Tom Brokaw: Obama Is Going To Have To Answer For His Out-Of Control Deficit. And HOW He Is.

When even doctrinaire liberal statesmen start saying stuff like this, Obama is in trouble:

Brokaw: ‘Obama Is Going to Have to Answer For’ Exploding Budget Deficit ‘On His Watch’
By Noel Sheppard | October 14, 2012 | 13:00

Criticism of Barack Obama came from a surprising source Sunday.

Appearing on Meet the Press, former NBC Nightly News anchor  Tom Brokaw said the President “is going to have to answer for” the explosion in  the federal budget deficit that “happened on his watch” (video follows with  transcript and commentary):

[See embedded video at Newsbusters for Brokaw saying the following on video]

DAVID GREGORY, HOST: The issue of the debt, the issue of  taxes. I think it’s important to get to one of the big issues here. We have got  to in these final few weeks try to reach some resolution about this revenue  issue, whether we raise revenue to deal with the debt, because whether it’s  Medicare or whether it’s dealing with the debt level at the level that it’s at,  without agreement on both sides, we’re not going to be able to tackle some of  the more difficult issues, Tom.

TOM BROKAW: You know, I think that both campaigns have  failed to say to the American public, “This is going to be hard. This is a real  crisis in America.” You look at the IMF projections about where the global  economy is now. They’re saying you have to get your act together. We could be in  another recession next year at this time. They’ve got to level with the American  people about everyone’s going to have to give something. And there is going to  have to be some revenue raised at some point as well. I do think that the  governor is right, and we’ll expect to hear Governor Romney go after President  Obama this time about, “I want more details about your plan. You keep harping on  me. I haven’t heard the details in your plan as well.”

I looked at that  debate we that talked about a moment ago, it was playing last night on C-SPAN,  and governor [sic], now President Obama was saying, “Look, we’ve got a deficit  of half a trillion dollars. I’m going to get that under control.” Well, this  week, that deficit is $1.1 trillion and it happened on his watch. He is going to  have to answer for that.

Imagine that – Obama is going to have to answer for something.

Of course, the question is whether this is going to happen or if his media  will continue to allow him to not speak to this issue as they press Romney for  answers right through Election Day.

Stay tuned.

I’ve said it over and over and over.  All you have to do is use my blog’s search engine and type in “deficit” or “debt” to find that out.  Conservatives have been saying it.  Republicans have been saying it.  Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan and the entire Romney campaign have been saying it.

But up to now, the elite media have refused to say it.  Until now.

The fact that it has been the brazen truth for four miserable years is completely beside the point, of course.

Look, the last budget under George W. Bush had a deficit of $455 billion:

Federal deficit hits record $455 billion
The shortfall for fiscal 2008 is larger than was feared. It is likely to be a key issue in the last weeks of the campaign.
October 15, 2008|Richard Simon | Times Staff Writer

WASHINGTON — Compounding terrible economic news, budget officials announced Tuesday that the federal deficit has soared to a record $455 billion, injecting new urgency into the closing days of the presidential campaign about spending in Washington, including efforts to stem the financial disaster.

The final accounting for fiscal 2008 produced a larger shortfall than had been projected, reflecting the start of federal efforts to address the economic emergency. It is certain to become a significant issue in the campaign, confronting the candidates with new questions about their growing slate of proposals for new spending and tax cuts at a time when red ink is surging.

[…]

Democrats blamed Bush and his Republican allies in Congress for wiping out a budget surplus inherited from the Clinton administration through tax cuts that have been criticized for favoring the wealthy and through other spending.

Rep. Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the House Budget Committee, said the deficit was a “warning sign of the immense fiscal challenges just beginning to arise with the retirement of the baby boomers” and should be viewed as a call for Congress to control spending.

Now, I want you to notice that ending: Democrats demonized the other side and blamed them for everything (ignoring the fact that Democrats had controlled both the House of Representatives AND the US Senate for the previous two years, while Paul Ryan said we need to do something to fix our spending crisis or we will be in huge trouble soon.  One side focused on blame and demagoguery, the other side tried to get something done to fix the problem.

Democrats have lied and deceived about the Bush tax cut creating deficits for years, and they are dishonest.  Do you know which year produced the highest federal income tax revenue in American history, kids?  Was it in 1962 when the top marginal rate was over ninety damn percent?  No.  Was it back when we’re told that Bill Clinton paved every street in America with gold?  Nope.  It was the year 2007 thanks to George W. Bush’s tax cuts that encouraged people to start businesses and increase their investments.  That year, the United States raised a record $1,163,472 in individual income tax revenue and an also-record $370-plus billion in corporate income tax revenue.

That increase in tax revenues began almost IMMEDIATELY because of the Bush tax cut, for the official historic record.  Because Bush’s 2003 tax cut:

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 been 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.

Even the New York Freaking Liberal TIMES was forced to acknowledge that the Bush tax cut had INCREASED FEDERAL TAX REVENUES:

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.

If you claim that the Bush tax cuts increased the deficit and blame Bush for the whopping deficit and stunning debt, you are therefore, henceforth, ergo sum and ipso facto a documented LIAR.  Because the fact is that the Bush tax cuts increased revenue and revenues have since PLUNGED because Barack Obama has spent the last four years demonizing the wealthy and threatening every single year to attack them with punitive tax rates.

By the way, I mentioned the top rate being over ninety percent in the 1960s; do you know that under Obama and his constant demagoguery of higher taxes for the rich, under Obama we’ve suffered the biggest drop in revenues SINCE the 1960s when the top marginal tax rate was over ninety percent and the wealthy were sheltering their money rather than using it to create jobs and increase investment?

