest in the developed world, up from 21st place, according to researchers at the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
“If Democrats control everything after 2008, there will be a substantial tax increase,” Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia tells Newsmax. “Most or all of the Bush tax cuts will be allowed to expire and tax rates may be increased besides.”
The largest hike in federal spending would come from Democrats’ plans to extend health coverage to 47 million uninsured U.S. residents.
Hillary Clinton’s plan, according to her campaign, would add about $110 billion a year to the federal budget.
Barak Obama’s plan, say Harvard University experts, would cost between $50 billion and $65 billion a year. John Edwards’s health care plan, according to an Emory University study, could run up to $145 billion a year.
Democrats across the board are also pitching college tuition subsidies with an annual price tag of up to $30 billion. And their promises don’t stop there. Most candidates have pledged new programs in federally funded areas such as primary education, roads and bridges, and energy.
All told, the Democratic platform could cost more than $700 billion over four years.
“I have a million ideas,” Clinton tells the Boston Globe, “and the country can’t afford them all.”
On that point, even Clinton’s critics agree with her.
“It is pretty clear that more spending programs have been promised out of repealing the top Bush tax cuts than [the] repeal would be able to fund,” Nate Bailey of the Tax Foundation tells Newsmax. “It’s almost certain that funding all of these proposed programs would require massive tax hikes, the scale of which the U.S. has never seen.
President Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which amount to some $188 billion in tax relief per year, are set to expire beginning in 2010. A Democratically-controlled Congress appears intent on allowing that to happen once the Bush veto threat vanishes, experts note.
Last month, Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, offered a taste of what’s to come. Rangel set out a series of tax goals – something he termed “the mother of all tax reforms” – hinged on the expiration of the Bush cuts.
Acknowledging that his plan has no chance as long as Bush is in the White House, Rangel said he’s first going after the unpopular Alternative Minimum Tax – a measure passed in 1969 to ensure the most wealthy would not be entirely insulated from paying taxes.
The AMT has never been tied to inflation. As a result, it now threatens to ensnare some 20 million middle-class taxpayers. In recent years, Congress has enacted annual “patches” to exclude middle-class families.
Rangel backed the patches again this year — offset by higher taxes on hedge-fund and private-equity managers — but said in 2009 he wanted to scrap the AMT entirely in favor of new taxes aimed squarely at the wealthiest Americans
“We should try to look at the disparity that exists between middle income and those that are more fortunate in income and try to spread the tax relief,” Rangel said in a press conference.
Rangel would also like to tack a 4-percent surtax on families making more than $200,000 per year and scale back cuts on capital gains taxes enacted under Bush.
The top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, recently told Bloomberg News that the combined effect ending the Bush cuts and adding the surtax would result in a $3.5 trillion tax hike over 10 years.
Political commentator and Newsmax columnist Dick Morris, writes that a Democratic sweep would bring “mammoth tax increases” that would “be horrific and probably trigger a recession.”
What some call “horrific,” however, others, like Hillary Clinton, term merely “sacrifice.”
Pushed by Tim Russert at the recent Democratic debate to explain her position on the Rangel tax proposals, Clinton responded that, “we’ve not been asked to sacrifice anything. You know, young men and women wearing the uniform of our country are dying and being maimed. We have the average American family losing a thousand dollars in income, and George Bush and his cronies can’t figure out how they can give even more tax cuts to the wealthiest of Americans.”
When Russert pressed further, implying she had expressed support for Rangel’s 4-percent tax surcharge and his plans for the AMT, she demurred.
“No, I didn’t say that. I said that I’m in favor of doing something about the AMT. How we do it and how we put the package together everybody knows is extremely complicated.
“There are a lot of moving pieces here,” Clinton said. “I’m not going to get committed to a specific approach, but I applaud Chairman Rangel for beginning the conversation.”
Obama, asked a similar question by Russert, spoke of a “10,000-page tax code that is rife with corporate loopholes.”
“There’s a building in the Cayman Islands that supposedly houses 12,000 U.S. corporations, which means it is either the largest building in the world or the biggest tax ripoff in the world, and I think we know which one it is.”
