Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues

We keep seeing the same liberal argument being played over and over again.  As the mainstream media seek to make their case to the American people that the Bush tax cuts should expire, one of the primary strategies being employed is to claim that Republicans are refusing to “pay for” their extension of the tax cuts.  And that therefore the Republicans will hike the deficit.  The problem is that it’s a false premise, based on a static conception of human behavior that refuses to take into account the fact that people’s behavior changes depending upon how much of their money they are allowed to keep, and how much of their money is seized from them in taxation.

As bizarre as it might seem, it is seen as perverse these days to suggest that allowing someone to keep more of the money he or she invests would stimulate people to take more risks by investing in businesses and products, and that such increased investment in business and products would in turn stimulate more economic growth.  Common sense has become akin to rocket science these days.

Then again, liberals aren’t doing much for rocket science, either.

Let’s take a look at the current facts, and then examine the history of our greatest tax-cutting presidents.

The Falsehood That Democrats Are ‘Cutting’ Taxes

Democrats say they are cutting taxes on “95% of Americans, but argue that giving the same tax cut benefits to the remaining 5% would hike the deficit and be fiscally irresponsible.

Well, for one thing, the Democrats are flat-out lying when they say they are cutting taxes for 95% of Americans.  That can’t possibly be true, because as a matter of simple fact a whopping 47% of American households pay no federal income taxes whatsoever.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it’s simply somebody else’s problem.

About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That’s according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization. […]

The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.

What Democrats are doing – deceitful liars that they are – is giving Americans “tax credits” and calling them “tax cuts.”

A  tax cut is a reduction in the percentage or amount of taxes that is being imposed on a citizen.  The government is cutting the amount it had been collecting from taxpayers.  A government cannot “cut” a citizen’s taxes unless that citizen had been paying taxes in the first place.

A tax credit is when you give someone money that has been collected from another taxpayer.  It is redistribution of wealth.  It is what Karl Marx described as “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”  Do you notice that “to” in the middle?  It means, “transferring the wealth from one government-penalized group of people TO another government-privileged group of people.”  It is what Obama described as “spreading the wealth around.”

What Obama and the Democrats in Congress propose is NOT a “tax cut.”  And it is nothing but a lie to call it that.  And every single journalist who has suggested that it is a tax cut is as much of a liar as the Democrats are.

That’s the first point.  Democrats are advancing a central tenet of Marxism and deceitfully and even demagogically relabeling it as “capitalism.”  And the media helps them get away with it.

The Falsehood That Cutting Taxes For the Rich – But NOT The Other Classes – Contributes To the Deficit

Next comes the idea Democrats argue that tax cuts for the rich contribute to the deficit.

Let’s say for the sake of argument (just for the moment; I’ll prove it’s wrong below) that tax cuts for the rich raise the deficit.  Let me ask you one question: how then do tax cuts for the rest of us not ALSO raise the deficit???

Why wouldn’t raising taxes on the middle class and the poor not correspondingly lower the deficit?  So why aren’t Democrats going after them?

Are Democrats too stupid to realize that there just aren’t enough rich people to pay off our deficit, especially when this president and this Congress have raised said deficit tenfold over the last Republican-passed budget deficit?  The last budget produced by congressional Republicans was in 2007.  That year, the deficit was approximately $160 billion; now under Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid it is $1.6 TRILLION a year as far as the eye can see.

Wouldn’t ANY tax cuts raise the deficit?  And shouldn’t we therefore tax the bejeezus out of EVERYBODY to lower the deficit?  Wouldn’t every single dollar collected reduce the deficit correspondingly?

Let me put it concretely: say I took a $100 bill out of the wallet of a millionaire.  And then say I took a $100 bill out of the wallet of a poor person.  If I took both bills to a Democrat, would he or she be able to tell the difference?  Would he say, “Ah, THIS bill will lower the deficit because it comes from a rich person; but THIS one clearly won’t because it clearly came from a poor person.”

Update, Sep. 10: A study by the Joint Tax Committee, using the same static methodology that I refer to in my opening paragraph, calculate that the government will lose $700 billion in revenue if the tax cuts for the top income brackets are extended.  And that sounds bad.  But they also conclude that the Bush tax cuts on the middle class will cost the Treasury $3 TRILLION over the same period.  If we can’t afford $700 billion, then how on earth can we afford $3 trillion?  And then you’ve got to ask how much the Treasury is losing by not taxing the poor first into the poorhouse, and then into the street?  And how much more revenue could we collect if we then imposed a “street” tax? [end update].

Hopefully you get the point: if tax cuts for the rich are bad because they increase the deficit, then they are equally bad for everyone else for the same exact reason.  And so we should either tax the hell out of everyone, or cut taxes for everyone.  And a consistent Democrat opposed to “deficit-hiking tax cuts for the rich” should be for raising YOUR taxes as much as possible.

Republicans don’t fall into this fundamental contradiction (see below), because they don’t believe that tax cuts create deficits.  Democrats do.  Which means they are perfectly content with shockingly supermassive deficits – as long as its 95% of Americans who are creating those deficits, rather than 100%.

Joe Biden said it was a patriotic duty to pay higher taxes.  And yet Democrats are trying to make 95% of Americans unpatriotic traitors who don’t care about their country?