Interestingly, in spite of the DotCom recession that Clinton created and handed to George Bush – which vaporized $7.1 trillion in American wealth and which annihilated 78% of the Nasdaq stock index valuation – George Bush that year produced over $160 billion more dollars in revenue than Bill Clinton EVER did in his very best year.  So how the hell is a tax cut plan that INCREASES tax revenues to blame for increasing the deficit other than the fact that being a Democrat is tantamount to being a pathologically dishonest and deranged weasel???

I have documented that every single time we have EVER cut tax rates in American history – EVERY SINGLE TIME – America has increased its federal income tax revenues.  That is what happened when Calvin Coolidge tried it; that is what happened when John F. Kennedy tried it; that is what happened when Ronald Reagan tried it; and that is what the hell happened when George W. Bush tried it.

Barack Obama is a pathologically dishonest liar.  What he did was pile up a massive, enormous load of debt and then blame it on Bush.  Let’s review that Obama spending:

It is Obama’s assertion that it was President Damn Bush who passed the $862 billion stimulus on February 17, 2009.

It is Obama’s assertion that it was President Damn Bush who did that $79 billion bailout for Government Motors and their union Democrats in 2009.  Obama claimed the credit but stuck Bush with the bill because Obama did it in 2009.

It is Obama’s assertion that it was President Damn Bush who signed that $410 billion Omnibus bill in March of 2009.  Again, Bush’s fiscal year, therefore it must have been Bush who spent that money.

It is Obama’s assertion that it was President Damn Bush who left $350 billion in TARP money to President Damn Bush who spent it in early 2009.  Because according to actual reality Bush spent half of the $700 billion TARP fund and left the other half for Obama to spend.

It is Obama’s assertion that it was President Damn Bush who rammed that damned $2.6 trillion ObamaCare – Ooh, I’m sorry, BusheyCare bill – down our collectivist throats at the end of 2009.

Obama made some other incredibly deceitful and frankly demonic assertions in his budget math, too.  Obama asserted that the Iraq War would have gone on FOREVER unless he, the messiah, had ended it.  It didn’t matter that Bush won the Iraq War in spite of Obama’s demagoguery or that Bush negotiated the final status of forces agreement that the US followed when we pulled out our troops to “give Obama his great achievement.”  But Obama claimed that in “ending” the Iraq War on Bush’s timetable, Obama somehow saved $700 billion over Bush.  And of course Obama MASSIVELY increased the war in Afghanistan (something which Bush wisely avoided) such that more than 70% of all the American soldiers killed in Afghanistan were killed under Obama’s four years with fewer than 30% being killed over Bush’s eight years in Afghanistan.  But in Obama’s math, he inherited the war in Afghanistan and it doesn’t matter one wit if he’s the fool who massively escalated that war or not.  Bush gets the blame, regardless of what the subject is, and Obama gets the credit.

So of course by Obama’s logic Bush is somehow responsible for ALL the SPENDING of the two wars (including the nearly twelve-year-long war in Afghanistan that Obama massively escalated before cutting and losing), and Obama is responsible for all the SAVINGS from the same wars.

In any event, Obama managed to turn an actual Bush $455 billion budget deficit that Bush left him into an imaginary trillion-dollar deficit and then promised categorically that he would cut that deficit he “inherited” in half by the end of his first term.

And of course the problem is that Obama is a liar by EVEN HIS OWN INCREDIBLY DISHONEST METRIC.  His promise to cut the deficit in half was just one more among all the other major promises that he broke.

And now Obama is going to make a whole bunch of the same sort of promises he made before and he’ll be just as dishonest about keeping them as he was the last damn time we believed his lies.

What Mitt Romney Said Last Night About Tax Cuts And The Deficit Was Absolutely Right. And What Obama Said Was Absolutely Wrong.

Mitt Romney repeatedly said last night that he would not allow tax cuts to add to the deficit.  He repeatedly said it because over and over again Obama blathered the liberal talking point that cutting taxes necessarily increased deficits.

Romney’s exact words: “I want to underline that — no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

Meanwhile, Obama has promised to cut the deficit in half during his first four years – but instead gave America the highest deficits in the history of the entire human race.

I’ve written about this before.  Let’s replay what has happened every single time we’ve ever cut the income tax rate.

The fact of the matter is that we can go back to Calvin Coolidge who said very nearly THE EXACT SAME THING to his treasury secretary: he too would not allow any tax cuts that added to the debt.  Andrew Mellon – quite possibly the most brilliant economic mind of his day – did a great deal of research and determined what he believed was the best tax rate.  And the Coolidge administration DID cut income taxes and MASSIVELY increased revenues.  Coolidge and Mellon cut the income tax rate 67.12 percent (from 73 to 24 percent); and revenues not only did not go down, but they went UP by at least 42.86 percent (from $700 billion to over $1 billion).

That’s something called a documented fact.  But that wasn’t all that happened: another incredible thing was that the taxes and percentage of taxes paid actually went UP for the rich.  Because as they were allowed to keep more of the profits that they earned by investing in successful business, they significantly increased their investments and therefore paid more in taxes than they otherwise would have had they continued sheltering their money to protect themselves from the higher tax rates.  Liberals ignore reality, but it is simply true.  It is a fact.  It happened.

Then FDR came along and raised the tax rates again and the opposite happened: we collected less and less revenue while the burden of taxation fell increasingly on the poor and middle class again.  Which is exactly what Obama wants to do.

People don’t realize that John F. Kennedy, one of the greatest Democrat presidents, was a TAX CUTTER who believed the conservative economic philosophy that cutting tax rates would in fact increase tax revenues.  He too cut taxes, and he too increased tax revenues.

So we get to Ronald Reagan, who famously cut taxes.  And again, we find that Reagan cut that godawful liberal tax rate during an incredibly godawful liberal-caused economic recession, and he increased tax revenue by 20.71 percent (with revenues increasing from $956 billion to $1.154 trillion).  And again, the taxes were paid primarily by the rich:

“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 we get to George Bush and the Bush tax cuts that liberals and in particular Obama have just demonized up one side and demagogued down the other.  And I can simply quote the New York Times AT the time:

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.

