We don’t have a revenue problem Mr. President….we have a spending problem. Get it through your head.
President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation’s deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation’s long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes.
In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.
“Every corner of the federal government has to be looked at here,” David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, said Sunday in one of multiple television appearances. “Revenues are going to have to be part of this,” he said, referring to tax increases.
That tax increase, while the economy is still in shambles will hurt those who need tax CUTS the most. Small business owners. The ones who will employ those currently out of work. If you hurt them, then they go out of business and take the jobs with them. Plain and simple math here folks.
Eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the highest earners, however, will only put a small dent in the projected deficit.
Republicans contend that raising top rates would hurt small businesses and cut into cash that might otherwise turn into consumer spending. Mr. Ryan said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday that “If you go down the tax increase path you’re sacrificing the economy.”
Exactamondo.
But with the Socialist minds we have in the White House they become fixated on class warfare for no other reason other than to get votes from the gullible.
Any attempt to increase the revenue on the backs of those who employ millions is counterproductive and will cripple this economy even further. We have a spending problem….cut spending. The liberals can whine and cry about the “rich fat cats” all they want but in the end those in the top 25% pay the majority of income taxes in this country while employing millions.
Paul Ryan’s solution is brilliant….reduce the size of government. The entitlement culture needs to end. And reduce the tax burden. Look at the 2010 Census. The 10 states with the lowest tax burden saw a 17% growth in personal income compared to the 10 states with the highest. The nine states with NO tax averaged job growth of 18.2%. Compare that with the nine highest taxed states which had a growth of 8.4% in 10 years.
(PDF here)
The lesson is that high taxes and strong public employee unions tend to stifle growth and produce a two-tier society like coastal California’s.
The eight states with no state income tax grew 18 percent in the last decade. The other states (including the District of Columbia) grew just 8 percent.
The 22 states with right-to-work laws grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew just 6 percent.
The 16 states where collective bargaining with public employees is not required grew 15 percent in the last decade. The other states grew 7 percent.
Now some people say that low population growth is desirable. The argument goes that it reduces environmental damage and prevents the visual blight of sprawl.
But states and nations with slow growth end up with aging populations and not enough people of working age to generate an economy capable of supporting them in the style to which they’ve grown accustomed.
Slow growth is nice if you’ve got a good-sized trust fund and some nice acreage in a place like Aspen. But it reduces opportunity for those who don’t start off with such advantages to move upward on the economic ladder.
It’s common sense. Let everyone keep more of their money, so they can spend more, and employ more, while reducing the size of government. Paul Ryan’s plan does that, as David Brooks points out:
The best thing about the long-term budget proposal from Paul Ryan, the Republican chairman of the House Budget Committee, is that it forces Americans to confront the implications of their choices. If voters want taxes that amount to roughly 18 percent of G.D.P., then they are going to have to accept a government that looks roughly like what Ryan is describing.
The Democrats are on defense because they are unwilling to ask voters to confront the implications of their choices. Democrats seem to believe that most Americans want to preserve the 20th-century welfare state programs. But they are unwilling to ask voters to pay for them, and they are unwilling to describe the tax increases that would be required to cover their exploding future costs.
Raising taxes on the rich will not do it. There aren’t enough rich people to generate the tens of trillions of dollars required to pay for Medicare, let alone all the other programs. Democrats, thus, face a fundamental choice. They can either reverse President Obama’s no-new-middle-class-taxes pledge, or they can learn to live with Paul Ryan’s version of government.
Of course Brooks colleague only wants to talk about the Bush tax cuts:
Among other things, the latest budget deal more than wipes out any positive economic effects of the big prize Mr. Obama supposedly won from last December’s deal, a temporary extension of his 2009 tax cuts for working Americans. And the price of that deal, let’s remember, was a two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts, at an immediate cost of $363 billion, and a potential cost that’s much larger — because it’s now looking increasingly likely that those irresponsible tax cuts will be made permanent.
And Ace, in an especially good rant, is sick of it:
Let me risk embarrassment by taking a Krugman Number as the real number. That is a mistake right out of the box; he lies. But for the sake of convenience, let me pretend I think Krugman Numbers are real numbers and not imaginary ones like the square root of negative one.
$363 billion is about $181.5 billion per year, Krugman. Our deficit, per year, is $1.65 trillion, and that, I repeat, is just the deficit. (Actual government spending is about $3.7 trillion per year.)
Let’s go along with your proposal and just end those “Bush tax cuts.” (Notice, by the way, that I think he means the Bush tax cuts for the top bracket, whereas the Bush tax cuts actually reduced taxes on the middle and lower classes too — but he calls that aspect of the tax cuts “his [Obama’s] 2009 tax cuts for working Americans.”)
Okay, so, hypothetically, the “Bush Tax Cuts” are now ended. Poof. That brings the yearly deficit from $1.65 trillion all the way down to… $1.468.5 trillion per year.
And what next, Krugman? You violently oppose any reduction in spending so you must have in mind either:
1) The simple collapse of government and the economy, or
2) Generating more revenue from somewhere else
Where else, Mr. Krugman? Where are you imagining you can get ten times the $181.5 billion per year you just heroically “saved” us?
And what next?
Maybe you’re thinking we should not just revert to Clinton levels of taxation on the rich, but increase them. Let’s say we jack up taxes on the rich even more, such that we bring in another $363 billion per hear.
Still over $1 trillion in hock per year, every year, year in, year out. Like the clockwork of a cheap alarm clock serving as the timer for a shrapnel-loaded terrorist bomb.
And what next?
Where are you going to get that $1 trillion+ per year? Please, you’re a smart man. Surely you must have some idea of where to get that money.
Surely you’re not just sitting there telling us that we cannot cut a dime from spending, but also cannot raise taxes any further, and therefore are simply arguing in favor of debt destroying the country in 10-15 years.
Surely you have some opinion on where another $1 trillion, per year, can be had from.
I understand what your Step One is. Obviously I understand Step One — it’s all you ever want to talk about.
What I’m really curious about is — what is Step Two, and what is Step Three? Oddly enough you suddenly get very quiet about those later steps.
Everyone knows what Step One. Stop f**king writing endlessly about Step One.
As Brooks wrote, it’s time to come to grips with reality. Cut spending…..period.
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