Sabato, author of “A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution,” believes taxes will be a cornerstone of the coming Republican campaign.
“The tax issue is one of the best Republicans will have for 2008,” he tells Newsmax. “It unifies the disparate wings of the GOP, and it targets a very real vulnerability among Democrats. This is one of their few bright spots
The bigger point of your post should be what everyone loudly proclaims at every opportunity.
The left cannot be honest about their agenda because the public will reject it.
And, they think they know better anyway, so they try to get it implemented by deception, against the will of the public, whom they see as too dumb to understand how superior the leftists’ ideas are.
Off topic.....What ever happened to Carl from Oyster Bay that used to write for Newsmax? Anyone know??
People who are genuinely concerned with loopholes should be promoting something along the lines of the Fair Tax.
Wheeeeee....everything will be Freeeee!/sarc
You discovered the political classes nasty little secret. They plan to tax YOU to hand out gimmies to their pet constituent groups. They aren’t really concerned about loopholes except in how they can use them to reward their pets and punish their foes.
“democrat promises carry high price tag...”
it is called NATIONALIZATION of the means of production.
George Will - Newsweek, 2/22/93
And within a few years, Clinton’s health-care plan will require at least ten times the federal spending levels that she claims. Even if Republicans again attain federal office, they still never will be able to lower taxes to any reasonable threshold or restart serious medical innovation. America never will be as prosperous as it is today, and most American doctors and patients will conduct business in previously lawless Mexico.
And sadly, we, the people either will pay the same for a growing industrial military complex, or health care and education for every man, woman, child, tranvestite, illegal alien..etc. Less gov’t is better, less taxes is better, but currently, this is not the case. We just got a fancy “Capital One” card with a nice delayed payment interest rate.....payment plan over the next 40 years. Buy now, pay later. I feel like a auto store commercial. \sarc
Pure utter nonsense without even the slightest hint of a clue about the Federal Budget. Right now, and for the forsee able future, US Defense Spending consumes far far less of the Federal Budget then it did under any President from Truman to Reagan.
“and sadly, we, the people wither will pay the same for a growing industrial military complex.....”
billions for defense, not a penny for tribute.
If we didn’t have a tax system that amounted to legalized extortion of the successful, there would be no need for loopholes.
Loopholes are how the successful have tried to defend themselves from the mobocracy stealing everything they’ve earned.
Even this relatively anti-tax article perpetuates the disinformation of tax cuts.
Tax REVENUES went up in response to the tax rate cuts. If the tax rate cuts are allowed to expire, tax REVENUES will go DOWN. There will be NOTHING to spend on all these programs promised by the Dems.
Of course, it also ingores the fact that if the AMT were REALLY an Alternative MINIMUM Tax, then we wouldn’t have tens of millions of Americans getting a free ride with no tax burden at all. I’m talking about the low income people who continue to vote for larger government while knowing they won’t have to pay a dime for it.
“This is one of their few bright spots”
Few? Immigration, Iraq, WOT, Social Security, the Economy...huh? Granted, some RINOs are MIA on these issues, but by and large the GOP, specifically most presidential candidates, get it.
Put Rangel’s trillion buck tax raise, Hil’s new programs, Obama’s Warren Buffet tax plan and by the end of 2008, if these guys win, we will all be working 21 hours a day just to keep up with their socialist dream.
I enjoy your careful use of those words “Defense Spending” and “Federal Budget.” I’m assuming you mean percentages too, but maybe you’re not.
The Iraq war and the Afghanistan war are not part of the defense budget, they are appropriations.
The total requested military budget for 2007 was $699 billion.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_federal_budget,_2007
I haven’t run the numbers personally, but it appears that spending per household has increased say the Heritage Foundation: http://www.heritage.org/Research/Budget/wm398.cfm
“A Spending Spree: Federal spending’s drag on the economy is now over $20,000 per household — its highest level since World War II — and growing. Mandatory spending reached 11 percent of GDP for the first time ever. “
I’m confused on your statement of how this is nonsense.
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