And of course the New York Times, as reliable liberals, use the adjective whenever something good happens under conservative policies and whenever something bad happens under liberal policies: “unexpected.”   But it WASN’T “unexpected.”  It was EXACTLY what Republicans had said would happen and in fact it was exactly what HAD IN FACT HAPPENED every single time we’ve EVER cut income tax rates.

The truth is that conservative tax policy has a perfect track record: every single time it has ever been tried, we have INCREASED tax revenues while not only exploding economic activity and creating more jobs, but encouraging the wealthy to pay more in taxes as well.  And liberals simply dishonestly refuse to acknowledge documented history.

Meanwhile, liberals also have a perfect record … of FAILURE.  They keep raising taxes and keep not understanding why they don’t get the revenues they predicted.

The following is a section from my article, “Tax Cuts INCREASE Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues“, where I document every single thing I said above:

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

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“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”

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“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”

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“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).

[To read that article in its entirety, click here].

When Romney said that the small businesses that create jobs was going to be hurt by Obama’s taxes, he was RIGHT.  In a different article available here, I document the facts from official sources and then say:

Out of 27,281,452 total firms, 21,351,320 are listed as “nonemployer firms.”  Which means that 78.23 percent of all small businesses hire ZERO employees.   So when Obama says that 97% of small businesses won’t be affected by his tax hike, please understand that the whopping majority of those businesses that won’t be affected aren’t hiring anybody.  Another 3,617,764 small businesses have no more than four employees.  Those small businesses that hire zero workers plus those small businesses that hire no more than four workers constitute 91.5% of ALL small businesses.

Here’s a more relevant way to look at it.  When you consider the businesses that employ more than four people, you are looking at businesses that hire 94.97 percent of ALL the workers who work for small businesses.  And while not all of the small businesses that hire between 5-9 employees are going to be paying higher taxes as a result of Obama’s class warfare on small businesses, most of them do.  And virtually none of the businesses that hire more than ten employees are going to earn less than $250,000 a year.

Romney pointed out in the debate that half of all jobs created by small business and a quarter of ALL THE JOBS CREATED IN AMERICA would have their income taxes skyrocket under Barack Obama.

When Romney said that Obama’s taxation was going to destroy 700,000 small business jobs, he was RIGHT.

Which is why 85% of small businesses agree with Romney and disagree with Obama that Obama’s policies have led America down the wrong track.

Which is why 64% of small businesses are saying they plan to simply wait Obama out rather than create jobs while he’s trying to ruin them.

Obama deceitfully talks about giving tax cuts to small businesses when in fact he is actually massively taxing them.

Obama IS helping small businesses … into BANKRUPTCY.  And Obama says the recession is behind us while small businesses are going belly up in droves.

Romney absolutely crushed Obama in the debate last night.  Nobody had EVER won a debate by the margin that Romney won by in the history of CNN.  If you have any decency and care about people who need a job and love this country at all, please cast your vote for Mitt Romney.

Hey Democrats, Why Is It That States With The Highest Tax Rates Have The Highest Debt???

I wrote an article entitled, “Tax Cuts Increase Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues” that documents the fact that, on every single occasion in which it has ever been tried, cutting income tax rates has increased federal tax revenues and resulted in a healthier economy.

Democrats stupidly won’t believe that.  Mostly because they are stupid people who are committed to stupid and depraved world views (such as Marxism).

A Newsmax article documents that what is true of the federal government and tax cutting also happens to be true of the states and tax cutting:

Abolish State Income Taxes
Tuesday, 20 Jul 2010 11:15 AM
By Richard Rahn

Did you know there are nine states that have no state income tax?

The non-income-tax states (see accompanying chart) are geographically and economically diverse, ranging from the state of Washington in the Pacific Northwest, to Texas and Florida in the South, and up to New Hampshire in the Northeast.

Why is it that some of the states with the biggest fiscal problems have the highest individual state income tax rates, such as New York and California, while some of the states with the least fiscal problems have no state income tax at all?

High-tax advocates will argue that the high-tax states provide much more and better state services, but the empirical evidence does not support the assertion.

On average, schools, health and safety, roads, etc. are no better in states with income taxes than those without income taxes. More importantly, the evidence is very strong that people are moving from high-tax states to lower-tax-rate states — the migration from California to Texas and from New York to Florida being prime examples. (Next year, the combined federal, state, and local income tax rate for a citizen of New York City will be well over 50 percent, as contrasted with approximately 38 percent for citizens of Texas and Florida.)

If the citizens of California and New York really thought they were getting their money’s worth for all of the extra state taxation, they would not be moving to low-tax states.

The obvious question then is, Where is all the extra money from these state income taxes going?

It is going primarily to service debt, and to pay for inflated salaries and employee benefits. It is interesting that the high-tax-rate states also, on average, have much higher per capita debt levels than states without income taxes. (Alaska is an outlier because it has its oil reserve to borrow against and actually gives its citizens a “dividend” each year.)

The biggest additional burden the high-tax states have is unionized government worker contracts. My Cato colleague Chris Edwards notes: “Half of all state and local spending — $1.1 trillion out of $2.2 trillion in 2008 — goes toward employee wages and benefits.”

His study showed that, on average, total hourly compensation for state and local government workers was 45 percent higher than for equivalent private-sector workers.

In addition, the government workers are rarely fired even those with poor job performance. Importantly, the differential was much greater in states where more than half of the state employees were unionized, and these were all in states with state income taxes, with the exception of Washington.

High rates of unionization of public employees and high rates of debt go hand in hand. Those states whose government workers are less than 40 percent unionized have median per capita state debt of $2,238, while those states where unionization rates are over 60 percent have a median per capita state debt of $6,380.

