Obama – “Give Me More Taxes or Give Me Nothing”

President Obama gave another speech this morning, this time announcing his deficit reduction class warfare plan:

President Obama called on Monday for Congress to adopt his “balanced” plan combining entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, and said he would veto any approach that relied solely on spending reductions to address the fiscal shortfall.

“I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” he said. “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.

“We are not going to have a one-sided deal that hurts the folks who are most vulnerable,” he continued.

…Mr. Obama is seeking $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy and corporations, through a combination of letting Bush-era income tax cuts expire on wealthier taxpayers, limiting the value of deductions taken by high earners and closing corporate loopholes. The proposal also includes $580 billion in adjustments to health and entitlement programs, including $248 billion to Medicare and $72 billion to Medicaid. In a briefing previewing the plan, administration officials said on Sunday that the Medicare savings would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

The plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from ending the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

…But Mr. Obama spent much of his talk in the Rose Garden making an impassioned plea for what he called fairness in taxation, on the premise that “middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires.”

“This is not class warfare,” he said. “It’s math.”

“It’s math”

….I can see it now; this will be the new campaign slogan.

And that’s all this is. It’s a speech, and a plan, laying the groundwork for 2012. There is nothing serious in this plan. Nothing that will get passed by Congress and no indication that Obama will seek to compromise. Instead we get more class warfare in the hopes that somehow, someway, this will get him re-elected.

From The Tax Foundation:

Some specific effects which will arise from these proposals include:

• Creating perverse incentives for healthcare providers
• Decreasing the long-term solvency of Social Security by claiming to veto any bill affecting Social Security without nebulously defined revenue increases
• Handicapping lawmakers with the 2:1 spending-cut-to-revenue-increase ratio
• Relying on static economic conditions rather than the more realistic dynamic conditions which affect the source of capital gains taxes (one of the most volatile sources of revenue), as large part of the “Buffett Rule.”

The dire nature of the country’s fiscal situation, which Obama’s proposal is meant to address, will be exacerbated, not helped, by most of the proposals he put forth.

The Republican reaction:

“Veto threats, a massive tax hike, phantom savings and punting on entitlement reform is not a recipe for economic or job growth — or even meaningful deficit reduction,” said Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader. “The good news is that the joint committee is taking this issue far more seriously than the White House.”

Mr. Boehner said, “This administration’s insistence on raising taxes on job creators and its reluctance to take the steps necessary to strengthen our entitlement programs are the reasons the president and I were not able to reach an agreement previously, and it is evident today that these barriers remain.”

Obama’s speech was nothing more than empty rhetoric to play to the base. It was a speech reminiscent of his speeches in 2008 but what this man can’t seem to grasp is that times have changed. The hopey-changey crapola isn’t playing anymore because people now see what his policies have wrought. Furthermore, if he thinks he has some kind of leverage because of the automatic cuts due to come in December, if no deal is reached, then he is sorely mistaken…again. Republicans would rather have budget cuts without tax increases, which is what we will get with those 1.2 trillion dollar automatic cuts. There are some defense cuts built into those automatic cuts which we would rather not see but if this man really believes the GOP will make a deal to increase taxes, in this economy, he is high as a kite.

I’ll close this out with this great observation from Ed Morrissey:

With even his own party insisting that they’re not going to bite on more spending and higher taxes, Obama’s already starting to isolate himself on economic policy. He issued this warning in a sad attempt to impress a few people on the Left with his “leadership,” but issuing empty threats isn’t real leadership. It’s an expression of political impotence.

Curt

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