Now, Democrats will at this point repudiate logic and punt to the issue of “fairness.”  But “fairness” is a very subjective thing, when one group of people decide it’s “fair” for another group of people to hand over their money while the first group pays nothing.  Even George Bernard Shaw – a socialist, mind you – understood this.  He pointed out the fact that “A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.”

Which is to say it’s NOT fair at all.  Paul may think it’s fair, but poor Peter gets screwed year after year.

And it is a fundamental act of hypocrisy – not to mention advancing yet ANOTHER central tenet of Marxist class warfare – to claim to oppose tax cuts for the rich in the name of the deficit, but not to oppose tax cuts for everyone else.

And for the record, I despise both hypocrisy AND central tenets of Marxism.  Which is why I despise the Democrat Party, which is both hypocritical and basically Marxist.

[Update, September 20] Brit Hume demolished the Obama-Democrat argument regarding the Bush tax cuts being a “cost” to the government, saying:

“But the very language used in discussing these issues tells you something as well. In Washington, letting people keep more of their own money is considered a cost. As if all the money really belongs to the government in the first place in which what you get to keep is an expenditure.”

And, again, that mindset about government control and in fact government ownership over people’s wealth represents a profoundly Marxist view of the world. [End update].

For what it’s worth, Democrats will only maintain the massive contradiction of “tax cuts for the rich raising the deficit” for so long.  Obama already admitted he was willing to go back on his promise to raise taxes on the middle class.  And his people are already looking to tee off on middle class tax hikes.  In addition, if you have any private retirement funds, they may well be coming after you soon.

The Falsehood That Tax Cuts Increase The Deficit

Now let’s take a look at the utterly fallacious view that tax cuts in general create higher deficits.

Let’s take a trip back in time, starting with the 1920s.  From Burton Folsom’s book, New Deal or Raw Deal?:

In 1921, President Harding asked the sixty-five-year-old [Andrew] Mellon to be secretary of the treasury; the national debt [resulting from WWI] had surpassed $20 billion and unemployment had reached 11.7 percent, one of the highest rates in U.S. history.  Harding invited Mellon to tinker with tax rates to encourage investment without incurring more debt. Mellon studied the problem carefully; his solution was what is today called “supply side economics,” the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate investment.  High income tax rates, Mellon argued, “inevitably put pressure upon the taxpayer to withdraw this capital from productive business and invest it in tax-exempt securities. . . . The result is that the sources of taxation are drying up, wealth is failing to carry its share of the tax burden; and capital is being diverted into channels which yield neither revenue to the Government nor profit to the people” (page 128).

Mellon wrote, “It seems difficult for some to understand that high rates of taxation do not necessarily mean large revenue to the Government, and that more revenue may often be obtained by lower taxes.”  And he compared the government setting tax rates on incomes to a businessman setting prices on products: “If a price is fixed too high, sales drop off and with them profits.”

And what happened?

“As secretary of the treasury, Mellon promoted, and Harding and Coolidge backed, a plan that eventually cut taxes on large incomes from 73 to 24 percent and on smaller incomes from 4 to 1/2 of 1 percent.  These tax cuts helped produce an outpouring of economic development – from air conditioning to refrigerators to zippers, Scotch tape to radios and talking movies.  Investors took more risks when they were allowed to keep more of their gains.  President Coolidge, during his six years in office, averaged only 3.3 percent unemployment and 1 percent inflation – the lowest misery index of any president in the twentieth century.

Furthermore, Mellon was also vindicated in his astonishing predictions that cutting taxes across the board would generate more revenue.  In the early 1920s, when the highest tax rate was 73 percent, the total income tax revenue to the U.S. government was a little over $700 million.  In 1928 and 1929, when the top tax rate was slashed to 25 and 24 percent, the total revenue topped the $1 billion mark.  Also remarkable, as Table 3 indicates, is that the burden of paying these taxes fell increasingly upon the wealthy” (page 129-130).

Now, that is incredible upon its face, but it becomes even more incredible when contrasted with FDR’s antibusiness and confiscatory tax policies, which both dramatically shrunk in terms of actual income tax revenues (from $1.096 billion in 1929 to $527 million in 1935), and dramatically shifted the tax burden to the backs of the poor by imposing huge new excise taxes (from $540 million in 1929 to $1.364 billion in 1935).  See Table 1 on page 125 of New Deal or Raw Deal for that information.

FDR both collected far less taxes from the rich, while imposing a far more onerous tax burden upon the poor.

It is simply a matter of empirical fact that tax cuts create increased revenue, and that those [Democrats] who have refused to pay attention to that fact have ended up reducing government revenues even as they increased the burdens on the poorest whom they falsely claim to help.

Let’s move on to John F. Kennedy, one of the most popular Democrat presidents ever.  Few realize that he was also a supply-side tax cutter.

Kennedy said:

“It is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now … Cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit, but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus.”

– John F. Kennedy, Nov. 20, 1962, president’s news conference

---

“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964

“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

---

“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”

---

“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”

– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.

---

“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”

– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill

Which is to say that modern Democrats are essentially calling one of their greatest presidents a liar when they demonize tax cuts as a means of increasing government revenues.

So let’s move on to Ronald Reagan.  Reagan had two major tax cutting policies implemented: the Economic Recovery Tax Act (ERTA) of 1981, which was retroactive to 1981, and the Tax Reform Act of 1986.