High rates of unionization tend to lead to excess staffing, unaffordable benefits, and pensions.

There have been a number of both empirical and theoretical studies showing the negative impacts of state income taxes and particularly those with high marginal rates on economic growth within the state.

A recent study published in the Cato Journal by professors Barry W. Poulson and Jules Gordon Kaplan, which was carefully controlled for the effects of regressivity, convergence, and regional influences in isolating the effect of taxes on economic growth in the states concluded: “Jurisdictions that imposed an income tax to generate a given level of revenue experienced lower rates of economic growth relative to jurisdictions that relied on alternative taxes to generate the same revenue.”

State Income Tax Rates and Debt (All Figures Percent)

States	Income Tax	State Debt as % of Income
Without Individual Income Tax
Tennessee	0	2.02
Texas	0	2.70
Nevada	0	4.07
Wyoming	0	4.90
Florida	0	5.20
Washington	0	7.93
South Dakota	0	10.95
New Hampshire	0	14.10
Alaska	0	24.01
Highest Individual Income Tax rates
Iowa	9.28	6.47
Maryland	9.23	7.26
California	10.55	7.55
Oregon	11.36	8.61
Hawaii	11.00	11.89
New Jersey	9.06	12.01
New York	10.67	12.22
Vermont	8.95	13.12
Rhode Island	9.9	20.04

The state of New York is a poster child for what not to do. At one time, it was the richest and most populous state. But at least going back to the Harriman and Rockefeller administrations decades ago, it decided it could tax and spend its way to prosperity. (Note: New York City residents face a maximum combined state and city income tax of over 12 percent, while those in many New York counties pay a little less than 9 percent, giving the state an average maximum tax rate of almost 11 percent.)

The results have been the opposite of what was promised.

New York’s relative population, economic growth, and per capita income have all declined, particularly in relation to those states without a state income tax.

In the past year, per-person taxes have increased by $419 in New York, far higher than any other state. (Note: They went up only $1 in Texas. Is New York or Texas now better off?)

Income taxes, as contrasted with consumption (i.e., sales) taxes and modest property tax rates, are far more costly to administer and do far more economic damage (by discouraging work, saving and investment) and are far more intrusive on individual liberty.

The states without state income taxes overall have had far better economic performance for most of the past several decades than have the income tax states — particularly those with high marginal taxes.

The Tea Party movement indicates that it might be the right time politically for politicians in the income tax states to call for those taxes to be phased out.

Good economics might actually be good politics this year.

Richard W. Rahn is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth.

That table alone is worth a million bucks.  Notice how it documents the fact that liberal/Democrat economic policy is about as abject a failure as you can get.

What is also interesting is that the United States did not have a permanent federal income tax until 1913.  That, coincidentally, was the same year that Democrats also gave us the Federal Reserve with the promise that they would now be able to fix everything.  Like all of their promises, it was a giant lie.

Many founding fathers warned against a federal reserve system that Woodrow Wilson ultimately rammed down our national throats.  Here are the words of Thomas Jefferson in particular:

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation then by deflation, the banks and the corporations will grow up around them, will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” -Thomas Jefferson, The Debate Over The Recharter Of The Bank Bill, (1809).

For the factual record, the Federal Reserve, perversely named as it is, is in fact the very kind of “private bank” that Jefferson warned us about.  It’s fascism, but Democrats love fascism.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are examples of other “government sponsored enterprises” devised by Democrats that give us the very, very worst of both government and private enterprise.

And this article directly relates that tax and the out of control Federal Reserve system with our present out of control debt.

Democrats have led the way in screwing up America for the last hundred years.  They were screwing it up in 1913 under Woodrow Wilson.  They were screwing it up again in the 1930s under FDR.  And now we are royally screwing it up under Obama.

And now we have no chance of lasting another hundred years because Democrats have loaded us up with debt that we can never hope to ever repay even as our debt continues to spiral even more out of control.

Pawlenty on Obama: ‘You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.’

Tim Pawlenty just went way up on my list of candidates after that particular remark in my title.

Is Obama anti-business?  Well, how about this for a factoid: 77% of investors think he is.  He was anti-business in 2009.  He was anti-business in 2010.  And he is still anti-business in 2011.  How many eggs are you going to get when you’re out to get all the chickens and when the chickens know you’re out to get them?

Here’s an article that talks about this former governor who has been successful where Obama has failed, failed and failed some more.  What is interesting is how we hear Pawlenty talk about how to fix our broken economy, and Obama talking about wtf???

Republican presidential candidate Pawlenty: ‘We are in deep doo-doo’
By Abdon M. Pallasch Political

How badly has President Barack Obama managed the United States’ economy?

Pretty badly, says plain-talking former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty in a campaign stop in Chicago Tuesday.

“We are in deep doo-doo. We are in deep crap,” Pawlenty said Tuesday, in a locale meant to drive home the Republican presidential candidate’s differences with the president.

In a classroom at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy Studies, located across the street from the law school where Obama used to teach, Pawlenty laid out his tax-slashing, budget-cutting proposal that he says will save the U.S. economy:

There would be only three tax rates: Zero, for low-income earners who currently pay no federal tax; 10 percent, for single people earning up to $50,000, or married couples who earn up to $100,000; and 25 percent, for people who earn more than that (down from a top rate of 35 percent now). He would cut the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent and end the estate tax.

Those tax cuts, plus a freeze on federal spending, would spur growth of 5 percent a year, he said.

Democrats immediately said Pawlenty’s proposed tax cuts would disproportionately benefit the wealthy.

Obama senior advisor David Axelrod, who finished a speech on the North Side just before Pawlenty started his, credited Pawlenty with “good stagecraft” for holding the speech on Obama’s old stomping grounds. But he said Obama’s budget-fixing recipe is better.

