The Original Liberal "Nutty" Buddy.
Posted on 01/02/2013 7:49:09 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Via Mediaite, "balanced approach" is Obama's Orwellian term for selling tax hikes to the public as a condition of spending cuts even though there's nothing remotely balanced about our fiscal problems. Spend 10 seconds looking at the graphs in Yuval Levin's new post at the Corner. That's the reality that the "balanced approach" pretends to address. As Levin said in another post today, “The fiscal trajectory of our welfare state is not sustainable, no matter how much taxes go up.”
But okay. The left’s new talking point, pushed by The One himself, is that they absolutely positively won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling. No one believes that, but fine. Supposedly, if the GOP wants spending cuts, the debt ceiling is off the table and the price will be additional revenue. One question: Where’s that new revenue coming from? I can’t figure it out. Neither can Megan McArdle:
For starters, there’s a matter of timing. President Obama just successfully raised taxes on the rich. Is he going to go back and do it again in a few months? I’m not sure about the optics here: while I think that a tax increase on the rich was popular and inevitable, I don’t think that Democrats will do well to position themselves as the party that does nothing but demand more tax increases, even on rich people. Moreover, each successive tax increase is likely to be less popular than the last, precisely because the most politically popular increases inevitably get passed first. A return to the Clinton-era tax levels on people who make more than $450,000 a year is, politically speaking, a no-brainer. A further hike will peel off a few voters who just wanted the rich to pay their “fair share” and now feel content. The third hike will be pushing rates close to 50%, if it is to raise any money at all. That seems to be pushing pretty far past most Americans’ ideas about what tax rates ought to be…
When you look at the actual proposals Democrats talk about, they’re trivial. Things like lengthening the depreciation schedule for corporate jets, which doesn’t raise much in the short term, and raises almost nothing in the long term, because while companies get a smaller depreciation and amortization deduction for the first few years, that just means they get a bigger one later. Or ending the immediate expensing of drilling costs, a deduction that the major oil companies lost years ago, so that you’re basically just pulling pennies out of wildcatters.
There are bolder things they could do in lieu of raising rates again, like eliminating deductions or enacting a VAT, but that gets them into squeezing the middle class and that’s not the way this game is played. Those would be viable options if this were about raising revenue, but revenue and deficit reduction have never been the core of Obama’s tax messaging. (The final deal ended up raising less revenue than Boehner offered O during their negotiations, in fact.) The core is “fairness” and the middle class are already paying their “fair share” per the Democrats’ acquiescence last night in making the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone earning less than $450K. Tax hikes are for rich people — except for the huge hit you and I took yesterday on the payroll tax — so presumably the “balanced approach” that Debbie Downer’s talking about here vis-a-vis the debt ceiling will have to target the rich again. But how? Cancel the tax exemption for muni bonds and let local governments wither? Hike capital gains taxes while the economy continues to lurch along? The whole reason McConnell got Obama and Biden to agree to a $450,000 threshold for new tax hikes instead of the $250,000 one that O preferred is because the White House feared congressional Democrats would go wobbly if the GOP dug in and hammered them during a post-cliff standoff for being tax vampires. If Obama demands further taxes on the rich during the debt-ceiling negotiations, and then further taxes after that as part of the next fiscal clusterfark, how many Dems will stick with him as public perceptions start to sour? Realistically, the Democrats had more fiscal leverage over the past two months than they’re likely to have over the next two years and all they got from it was something like $60 billion a year in extra revenue when we’re running trillion-dollar deficits. If that’s their best showing even when everything’s breaking their way, what does O think he’s getting in March? Or am I giving him and Wasserman-Schultz too much credit in thinking they’re interested in anything deeper than the “balanced approach” soundbite here?
More tax increases are a dead issue. Not going to happen. Spending cuts, Spending cuts, Spending cuts!
Well since the bill O signed makes most of the Bush tax cuts permanent, meaning they don’t expire like they did twice before (Dec 31 2012), they wont have this weapon to use again.
RE: they wont have this weapon to use again.
Just remember this — the present Congress is NOT BOUND by a previous congress.
Therefore, nothing is “permanent”
You do understand that those tax cuts had a built in expiration date, and why they did? And what trouble that caused the past few weeks?
First Dec 31, 2010, then extended for two more years by O and Pelosi congress.
Extending them in 2010 was the SMARTEST thing O did, Few Rs appear bright enough to understand why it was such a smart move for him.
They never stop. inch by inch they will cover the mile to their goal.
The Original Liberal "Nutty" Buddy.
I agree with Charles Krauthammer. Obama has shown himself to be a European Socialist. He is going to continue spending as he has during his first term. Then a Republican will be brought in to “fix” the catastrophe when Obama is finished. I can see Michelle telling Barry “Now that there is a black president, suddenly there’s no money? Whitey’s got it. Now go get it Barrack.”
Yeah - we got a glimpse of what “balanced” means to Obama and the rest of the ‘rats on Fox tonight - not “balanced” with spending cuts and limitations on entitlements - but “blanced” with more tax increases, as in eliminating “loopholes” AKA deductions such as mortgage and medical costs - this country really is headed over the cliff......
The rich are being flushed out like a marching band in full force heading into a preserve, they will move offshore and will deny any further confiscation by the government.
Or they will fold into shell companies with tax exemption status.
If we had a conservative alternative to the Demonrats I would agree, alas......
If the “rich” wish to avoid losing their cash, they need to buy wind power, solar power and algae power industry. Then they will get lots of “grants” which they can gobble up and declare bankruptcy. I am sure they are busy buying and creating more Solyndra’s.
LOL LOL LOL....Puh Huhleeze stop...LOL
they will get money via death of us.
obamacare will kill more people when the government determines you’re ot worth saving.
they wil then get OUR money from the dead via progressive death taxes. they really rake it in when it’s a big estate. on money that’s been earned for decades and have already been taxed.
kill off the rich old people with large estates via obamacare qaly scores, take the family’s oney, keep spending more and complain the rich still aren’t paying enough.
There is NEVER anything “balanced” about Debbie Wasserman-Schmuck. NEVER.
She is Alan Grayson in drag.
The only "balanced" tax structure would be if everyone's income were taxed at the same rate. THAT's equality. THAT would be "balanced". This sliding scale stuff has got to go. I want a one-page income tax form that says, for example: Calculate 15% of your gross income and make the check out to Treasury Dept. Hehe, goodbye IRS.
They already have a VAT. It’s called the corporate tax. More probably wouldn’t be unpopular, considering no one notices the one we have, nor countless other taxes. People are ignorant.
Pffft. Like they couldn’t drum up another phoney baloney crisis or get Pubs to trade tax hikes for magic beans. Anyway, they don’t need to bother with oldfashioned laws and parliamentary procedure. They can tax at will through the money supply, at least until its price inevitably skyrockets. But by then Keynes said we’d all be dead.
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