Did Reagan’s tax cuts decrease federal revenues?  Hardly:

We find that 8 of the following 10 years there was a surplus of revenue from 1980, prior to the Reagan tax cuts.  And, following the Tax Reform Act of 1986, there was a MASSIVE INCREASE of revenue.

So Reagan’s tax cuts increased revenue.  But who paid the increased tax revenue?  The poor?  Opponents of the Reagan tax cuts argued that his policy was a giveaway to the rich (ever heard that one before?) because their tax payments would fall.  But that was exactly wrong.  In reality:

“The share of the income tax burden borne by the top 10 percent of taxpayers increased from 48.0 percent in 1981 to 57.2 percent in 1988. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers dropped from 7.5 percent in 1981 to 5.7 percent in 1988.”

So Ronald Reagan a) collected more total revenue, b) collected more revenue from the rich, while c) reducing revenue collected by the bottom half of taxpayers, and d) generated an economic powerhouse that lasted – with only minor hiccups – for nearly three decades.  Pretty good achievement considering that his predecessor was forced to describe his own economy as a “malaise,” suffering due to a “crisis of confidence.” Pretty good considering that President Jimmy Carter responded to a reporter’s question as to what he would do about the problem of inflation by answering, “It would be misleading for me to tell any of you that there is a solution to it.”

Reagan whipped inflation.  Just as he whipped that malaise and that crisis of confidence.

This might explain why a Gallup poll showed that Ronald Reagan is regarded as our greatest president, while fellow tax-cutting great John F. Kennedy is tied for second with Abraham Lincoln.  Because, in proving Democrat policies are completely wrongheaded, he helped people.  Including poorer people who benefited from the strong economy he built with his tax policies.

Let’s move on to George Bush and the infamous (to Democrats) Bush tax cuts.  And let me quote none other than the New York Times:

Sharp Rise in Tax Revenue to Pare U.S. Deficit
By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
Published: July 13, 2005

WASHINGTON, July 12 – For the first time since President Bush took office, an unexpected leap in tax revenue is about to shrink the federal budget deficit this year, by nearly $100 billion.

A Jump in Corporate Payments On Wednesday, White House officials plan to announce that the deficit for the 2005 fiscal year, which ends in September, will be far smaller than the $427 billion they estimated in February.

Mr. Bush plans to hail the improvement at a cabinet meeting and to cite it as validation of his argument that tax cuts would stimulate the economy and ultimately help pay for themselves.

Based on revenue and spending data through June, the budget deficit for the first nine months of the fiscal year was $251 billion, $76 billion lower than the $327 billion gap recorded at the corresponding point a year earlier.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last week that the deficit for the full fiscal year, which reached $412 billion in 2004, could be “significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion.”

The big surprise has been in tax revenue, which is running nearly 15 percent higher than in 2004. Corporate tax revenue has soared about 40 percent, after languishing for four years, and individual tax revenue is up as well.

[Update, September 20: The above NY Times link was scrubbed; the same article, edited differently, appears here.]

Note the newspaper’s use of liberals favorite adjective: “unexpected.” They never expect Republican and conservative polices to work, but they always do if they’re given the chance.  They never expect Democrat and liberal policies to fail, but they always seem to fail every single time they’re tried.

For the record, President George Bush’s 2003 tax cuts:

raised federal tax receipts by $785 billion, the largest four-year revenue increase in U.S. history. In fiscal 2007, which ended last month, the government took in 6.7% more tax revenues than in 2006.

These increases in tax revenue have substantially reduced the federal budget deficits. In 2004 the deficit was $413 billion, or 3.5% of gross domestic product. It narrowed to $318 billion in 2005, $248 billion in 2006 and $163 billion in 2007. That last figure is just 1.2% of GDP, which is half of the average of the past 50 years.

Lower tax rates have be so successful in spurring growth that the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the very wealthy has increased. According to the Treasury Department, the top 1% of income tax filers paid just 19% of income taxes in 1980 (when the top tax rate was 70%), and 36% in 2003, the year the Bush tax cuts took effect (when the top rate became 35%). The top 5% of income taxpayers went from 37% of taxes paid to 56%, and the top 10% from 49% to 68% of taxes paid. And the amount of taxes paid by those earning more than $1 million a year rose to $236 billion in 2005 from $132 billion in 2003, a 78% increase.

Budget deficits are not merely a matter of tax policy; it is a matter of tax policy AND spending policy.  Imagine you have a minimum wage job, but live within your means.  Then you get a job that pays a million dollars a year.  And you go a little nuts, buy a mansion, a yacht, a fancy car, and other assorted big ticket items such that you go into debt.  Are you really so asinine as to argue that you made more money when you earned minimum wage?  But that’s literally the Democrats’ argument when they criticize Reagan (who defeated the Soviet Union and won the Cold War in the aftermath of a recession he inherited from President Carter) and George Bush (who won the Iraq War after suffering the greatest attack on US soil in the midst of a recession he inherited from President Clinton).