Pawlenty “left his own state with a $5 billion deficit and now he’s counseling the rest of the country on how to handle finances,” Axelrod said. “He proposes massive new tax cuts for upper-income Americans … that would produce huge new deficits. He wants to replay the same formula that got us into the jam in the first place.”

But Pawlenty told the classroom full of students at the university that people should not focus on “whether this makes some group a little more wealthy or a little less wealthy. You can’t be pro-job and anti-business. That’s like being pro-egg and anti-chicken.”

Flirting with the so-called “third rail” of American politics, Pawlenty said he would raise the retirement age for younger workers to start collecting Social Security in the future. People nearing retirement now would not be affected, he said.

“If you’re coming in new to the work force, gradually, over time, we are going to raise the retirement age,” Pawlenty said. “If you’re wealthy, you’re not going to get the cost-of-living adjustment.”

Proposals that can be short-handed as “cutting Social Security” can kill campaigns, but Pawlenty said, “It’s going to be the ‘Jack Nicholson election.’” Referring to the movie “A Few Good Men,” Pawlenty said, “There’s that famous line when he’s on the witness stand and he said, ‘You can’t handle the truth.’ The American people, I think, can handle the truth. It doesn’t mean we freak ’em out. It doesn’t mean we scare ’em. … I’m only doing this because I love the country. We’ll only get it to a better place if people are willing to tell the American people the truth. I am. President Obama isn’t. He’s ducking, bobbing, weaving.”

In a speech at the Misericordia, a home for children and adults with disabilities, Axelrod told the story of how, back in April, he and Obama were crafting a joke about Pawlenty for Obama to use at the White House Correspondents Association dinner. The two were interrupted by a National Security Council staffer who had to brief Obama on something, so Obama asked Axelrod to leave the room.

When Axelrod came back in, Obama rejected a suggestion for a joke about how Pawlenty “could really be a strong candidate but for his unfortunate middle name: bin Laden.”

“ ‘That’s so hackneyed, bin Laden, that’s so yesterday, Why don’t we take that out,’ ” Obama said, Axelrod recalled. “ ‘We’ll put in “Hosni.’’ ’ ” Axelrod didn’t think that was as funny, but he agreed to it.

“It was only the next day that we realized that he had not only eliminated Bin Laden from the joke. He had given the order to eliminate bin Laden from the face of the Earth,” Axelrod told the crowd.

Later, speaking to reporters, Axelrod laughed when asked if he agreed with potential Republican candidate Sarah Palin, who said over the weekend that Paul Revere’s famous ride was an attempt to “warn the British’’ — that the British were coming.

“I think that’s a good reflection of why we can’t abandon education,” he said. “We need good education so everybody knows their history lessons and gets them properly.”

Pawlenty just laughed when asked the same question. He proceeded to a fund-raiser.

Well, first of all,we are – to put it in Pawlenty’s accurate term – ” in deep crap” – and the best Axelrod can do is talk about a joke that Obama’s people are going to go after Sarah Palin for an impromptu remark about Paul Revere when their guy is on the record saying he’d visited 57 states with one more yet to go?

And Obama’s going to talk about Pawlenty’s $5 billion deficit?  Seriously?  And just how many TRILLIONS of deficit does he have just so far???  Obama’s budget just for this term would add THIRTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt.  From McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.73 trillion budget Monday  for fiscal 2012 that he said will start reining in runaway budget deficits, but  his plan envisions the gross national debt swelling by almost $13 trillion over  a decade.

Obama’s budget sets up a clash with the  Republican-led House of Representatives over how to recover from the deep  recession of recent years and strengthen the economic foundation for the future,  with federal spending the pivotal battleground.

Obama added $3 trillion to the deficit in less than two years.  Another way to put it: In just nineteen months, Obama added more to the debt than every single US president from George Washington to Ronald Reagan – combined.

And this idiot is talking about $5 billion???  Like we’re not supposed to laugh our asses off and then impeach Obama as a clear and present danger to the United States?  Particularly when in fact Pawlenty in fact DID actually leave office with the budget balanced?  If you’re going to talk about devastating developments after the guy was gone – especially when that characterization is being made by the guy’s political enemies – at least have the courtesy to do the same sort of redacting with Bill Clinton’s legacy – who managed to take all the credit for balancing the budget but wasn’t in any way responsible for the disastrous Dotcom crisis that unfolded on his watch.

Which is to say, Democrats should either give Tim Pawlenty plenty of credit for balancing the budget or at least shut the hell up.

Tim Pawlenty as a man has a good, solid life.  And he’s got the background and the bona fides to get behind.  He is a candidate worthy of consideration.

On Cavuto’s Fox News program on Friday, Cavuto pointed out that the White House was questioning whether Tim Pawlenty was being realistic about whether he could create the kind of 5% GDP that he is talking about.  Pawlenty’s response was almost as good as his quip in my title.  I don’t have an exact quote, but basically he said “I’m an optimist, and I have an optimistic view of America’s future.  We’ve been great before, and I believe we can be great again.  And if Barack Obama could say that he was going to provide jobs for the all the jobless, slow the rising oceans, heal the planet, end all the wars and basically remake our nation, I think I can talk about doubling our GDP.”

Touché.

Tim Pawlenty wants to increase our GDP and grow our economy and create jobs by NOT being anti-chicken while claiming to be pro-egg.  In other words, the man actually makes sense.

Obama has spent three years demonizing and attacking businesses while demanding that they create more jobs.  That, by stark contrast, is 100% pure insane, no additives or preservatives.

Pawlenty wants profound tax cuts.  And while liberals want to ignore history and argue that the more you tax, the more you collect in tax revenue, Pawlenty cites the fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have dramatically increased our tax revenues.  See my article “Tax Cut’s INCREASE Revenues; They have ALWAYS Increased Tax Revenues” for that documented history.

