Posted on 07/08/2011 9:50:22 AM PDT by 92nina
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush was promised $2 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax hikes by Congressional Democrats. That's not what happened. All $137 billion in tax hikes went through. Most notable was raising the top marginal tax rate from 28 percent (the Reagan low) to 31 percent (itself a setup for the 1993 Clinton tax hike of this rate all the way up to 39.6 percent). There were also increases in "sin" taxes and the Medicare payroll tax, as well as the yacht "luxury tax" that President Obama seems so intent on re-visiting on the jet plane manufacturers...
Read more: http://www.atr.org/budget-deal-real-tax-hikes-fake-a6322#ixzz1RX2WqLrp
(Excerpt) Read more at atr.org ...
Take this article and others I found to the fight to the Libs on their own turf; put the Left on the defensive at at Digg and at Reddit and in Stumbleupon and Delicious
“The America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. A perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of citizens… which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it… which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.”
— Robert A. Heinlein
My father always love Heinlein, I can see why with what you quote. I pray he was wrong...
For the past 3 years tax revenue has been about 15% of GDP and spending has been 25% of GDP. The democrats have proven that they are OK with budget defects equal to 10% of GDP, because that is how they have governed. If republicans go along with tax increases, they will be acting as enablers to the big spenders to allow them to spend even more than they otherwise would have. Raise taxes to 20% of GDP and they will just raise spending to 30% of GDP.
The government doesn't get whatever it demands. It gets what the American people are willing to give it. That's about 18 per cent of GDP on average and 60 years of data covering any number of variations on the tax system prove it. Less in hard times (like now), a bit more in boom times, 18 per cent on average.
The tax code could be much less distorting than it is, but it can't squeeze a lot more money out of the economy. Taking more than people are willing to give entails more force than our government can get away with deploying and is, in any case, self-defeating. Brutalizing the people is no way to maximize government revenue in the long run, or even the intermediate run.
Changes to the tax code are just accounting tricks that have little, or no effect on the government's revenue. Talking about such changes is a childish diversion. The politicians want to pretend they are doing something to address our fiscal disaster. They don't want to do anything. Accounting gimmicks are the order of the day.
Of course gimmicks abound on the spending side as well. Obama isn't going to agree to cut anything. He may play games with the numbers pretending to reduce government expenditures someday, when someone else is President. No programs will be eliminated, no government function abandoned. Government will continue to spend more to do more unless and until voters render the Democrat Party impotent to prevent a dramatic change of course. Any number of Democrats would drink Draino before they'd agree to reduce the size, scope and expense of the federal government.
As a result, the debt limit negotiations are a waste of time. No deal worth having is possible. The House should vote on its minimum terms for setting a debt ceiling just high enough to get us through 2012 and let Obama take it or leave it. If he leaves it, he'll have to either learn to run the government on a cash basis or take the heat for a default. On his head be it.
Finally, someone is recalling the fact that Democrats have lied before in their “compromises” with Republican over taxes and spending cuts. Not only was Papa Bush sucker punched into passing higher taxes, thus losing a second term, but Ronald Reagan was also hoodwinked in the same way.
If Boehner and the rest of the GOP falls for this Charlie Brown/Lucy football scenario again, they need to be primaried out of office next year. They are obviously too stupid to govern.
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