As a result of the Clinton-era Dot-com bubble bursting, the Nasdaq lost a whopping 78% of its value, and $6 trillion dollars of wealth was simply vaporized.  We don’t tend to remember how bad that economic disaster was, because the 9/11 attack was such a huge experience, and because instead of endlessly blaming his predecessor, George Bush simply took responsibility for the economy, cut taxes, and fixed the problem.  The result, besides the above tax revenue gains, was an incredible and unprecedented 52 consecutive months of job growth.

Update September 12: Did somebody say something about “jobs”?  Another fact to recognize is the horrendous damage that will be done to small businesses and the jobs they create if the tax cuts for the “rich” aren’t continued.  As found in the Wall Street Journal, “According to IRS data, fully 48% of the net income of sole proprietorships, partnerships, and S corporations reported on tax returns went to households with incomes above $200,000 in 2007.” Further, the Tax Policy Center found that basically a third of taxpayers who are expected to be in the top tax bracket in 2011 generate more than half their income from a business ownership.  And while Democrats love to point out that their tax hikes on the so-called rich only impact 3% of small businesses, the National Federation of Independent Business reports that that three percent employs about 25 percent of the nation’s total workforce.  “Small businesses that employ 20 to 250 workers are the most likely to be hit by an increase in the top two tax rates, according to NFIB research. Businesses of this size employ more than 25 percent of the U.S. workforce.”  So if you want jobs and an economic recovery, you simply don’t pile more punishing taxes on those “rich” people.  Especially during a recession [End update].

We’re not arguing theories here; we’re talking about the actual, empirical numbers, literally dollars and cents, which confirms Andrew Mellon’s thesis, and Warren Harding’s and Calvin Coolidge’s, John F. Kennedy’s, Ronald Reagan’s, and George W. Bush’s, economic policies.

Harding and Coolidge, Reagan and Bush, with Democrat JFK right smack in the middle: great tax cutters all.

The notion that small- and limited-government conservatives who want ALL Americans to pay less to a freedom-encroaching government are somehow “beholden to the rich” for doing so is just a lie.  And a Marxist-based lie at that.

[Update, 12/15/10]: Check out these numbers as to how the Reagan tax cuts INCREASED the taxes paid by the wealthy, and REDUCED the taxes paid by the middle class and the bottom 50% of tax payers:

Income tax burdens (from the Joint Economic Committee for the US Congress report, 1996):
1981: top 1% of earners paid 17.6% of all personal income taxes
1988: top 1% of earners paid 27.5% of all personal income taxes (+ 10%).

1981: top 10% of earners paid 48% of all personal income taxes
1988: top 10% of earners paid 57.2% of all personal income taxes (+ 9%).

So rich clearly paid MORE of the tax burden when their tax rates were LOWERED.

For the middle class:
1981: middle class paid 57.5% of all personal income taxes
1988: middle class paid 48.7% of all personal income taxes (- 9%).

The middle class’ tax burden went DOWN by 9%.  They paid almost 10% LESS than what they had been paying before the Reagan cuts.

For the bottom 50%:
1981: bottom 50% paid 7.5% of all personal income taxes
1988: bottom 50% paid 5.7% of all personal income taxes (- 2%).

So the Joint Economic Economic Committee concludes that if you lower the tax rates on the rich, the rich wind up paying MORE of the tax burden and the poor end up paying LESS.  When you enact confiscatory taxation policies, the people who can afford it invariably end up protecting their money.  They do everything they can to NOT pay taxes because they are getting screwed.  When the rates drop to reasonable rates, they don’t shelter their money; rather, they take advantage of their ability to earn more – and improve the economy by doing so – by investing.  If you take away their profit, you take away their incentive to improve the economy and create jobs.

Some articles to read:

The Reagan Tax Cuts: Lessons for Tax Reform

The Historical Lessons of Lower Tax Rates

Income Tax Cuts Increase Revenues and Help Low Income Families

[End Update, 12/15/10]

Obama’s Backdoor Taxation And The Coming Consequences Of Obamanomics

Remember Obama’s ubiquitous campaign pledge that 95% of Americans wouldn’t see their taxes go up one single dime? Oops.

Reuters ran a story that they titled, “Backdoor Taxes To Hit Middle Class.”  The Obama administration whined, pleaded, threatened, and intimidated Reuters to the point that Reuters took the story down.

Fortunately, the International Business Times is running pretty much the story under the same title:

Backdoor taxes to hit middle class

By Terri Cullen
01 February 2010 @ 06:16 pm ET
Next Politics & Policy Article

NEW YORK – The Obama administration’s plan to cut more than $1 trillion from the deficit over the next decade relies heavily on so-called backdoor tax increases that will result in a bigger tax bill for middle-class families.

In the 2010 budget tabled by President Barack Obama on Monday, the White House wants to let billions of dollars in tax breaks expire by the end of the year — effectively a tax hike by stealth.

While the administration is focusing its proposal on eliminating tax breaks for individuals who earn $250,000 a year or more, middle-class families will face a slew of these backdoor increases.

The targeted tax provisions were enacted under the Bush administration’s Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001. Among other things, the law lowered individual tax rates, slashed taxes on capital gains and dividends, and steadily scaled back the estate tax to zero in 2010.

If the provisions are allowed to expire on December 31, the top-tier personal income tax rate will rise to 39.6 percent from 35 percent. But lower-income families will pay more as well: the 25 percent tax bracket will revert back to 28 percent; the 28 percent bracket will increase to 31 percent; and the 33 percent bracket will increase to 36 percent. The special 10 percent bracket is eliminated.