Think of it in terms of gas (as I’ve argued before in more detail).  As the price of gas went up and up and up, did people buy the same amount of gas?  No way; they very quickly cut back on their driving.  If you increase the price of something, you sell less of it.  And in the same way, if you increase tax rates, you invariably end up encouraging counter-productive behavior, as the wealthy find it worthwhile to quit investing and instead pursue tax shelters and loopholes to protect their assets.

It is simply a repeatedly documented fact that every single time we have cut tax rates, we have ended up with increased revenues, as businesses and individuals were encouraged to invest because they were being rewarded with the ability to actually keep more of their own profits.  It comes down to this: if I give you a job, and you work hard, but at the end of the day the tax man comes and takes it all away, you’re not going to bother to take my job.  With total taxes exceeding 50% in a number of states, businesses and individuals are put in a position in which they take all the risks in hiring and investing – and if they lose they lose big – but even if they win they aren’t allowed to keep enough of their money to make the risks worth taking.

Democrats claim that the deficit has increased with lower tax rates.  And that is true.  But that isn’t the fault of the lower tax rates – WHICH AGAIN ACTUALLY INCREASED THE GOVERNMENT REVENUES DRAMATICALLY.  The bizarre argument that Democrats are making is analogous to the argument that the guy who lives in his parent’s basement and makes minimum wage and lives within his modest means actually makes more money than the multi-millionaire who buys multiple mansions, yachts and cars and then finds himself in debt.  It was the reckless spending that put us into the hole, not the tax policies that resulted in the politicians who spent that money having more money to spend.  Pawlenty is arguing that we need to profoundly cut tax rates and simultaneously have a balanced budget amendment and dramatically cut our spending.

That isn’t even mentioning the constant hypocrisy of the Democrats as they fail to live up to their own demagogic rhetoric.

Then there’s the issue of the Bush tax cuts.  Democrats say we’ve had the Bush tax cuts, and look what’s happened.  Two things.

First, consider this: Obama signed the compromise to extend the Bush tax cuts for two more years on December 17, 2010.  Many experts believed Obama would be forced to do this as a result of the Republican landslide victory that changed the political landscape in early November.  So let’s look at what has happened to the jobless rate since November:

November 2010: 9.8%
December 2010: 9.4%
January  2011: 9.0%
February 2011: 8.9%
March    2011: 8.8%
April    2011: 9.0%
May      2011: 9.1%

Interestingly, Obama initially appeared to be reaching out to the business leaders he had been attacking.  After getting his head handed to him in November 2010, Obama began to reach out to Republicans.  And then in mid December, he began to reach out to business – with his signing of the Bush tax cuts extension a major part of that reaching out.  In early January, he appointed as his new chief-of-staff a man who had a “business-friendly” persona.

And the market, the investors, the businesses, ordinary Americans, liked what they heard.  The public clearly, overwhelmingly wanted to see Obama reach out to the party that had just won massively.  Republicans are the party of business; reach out to business.  Let’s get to work growing this economy rather than attacking the people who grow the economy.

But even as people liked what they heard, there was always a question, as asked in this case by CNN Money:

“So is Obama really changing his tune on big business? Or is the president merely glad-handing big business while plowing ahead with his 2012 goal of making the rich pay more?”

Unfortunately, it didn’t take long before the business and investment community realized that Obama hadn’t changed his spots at all.  It’s either “same lies, different tune,” or “different lies, same tune” with this guy.

Before hardly any time had passed, “William Daley” became an afterthought and Obama was right back to attacking business with the same ferocity as before.

Obama’s senior economist Austan Goolsbee – now the FIFTH senior Obama economist to jump Obama’s HMO Titanic (with “HMO” standing for “His Majesty Obama” had this to say shortly before HE left.  And this according to an obvious liberal:

When Amanpour asked [Goolsbee] what the Administration could or should be doing to improve conditions, he ticked off items you’d expect to hear from a typical GOP Presidential adviser:  we’ve got to get the debt under control; we have a White House effort to identify and get rid of governmental regulations that are preventing the private sector from growing the economy; we should pass “free trade” agreements backed by the Chamber of Commerce; and we should leverage limited public dollars to release billions in private funding for investments.

Goolsbee’s bottom line:  “It’s now up to the private sector.”  That’s exactly what you’d expect from President Romney’s economic adviser.

And, of course, that brief flash of clarity was immediately followed by Goolsbee’s resignation.  We won’t be having any anti-Marxist heresies on Comrade Obama’s watch, no sir commissar.

Just in case you’re wondering why the economy seemed to be improving before going back into the toilet, there’s your answer.  The people who actually create jobs began to think that Obama finally had some level of actual awareness about how the economy and business and job-creation works, before Obama slammed the door on that idiotic thesis.  They believed Obama’s lies right after the election, then Obama demonstrated (“dictated” is more like it) that he hates business as much as he ever did, then he renewed his war on business, and it’s right back into the crapper with the U.S. economy.

So there’s the backstory behind the economy appearing to improve before diving headfirst back into the gave.  Obama is right back to being “pro-job” but “anti-chicken.”

Up above, I said there were “two things” about the Bush tax cuts and their impact on the economy.  The first point is that the extension of the Bush tax cuts DID work for five months of straight improvement – at least until Obama and the Democrats made sure that businesses and investors knew that they were as hated as ever.

The SECOND point about the Bush tax cuts – or ANY other tax cuts, for that matter – is that they have to be consistent and long-term before they will truly succeed.  This is because businesses need to know their operating environment before they will be willing to take risks such as hiring more workers.  They need to have a clear, long-term picture (most think at least five years) of what their tax liability will be.  And they need the same kind of knowledge about their health care liability and their regulatory liability.  If you start or expand a business, you’ve got one primary question: “Am I going to be able to make this work?”  And in order to answer that fundamental question, you need to know what your costs will be.

