Editorial: Gang Of Six Plan: A $3.1 Tril Tax Hike

IBD Editorials ^ | July 20, 2011 | Staff

[Kaslin]

National Debt: No wonder President Obama has so heartily endorsed the "Gang of Six" deficit plan. Just like everything Obama has offered so far, it's short on details and long on tax hikes.

Soon after the "Gang of Six" — a bipartisan group of senators that has been trying for months to put together a deficit reduction plan — issued its new proposal, President Obama praised it as "a very significant step" that represents "the potential for bipartisan consensus."

What it really represents is Washington at its worst.

The "plan" Obama was praising isn't a plan at all, but a few pages of bullet points with vague concepts, promises of future cuts, and confusing, and at times contradictory, numbers.

And what details it does contain show that the gang has employed some of the most egregious budget tricks available to make the spending cuts look bigger and tax hikes smaller than they actually are.

The best example of this is the plan's tax proposal, which alternately boasts that it cuts taxes by $1.5 trillion and raises them by $1 trillion, but which more likely will result in taxes going up by more than $3 trillion.

According to the outline, the $1.5 trillion in "tax relief" is how the Congressional Budget Office would score the plan.

But what the gang conveniently leaves out is that the CBO's forecast has $4.6 trillion in tax hikes already baked into it. That's because the CBO baseline assumes all the Bush tax cuts get repealed, that every other temporary tax cut is left to expire, and that the alternative minimum tax continues to entrap millions more middle-class families each year.

[hosepipe]

Gang of six or seven boot lickers....

[FlingWingFlyer]

Typical thieving gangbangers.

[apillar]

Gang of three liberals and three RINO’s..

[Indy Pendance]

These ‘gangs’ have to go. Gag.

[truthkeeper]

Dirty thieving rats is more like it.

[Carry_Okie]

They're taking lessons from California!

We lead the way again!!!

[sanjuanbob]

So we on this board understand the fuzzy math....how does the truth ever get onto Joe Sixpack’s kitchen table? Republicans will just be known as obstructionists....ie losing the PR battle.

[kittymyrib]

What were Coburn, Chambliss and Crapo smoking when they agreed to this massive tax hike and NOTHING on paper that would require the Democrats to cut spending? The GOP voters in OK, GA and ID need to burn up the phones tomorrow to keep this Obama bailout from happening.

[GlockThe Vote]

Gang rape.

[Truth29]

Bipartisan agreement has become a red flag phrase that we are about to get the shaft. One day the straw is going to break rather than bend and we will end up in a post apocalyptic future.

[hope]

I never in my life thought that I would change from a registered Republican. I got a new DL today and registered as an Independent. I was nervous about it @ first but now am feeling pretty good about it.

[dsrtsage]

It is actually a mistake to register as an independent (unless you live in an open primary state). In Nevada if you are registered as an independent, you can not vote for the candidate in the primary

[griswold3]

We’ll just be Greece.
Raising tax rates does not mean an increase in revenue.
As a matter of fact, I’d take it as a personnal challenge to see just how much I could starve the beast.

[org.whodat]

They plan on selling government property to their friends for pennies on the dollar, this is nothing more than another screwing of the American people.

[Betis70]

How is it a mistake if neither party stands for anything you believe in?

I’ve been a registered ‘decline to state’ voter since 1999. When I lived in California, I could go to the primary and pick a ballot for either party and cast it. Now living in CT, the two parties bar me from the primary. But the Repubs here are like left-wing Dems from Texas.

[Venturer]

Those three Republican In Name Only sell-outs have downed the Kool-aid by the quart

They have sold us out.

Gang of six should all be hanged on Hanging Judge Parkers huge scaffold. All at once with bags over their heads so we don’t have to view their traitorous faces.

Where are you Sarah we need you badly, We cannot afford to vote in Romney-Obama or Bachmans headaches. We need someone who will take it to these Clowns who claim to Represent us.

[okie01]

But what the gang conveniently leaves out is that the CBO's forecast has $4.6 trillion in tax hikes already baked into it. That's because the CBO baseline assumes all the Bush tax cuts get repealed, that every other temporary tax cut is left to expire, and that the alternative minimum tax continues to entrap millions more middle-class families each year.

In other words, the Gang of Six plan to "reduce the deficit" and create "tax reform" would contain a roughly $6.1 trillion tax increase.

In other words, Tom Coburn, Mike Crapo and Saxby Chambliss are either a.) dumb as a post or b.) craven traitors.

[hope]

Arizona is an open primary state...Also, Independents now outnumber registered rats.

[stephenjohnbanker]

I’d just as soon have Al Capone as POTUS. Oh yeah, he would steal a few billion, but I’ll bet he would slash taxes, and slash regulation to the bone ;-)