Investors will pay more on their earnings next year as well, with the tax on dividends jumping to 39.6 percent from 15 percent and the capital-gains tax increasing to 20 percent from 15 percent. The estate tax is eliminated this year, but it will return in 2011 — though there has been talk about reinstating the death tax sooner.

Millions of middle-class households already may be facing higher taxes in 2010 because Congress has failed to extend tax breaks that expired on January 1, most notably a “patch” that limited the impact of the alternative minimum tax. The AMT, initially designed to prevent the very rich from avoiding income taxes, was never indexed for inflation. Now the tax is affecting millions of middle-income households, but lawmakers have been reluctant to repeal it because it has become a key source of revenue.

Without annual legislation to renew the patch this year, the AMT could affect an estimated 25 million taxpayers with incomes as low as $33,750 (or $45,000 for joint filers). Even if the patch is extended to last year’s levels, the tax will hit American families that can hardly be considered wealthy — the AMT exemption for 2009 was $46,700 for singles and $70,950 for married couples filing jointly.

Middle-class families also will find fewer tax breaks available to them in 2010 if other popular tax provisions are allowed to expire. Among them:

* Taxpayers who itemize will lose the option to deduct state sales-tax payments instead of state and local income taxes;

* The $250 teacher tax credit for classroom supplies;

* The tax deduction for up to $4,000 of college tuition and expenses;

* Individuals who don’t itemize will no longer be able to increase their standard deduction by up to $1,000 for property taxes paid;

* The first $2,400 of unemployment benefits are taxable, in 2009 that amount was tax-free.

Notwithstanding that punishing the rich actually punishes the poor by punishing economic growth (the poor get their jobs because the rich create them, rather than vice versa), it was always a lie that Obama was only going to tax the rich.  People like me were pointing that out throughout the 2008 election campaign.

A couple examples:

Obama-Biden Will Come After Middle Class With Taxes

Obama WILL Raise Your Taxes And Your Living Costs

That Obama’s promise to tax only the rich was such a transparent lie that even the biased leftist New York Times reported on it.  The final paragraph in their article entitled, “Obama’s Pledge to Tax Only the Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say” reads as follows:

“There is no way we can pay for health care and the rest of the Obama agenda, plus get our long-term deficits under control, simply by raising taxes on the wealthy,” said Isabel V. Sawhill, a former Clinton administration budget official. “The middle class is going to have to contribute as well.”

The Wall Street Journal expressed the same point better (as usual) in analyzing Obama’s tax and spend demagoguery:

This is going to be some trick. Even the most basic inspection of the IRS income tax statistics shows that raising taxes on the salaries, dividends and capital gains of those making more than $250,000 can’t possibly raise enough revenue to fund Mr. Obama’s new spending ambitions.

The WSJ goes on to say:

as a thought experiment, let’s go all the way. A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010. Even taking every taxable “dime” of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.

We voted for a liar based on the huge pack of lies he offered us.

If you actually believed Obama’s “hope and change” that you would be able to get a free ride as Someone Else picked up your tab forever, you are a genuine fool.

Joe Biden summed up the Obama populist demagoguery by suggesting that paying excessively high taxes was the “patriotic duty” of the rich – which basically means that the middle classes and the poor either aren’t patriots or that they have no patriotic duties.

Liberals talk about “fairness,” as though its somehow “fair” that nearly half the country pay should pay no federal income taxes at all, while 1% of the American people should be compelled to pay 40% of all federal income tax.  They think it’s “fair” that the top 1% of earners pay more in taxes than the bottom 95% of Americans COMBINED.

This is America, where you have the right to sit on your fat ass while someone else works for the bon bons you stuff in your face while you vegetate in front of the boob tube.  Why SHOULD you work when you can saddle that burden on Someone Else?

Rich people study harder in their formative years.  They postpone prosperity longer to pursue more college education.  They work longer hours.  They save more.  They pursue jobs that are more demanding and more stressful. They invest when others consume, and then consume some more, and then some more.  And when they finally start to achieve, Mr. or Ms. bon bon feels entitled to confiscate their prosperity and redistribute it to the do nots.

And that’s “fair.”

Well, under Obama, your “fairness” is going to come home to roost.

Obama is considered “anti-business” by a whopping 77% of investors. whose investments stimulate economic growth.  Obama has gone to war with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce whose businesses create jobs.  Obama has gone to war with the banks that lend money to businesses.

Many businesses simply afraid to hire new workers because of Obama’s new taxes and rules, and the sheer atmosphere of doubt that he’s created.

We  are descending into a command-and-control economy with the government pulling the strings, according to a study.  And that is going to have severe consequences.

On top of Obama’s approach of punishing and discouraging businesses and investment, Obama took the Democrat Marxist-based economic philosophy of redistributionism and ran with it so far down the field that we could never hope to pay for it by taxing the rich even if we sucked them all dry.

Obama is spending vastly more money as a percentage of GDP than FDR ever did.  All of this spending is doing little to stimulate the economy (and what little it IS doing is both artificial and temporary), and the American people are going to have to pay dearly for all this never-before-seen-in-the-history-of-the-human-race spending very shortly down the road.