Obama signed the Bush tax cut extension for two years – and then very quickly went back on that signature by demagoguing the very thing he’d signed.  Will these tax rates be there for them in two years?  Certainly not, if Obama wins.  And there goes the window to make important investment/growth decisions.  Obama made sure that business owners wouldn’t have a long-term understanding of their taxes.  ObamaCare has thousands of pages being written as we speak; Obama’s regulations are being written as we speak; and nobody knows anything about how any of it will affect them.

Hence the paralysis.

Tim Pawlenty knows that no nation and no economy has ever had a recession that lasted forever – save when leftists have been allowed to run those nations/economies.  He also knows that economic growth and expansion are there just waiting for Obama to leave us the hell alone and get off our backs so that business owners can build better lives for themselves and their families – and create the jobs that result from those businesses growing – by allowing wealth creators to keep more of their own money.

He knows that if you really want to be pro-job, you had better be pro-business.  And that is something that Barack Obama has now proven he will never be, regardless of what he might say to the contrary.

[Update, 8/13]: Today, Michelle Bachmann won the Iowa Straw Poll, versus Pawlenty – who had spent a lot more time and money – coming in a very distant third.

I can’t explain why Iowans basically walked away from Pawlenty, but I can tell you why I’ve been annoyed with him.  It’s simple: his non-stop attack on Michelle Bachmann.

You want to go after people, Tim?  Go after Obama.  Heck, go after Mitt Romney like a lot of people said you should have done during the first debate.  But to go after Michelle Bachmann is just dumb.

To not go after Romney and then go after Bachmann makes you look like a guy who was afraid to fight the star quarterback and then started punching a cheerleader to show you were still “tough.”

You’re trying to present yourself as a true-blue conservative.  Everyone KNOWS Michelle Bachmann is a true conservative.  So why go after her when you could be going after a Mitt Romney who has held whatever position made him look good at the moment?

To continue, some of your attacks against her are just stupid.  Like the one that Michelle Bachmann didn’t stop things like cap and trade and ObamaCare being passed in the House.  As if she was somehow the Imperial Queen of the chamber rather than one minority Republican (at the time) in a chamber with 434 other representatives.  That was just a plain dumb attack.

You finished a distant third, Tim.  Which apparently will allow you to survive.  But if you keep tee-ing off on Bachmann, you won’t be around much longer.

‘Unexpected’ Increase In Tax Revenues: More Confirmation That Lower Taxes Increases Growth/Revenue

I just finished responding to a pair of enjoyable comments from Robbie (here and here).  And Robbie posts an excellent 5:46 minute video of the great economist Thomas Sowell:

As Robbie points out, I say much the same things as Sowell.  What he says about tax rate cuts and increased investment and growth having been proven by four presidents over nearly a century (Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George Bush) is exactly what I pointed out in my article “Tax Cuts Increase Revenues; They Have ALWAYS Increased Revenues.”

We just had more confirmation of the effectiveness of tax cuts in INCREASING tax revenues (which means that when the government has lower tax rates, it actually collects MORE in tax revenue than it would were it to have higher tax rates):

WASHINGTON – Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner now is saying that, contrary to his recent dire warnings of “catastrophic economic consequences” should Congress fail to increase the nation’ debt limit, there has been an apparent unexpected increase in projected tax revenue, and the deadline for possible default has been benched until mid-spring.

Allow me to define “unexpected” for you: it is an adjective in Democratese for, ‘We’re too stupid to understand why, and too dishonest to admit it, but conservative economic policies are working.'”

A little more information as to why we had this “unexpected” increase in tax revenue comes out of an interview:

CHIOTAKIS: So how did the Treasury Secretary do this? I mean, I thought the old deadline of July 8th was pretty firm.

GENZER: Yeah, that’s what everybody thought. But Geithner actually got a little help from you and me, Steve — the taxpayers. It seems the IRS actually took in more tax revenue than expected last month.

There was an expectation that was building for the entire second half of 2010 that Republicans would win big in November, which greatly stimulated the stock market:

“More than 85 percent of institutional investors see the GOP taking the House next month. While political polls suggest that changes are likely in Washington, a staggering number of professional investors think that the Republicans will win back the House of Representatives in November and that may be adding to their sense of a better business environment going forward. Since government policy error remains the biggest fear of investors, according to the poll, the view of DC trends matters.”

The unemployment rate – which had been steadily going UP, has gone down every month since Republicans were overwhelmingly elected and took over the House.  As I have pointed out in the past:

Here’s an interesting factoid that doesn’t seem to get any mention in the mainstream media: Unless I’m seriously mistaken, the unemployment rate has gone down every month since Republicans took control of The House in January:

Unemployment was if anything going UP.  And then Republicans took over, and whammo.  It started going down.  But Republicans didn’t receive so much as a scintilla of credit from the mainstream media.  It’s just amazing.

One of the things that investors and businesses were looking for from Republicans was their central promise that they would not budge in demanding that the Bush tax cuts be extended.  And as confidence grew that the Republicans would win in November and force Obama to reverse his repeatedly stated intention of pursuing Marxist class warfare and punishing investment, production and growth, people who actually produce in this nation began to act accordingly.

Hence the “unexpected” increase in tax revenue.

Democrats invariably point to the Clinton years as “proof” that the century proving that tax rate cuts increase revenues was just a ninety year fluke.

But the Clinton years actually prove the opposite: conservative policies were right during the Clinton years, too.

First, Clinton and Democrats increased taxes on the top marginal income rates in 1993.  Did wonderful things happen after that?  Well, if you’re a Republican, yes, they most certainly did: as a result of the complete failure of Clinton’s economic policy, 1994 marked the biggest takeover by Republicans in history, with Republicans slaughtering Democrats and taking over both the House and the Senate.

