Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 02/26/2009 1:12:57 PM PST by Red Steel
During his recent address to Congress Obama said that people making under $250,000 wouldn’t pay a single penny in additional federal taxes. I called that statement Obama’s “read my lips” moment, and I’m right too. Obama is already planning a massive tax hike for all Americans, albeit an indirect one.
It’s called “cap and trade.”
In one of the budget’s most ambitious proposals, the president plans to cap the emissions of greenhouse gases, forcing polluters to purchase permits for emissions that would be slowly brought down to 14% below 2005 levels by 2020 and 83% below 2005 levels by 2050. The sale of those permits, beginning in 2012, would reap $646 billion through 2019. Of those revenues, $525.7 billion would be devoted to extending Mr. Obama’s signature “Making Work Pay” $800 tax credit for working couples. Another $120 billion would go to clean energy technology.
Obama’s cap-and-trade system means that every business that emits “greenhouse gases” (and that’s all of them unless some industry lobbyists are able to bribe Obama’s people into exceptions) has to purchase permission from the government to keep producing and stay in business. That additional expense is going to be passed on to the customers of those businesses (all of us), so it’s basically a tax. That all of us are going to pay.
Even those people who make under $250,000/year. Maybe especially those people, because they’re the ones not likely to be able to afford fancy boutique products from “green companies” that charge a premium for them.
Obama’s cap and trade system means more burden for our economy at a time when we want it to expand and create jobs and wealth. It means we pay more for goods and services. It means the government controls production in America.
None of those things are good.
Just losing the 10% bracket adds about $375 to everyone’s tax bill (5% of $7,500). For a single person (without kids), in the low 20’s, that probably represents more than a week’s take home pay.
And, the remaining manufacturing-type businesses will just plan to close shop and move overseas.
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The smart ones have already done so or are in the planning stages now before a huge penalty is invented to punish businesses for moving. My hubby’s company is just planning to close. They’re ready to throw in the towel. It’s hard enough to run a business playing by the rules.
Add a mentality of punishing business and the trend to paint business as the greedy bad guys, it just isn’t worth it. Government, unions or lawyers or all together will win, the country will lose. That’s guaranteed from what is already happening.
They sure are for the little guy, all right. Provided that little guy pays no taxes at all.
Sorry can’t show my hands I’m busy reloading.
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