Now Mr. Middle Class and even Mr. Minimum Wage is going to have to pay for Obama’s massive government excesses, too.  Or else the whole Ponzi scheme we call our federal government will fall apart.

This hearkens to the words of Michelle Obama:

“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

I see those words, “Barack Obama will require you to work,” and I see a bunch of communist proletariats in a mandatory labor pool squatting over their forced labor.

I came across an article entitled, “A New Slavery: Forced Labor, the Communist Betrayal of Human Rights.”  Oh oh.  Barack Obama isn’t the first Marxist who ever decided to “require you to work.”

Obama has created such gigantic deficits through his gigantic “government as God” approach that we will have unsustainable trillion dollar deficits through 2020.

“Barack Obama will require you to work,” Michelle Obama assured us.  “Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.”

That means no more boob tube and bon bons for you, Obama voters.  Get off your fat, lazy, worthless asses and work off your Dear Leader’s deficits.

Don’t wait for Obama to start a forced labor camp in your neighborhood.  “Move out of your comfort zones” and start one of your own.  Maybe you cold begin by collecting your family’s feces to produce Toebee (compost) like the other Dear Leader requires his people to do in North Korea.

Poll Shows Few Americans Believed Obama Mistatement of the Union Speech

The Obama deficit of trust in a nutshell:

Deficit of Trust: Most Voters Don’t Believe President’s Assertions About Economy
Saturday, January 30, 2010

During his State-of-the-Union address Wednesday night, President Obama spoke about a deficit of trust between the American people and political leaders. New Rasmussen Reports polling on the president’s speech shows just how deep that trust deficit has become.

The president in the speech declared that his administration has cut taxes for 95% of Americans. He even chided Republicans for not applauding on that point. However, just 21% of voters nationwide believe that taxes have been cut for 95% of Americans. Most (53%) say it has not happened, and 26% are not sure. Other polling shows that nearly half the nation’s voters expect their own taxes to go up during the Obama years.

The president also asserted that “after two years of recession, the economy is growing again.” Just 35% of voters believe that statement is true, while 50% say it is false.

Obama claimed that steps taken by his team are responsible for putting two million people to work “who would otherwise be unemployed.” Just 27% of voters say that statement is true. Fifty-one percent (51%) say it’s false.

Obama is now pimping his “jobs bill” with the same type of lies he earlier pimped his stimulus.  That said:

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 30% of voters nationwide believe the $787-billion economic stimulus plan has helped the economy. However, 38% believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy. This is the first time since the legislation passed that a plurality has held a negative view of its impact.

The number who believe that the stimulus plan has hurt the economy rose from 28% in September, to 31% in October, and 34% in November before jumping to 38% this month. The week after the president signed the bill, 34% said it would help the economy, while 32% said it would hurt.

The Political Class has a much different view than the rest of the county. Ninety percent (90%) of the Political Class believes the stimulus plan helped the economy and not a single Political Class respondent says it has hurt. (See more on the Political Class).

Kind of interesting.  I watched CNN and NBC after the speech, and I got the idea that Obama must have walked on water.

The political class wants more government and fewer liberties for citizens 100% of the time.

There’s an old adage: fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.

Don’t be ashamed that you were stupid.  Get it right now, and start being part of the solution.

It’s time for some hope and change regarding Obama.  Let’s hope that more Americans change their view of Obama and see him for the lying fraud he is.

What McCain-Palin Need To Do From Tonight’s Debate Till Election Day

John McCain is being saddled with the anger and fear of voters over the financial collapse, according to most polls.  Up until this week, neither President Bush, Senator McCain, Governor Sarah Palin, or most Republicans bothered to respond to the repeated Democrat charges that this fiasco was the result of the “failed policies of the last eight years.”

That perception needs to be changed by through a deliberate and sustained effort.  It needs to begin tonight.  And it needs to continue until November 4.

Barack Obama has been arguing that “guilt by association” is invalid.  But Obama’s central charge against John McCain amounts to pure guilt by association: John McCain is NOT George Bush, and he has never BEEN George Bush.  His entire career stands as a screaming testimony to the fact that he is very much his own man.

John McCain needs to find a few popular measures that President Bush supported and ask Barack Obama, “Do you oppose this because President Bush was for it?  How about this?  And this?”

When Barack Obama again and again says that John McCain has voted with George Bush 90% of the time, McCain needs to remind voters that Barack Obama has voted with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid fully 97% of the time.  He needs to remind voters that Barack Obama is the personification of a Democrat-controlled Congress that has a 9% approval rating – the worst in American history; worse than the 12% rating Congress had in 1979.  Meanwhile, even Barack Obama has voted with Bush 40% of the time, and more conservative Democrats like Louisiana Senator Mary Landrieu have voted with Bush over 70% of the time.

Given the fact that Democrats are likely to not only continue to hold power – and even expand their power to a filibuster-proof majority -this economy cannot afford the domination of tax-and-spend socialist liberals in total control of our government.

John McCain and Sarah Palin need to examine Barack Obama’s tax plan.  Obama claims that 95% of Americans would get a tax cut; the Republicans need to ask Obama if he actually believes that every single American pays taxes, such that 95% of Americans would receive a cut, and 5% would face a steep increase.  Do Barack Obama’s two little girls pay taxes?  How can he possibly give a “cut” to 95% of Americans?  In reality, Barack Obama is using the IRS tax code to give at least 30% and as many as 40% of American tax filers who DON’T pay federal income taxes what amounts to a welfare check.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.  Republicans need to point out that Barack Obama will heavily increase the taxes of small business owners and people who invest in jobs and supply the money this country needs in order to grow and expand.

When you tax small business owners, they lay off employees; when you tax investors, they shelter their money.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama wants to give away another $845 billion dollars of American taxpayer money to the poor of the world in his Global Poverty Act.  It would cost each citizen at least $2500.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama wants to massively socialize the American health care system – which represents about a quarter of the American economy.  He makes a lot of promises, but the costs would be staggering.  Massachusetts passed a law mandating universal coverage that promised to lower costs in utopian fashion; it is now facing $400 million in cost overruns in small state population in a short period of time.  Barack Obama’s plan would be the same sort of disaster on a far more massive scale.  And that is hardly what this economy needs right now.

Barack Obama is trying to blame President Bush and Republicans for the financial disaster when Democrats are all over it.  John McCain needs to point out that past Obama advisor Franklin Raines was involved in massive fraud and chicanery of Fannie Mae just a couple years ago.  He needs to point out that Obama advisers – and lifelong Democrats – Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, and Jamie Gorelick raided well over $300 million in bonus money from Fannie Mae even as the agency was crumbling.  McCain needs to point out that Republicans DID try to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – which held over $5 trillion in mortgage assets – but that Democrats repeatedly blocked those attempts at regulation in the name of keeping the flow of mortgage loans available to poor and minority home buyers who couldn’t repay their obligations.  John McCain needs to point out that he himself prophetically warned the American people of this crisis two years ago when something could have been done to prevent this fiasco.  McCain needs to point out that Barack Obama himself has personally been deeply in the pockets of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – as well as corrupt and negligent Lehman Bros – at a rate that goes far beyond anyone else in Congress.  And that his relationship as an instrumental part in securing these terrible subprime loans with Fannie Mae go back to his days as a radical ACORN organizer.

John McCain needs to use Barney Frank as the poster child of Democratic negligence over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Barney Frank – who had an inappropriate (homo)sexual relationship with a key Fannie Mae official even when his Congressional committee had direct oversight in regulating the agency.  Barney Frank – who said for five years that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were healthy, and who led the Democratic fight against the very sort of regulation Democrats now claim the Republicans are guilty of having been opposed to.  Barney Frank – the leading overseer of GSEs for the last two years – was continuing to claim that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were fine as recently as July 14 of this year.  And John McCain needs to point out to the world that Fannie Mae’s and Freddy Mac’s stock crashed 90% while Democrats had direct control and direct oversight of these massive GSEs.

And that sort of corruption and incompetence is not what this economy needs right now.

Further, John McCain needs to point out that Barack Obama hasn’t merely had radical associations, but radical alliances.  Barack Obama spent 23 years steeped in the worldview of a radical, racist, anti-American pastor and church.  Barack Obama is the first “God damn America!” candidate for President.  And Barack Obama was more than just “palling around” with terrorist bomber William Ayers – in his capacity as a member of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge board, Barack Obama was directly in charge of administering funding in support of William Ayers radical Marxist educational initiatives.  Barack Obama didn’t merely “associate” with a terrorist who did something bad when Barack was merely 8 years old; Barack Obama officially partnered with William Ayers as a grown man as recently as 2001 to put “more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists.”

And that sort of radical activity is not something that either this country or this economy needs right now.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said, “I believe that this war is lost.”  And Barack Obama would have ensured that the war would have in fact been lost had he been President.  Obama talks about the loss of American prestige; does he genuinely believe that American troops slinking home in defeat with an emboldened terrorist enemy following us home would improve our international prestige?  John McCain needs to link Harry Reid’s proclamation of defeat with Barack Obama’s determination to snatch defeat from the jaws of success.

That defeatist mentality is not something that this country can afford right now.  As costly as a war is, the United States cannot afford to lose – and we would have lost had Barack Obama recalled the troops in defeat as he wanted to do three years ago.

Finally, John McCain needs to lead this nation to the conclusion that Barack Obama – the most radical, the most inexperienced, the most untested – candidate for President in this nation’s history, is not what either this country or this economy need right now.

Obama WILL Raise Your Taxes And Your Living Costs

There was an interesting exchange during the debate last night:

“He has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year,” McCain said.

“That’s not true, John. That’s not true,” Obama said, interrupting him.

But it IS true.

“Barack Obama has voted in support of higher taxes 94 times in just 3 years, including higher taxes for Americans making just $42,000 a year. If voters consider Barack Obama’s record of opposing tax cuts and his outspoken proposals to raise taxes on family savings, Social Security and small businesses — this latest campaign promise lacks a single shred of credibility.”

Despite Claiming He’d Lower Taxes For Middle Income Americans, Obama Voted In Favor Of The Democrats’ Budget – Which Would Raise Tax Rates For Americans Earning $42,000 Or More:

Obama Voted Twice In Favor Of The Democrats’ FY 2009 Budget Resolution. (S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #85: Adopted 51-44: R 2-43; D 47-1; I 2-0, 3/14/08, Obama Voted Yea; S. Con. Res. 70, CQ Vote #142: Adopted 48-45: R 2-44; D 44-1; I 2-0, 6/4/08, Obama Voted Yea)

In Obama’s new version of an economic plan (he’s had so many my eyeballs start rolling), Obama claims to reduce taxes for 95% of Americans (the actual figure is only 81% by Obama’s own figures).  And over 40% of Obama’s “95%” figure actually already don’t pay federal income taxes – which means that it is merely a welfare-like transfer payment.

The result of reducing the rax rate paid by the rich has both increased federal revenues and even raised the ratio of taxes paid compared with income earned.  Lowering taxes has provided an incentive to invest and build wealth, which has in turn raised revenues and increased the percentage of taxes paid by the rich relative to other income classes.

Barack Obama – who IS last years’ winner of “Most liberal US Senator” award – is a tax and spend liberal.  He has $800 billion in new spending projects.  When the wealthy react to his tax increases by sheltering their money, who is he going to come after next?  He’s going to come after you.  He’s already come after you before -94 times in just 3 years, in fact.

When you tax the rich, they find it profitable to shelter their assets.  Not only will the rich pursue tax sheltering activity, but their very focus will shift from making money to avoiding taxes.  That means less investment; which means less investment capital; which means less jobs.  When the housing finance crisis is already freezing investment capital, do you really want Obama in charge of the economy?

Furthermore, Obama will raise your costs.  He has repeatedly attacked John McCain for wanting to lower taxes on corporations.  Obama has promised to raise taxes on corporations – which already pay the 2nd highest tax rate in the world.  He will raise taxes on small businesses, as well.

The fact that he has forced to acknowledge that raising taxes might be a bad idea in a recession means nothing.  He won’t be able to help himself once he’s in office, with a Democratic Congress pushing him.  He won’t stand up against them for the simple reason that he’s never stood up against Democrats.  Obama makes a big deal about the fact that McCain has voted with Bush 90% of the time.  But Obama votes with Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi 97% of the time.  A Barack Obama presidency would look little different from a Nancy Pelosi presidency.

What will happen when businesses find themselves paying taxes?  Does anyone seriously think that prices won’t increase to keep up with their increased operating costs?  Does anyone seriously think that jobs won’t be cut in order to reduce costs?

John McCain mentioned Ireland, whose economy has boomed since they reduced their corporate tax rate to 11%.  The U.S. rate is 35%.  Which would you rather pay?  Can you seriously blame businesses for relocating or “outsourcing” given such disparities?

If Barack Obama is elected President, he will try to tax the rich.  But as the rich shelter their money, and as corporations cut back their operations, relocate, or outsource to recover their desired profit margins, the American people will see their Faustian bargain go south on them very quickly.

Why Obama’s Tax Plan Is So Wrong

Barack Obama, if elected, promises to enact a tax plan that he claims will “cut taxes for 95 percent of workers and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples.”

The statement is patently false, and it is beyond easy to prove it’s patently false.

The 5% of Americans that Barack Obama will attack with tax increases already pay more than 50% of the total income tax burden.  It is simply a naked act of class warfare to demand that people who are already overtaxed pay still more taxes.

To underscore the point above, it is also a fact that 40% of Americans pay no federal income tax at all.

How can Obama reduce federal taxes for 95% of Americans when 40% of Americans don’t pay federal taxes?  He can’t.  It is logically impossible.

What Obama will do is seize more from the wealthy, and – in an act of sheer pandering – give it to people who have not earned it.  He will use the IRS as a welfare agency.  You do all the work; I reap well over half of the benefit.

During his interview with Barack Obama, Bill O’Reilly called Obama’s plan “class warfare,” and Obama replied, “It’s not. Ninety-five percent is not class warfare.”  Sure it is.  Whenever one class of any size votes to take from another economic class, it’s class warfare.

Someone managed to stop Benjamin Franklin’s rolling in his grave long enough to ask him what he thought about Barack Obama’s tax plan.  Founding father Benjamin Franklin responded:

“When the people find they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic.”

Wow.  That’s pretty tough.  All Barack Obama is doing is saying, “If you vote for me, I will seize other people’s money and give it to people who did not earn it in a direct transfer payment.”  But Benjamin Franklin understood with razor sharpness how profoundly wrong Barack Obama’s socialism was nearly two hundred years before Obama was even born.

The reason Benjamin Franklin was so diametrically opposed to Barack Obama’s socialist, class-warfare, welfare payment tax plan is because he understood the thought of another man who condemned Barack Obama nearly two centuries before Obama was born.

The 17th Century Scottish historian Alexander Tytler studied the rise and fall of nations and presented his findings in what we now call Tytler’s Cycle. According to Tytler, all nations go from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to freedom, from freedom to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency, from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependence, and from dependence back to bondage. Tytler said the absolutely critical thing that leads a nation to decline from abundance to selfishness and on down the vicious cycle, is when they vote themselves benefits from the national treasury. And Benjamin Franklin understood this basic fact of history.

Barack Obama doesn’t.

This election may come down to whether we want Benjamin Franklin’s independent America or Barack Obama’s socialist America.  It may come down to whether we want to heed Alexander Tytler’s warning to cultures from history, or disregard it.