It wasn’t until Clinton reduced the capital gains rates that we really saw the kind of growth that Democrats love to point to.  It wasn’t until AFTER Clinton announced “the era of big government is over.”  And yet the actual reasons for that growth prove that their policies are totally wrong.

With the help of mainstream media propaganda, the American people have largely forgotten that Bill Clinton was forced to say, “The era of big government is over.”  With the help of mainstream media propaganda, the American people have largely forgotten that the “good” Clinton years came as a direct result of Republicans dominating both the House of Represenatives and the United States Senate.  With the help of mainstream media propaganda, the American people have largely forgotten that the “Clinton surplus” was the direct result of the Contract with America and its pledge for a balanced budget – literally over Clinton’s constant attempts to prevent it.

The mainstream media – like the Democrat Party whose propaganda whores they are – WILL NOT tell the truth about such matters.

But here we are again.  Republicans pass tax cuts, and then there’s an “unexpected” increase in revenue.  Just like every single other time.

After George W. Bush passed his tax cuts, we had dishonest and confused liberals reacting as the New York Times did:

“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.”

And 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.

It boils down to this: the more you hate America; the more you hate American economic power; the more you want to see the American people suffer; the more you should vote Democrat.

Now, I mentioned two comments to Robbie.  The other comment was about QE2 and its impact.

QE2 is the economic equivalent of sugar in nutrition.  Will it provide quick energy?  Sure it will.  Will that quick energy come at the expense of future health?  You bet it will.

Right now, as a result of the Obam Federal Reserve’s policy of increasing the monetary supply by buying debt from itself (literally creating money out of thin air), there is more economic activity.  Right now, as a result of this policy, credit rates are lower.  Fewer banks and corporations are going under because of the ready access to cheap money.  Investors see the stability and invest.

We should all feed our children tons of sugar, so we can enjoy the short term bonanza of frenetic activity.

Unless you worry about all the cavities, the weight gains, the diabetes, and of course that huge depressing crash with all of those catastrophic health consequences that necessarily come later..

The first time we ended QE1, the stock market lost 16% of its value in two weeks.  Which is to say it didn’t work the first time for the same reason it won’t work this second time.  Or a necessary third time, etcetera.

One of the more sinister effects of quantitative easing is that it essentially becomes a tax on saving.  You were busy at work putting away as much as you could during a period when your money was worth more.  But now, as a result of artificially increasing the money supply, all that money you accumulated in saving is worth less.  Why is this?  Because you can increase the money supply all you want, but you’ve still got the same finite amount of goods and services.  And when you’ve got twice as many dollars in the money supply as you had before, over time those same goods and services will cost twice as much as before, and so on.

Right now, prices are going up dramatically on virtually everything that matters.  And yet the only ones who refuse to admit it are the federal government and its stauchest mainstream media propagandists who think and report what the Obama regime wants them to think and report.

Meanwhile, the key factor that led to the economic crash in 2008 – the housing market – just had its worst quarter since the darkest depths of that crash.  And as bad as that is, the experts are saying that we are STILL  a ways off from hitting bottom.  Obama hasn’t solved anything.  And economists are described as being in the fetal position over this “unexpected” – (there’s that word again) – development.

It’s just like feeding that little kid sugar: frenetic activity that actually accomplishes nothing, followed shortly afterward by a nasty crash.

VIA CNBC: ‘Many Firms Reluctant To Hire Because Of [Democrats’] Taxes, Rules’

Enjoy your unemployment, courtesy of the Obama administration.

And understand that the fact that you NEED unemployment is also courtesy of the Obama administration.

Is Obama helping the economy, or hurting it?  What we find out is that businesses and the people who actually hire and create jobs understand that what Obama has already done has been bad, and what he is trying to do is even worse.

The key phrase of the article is “paralyzing uncertainty.”

Obama, thy name is turd.  And according to Rasmussen, 53% of the American people now recognize it.

Many Firms Reluctant to Hire Because of New Taxes, Rules
Published: Tuesday, 12 Jan 2010
By: Albert Bozzo
Senior Features Editor

A potential wave of new regulation and higher taxes may be scaring many businesses from hiring, prolonging any rebound in employment, say business groups and economists.

The prospect of increased federal and state regulation and taxes has been particularly disruptive to the hiring plans of small- and medium-sized businesses, which have historically generated about two-thirds of the nation’s jobs.

“I don’t really see the private sector hiring much in the next few months,” says Brian Bethune, an economist at Global Insight. “For the small-business sector there is just too much uncertainty about what happens beyond 2010.”

Not only is the Obama administration seeking to push through major overhauls of energy and health care policy, it is also expected to impose dozens of new workplace rules and raise income taxes.

As Washington and Wall Street grow increasingly restless about the unusually slow pace of job creation and the risk of a so-called jobless recovery, key business groups have begun to bang the drum more loudly.

In reporting that its small business optimism index fell for the second straight month in December, the National Federation of Independent Business Tuesday said members’ No. 2 reason for not expanding payrolls was the prospect of government policy initiatives.

Twelve percent said it was not a good time to expand because of the political environment. Over the next three months, 15 percent said they plan to reduce employment, while eight percent plan to create new jobs.

“We’re hearing it more and more from our membership,” says Bill Rys, the NFIB’s tax counsel. “At the federal level, there’s uncertainty about tax rates, health care costs, energy costs. You also have what’s going on at the state and local levels, with new fees and taxes. They’re reluctant to jump back in.”

Rys says the effect has been more pronounced in the past few months, perhaps mirroring the legislative progress of the massive health care reform bill, the highly-publicized Copenhagen climate change conference and new EPA rules on carbon emissions, as well as the approach of 2010, when the near decade-long Bush administration tax cuts are expected to expire.

The NFIB has some 350,000 members with an average size of eight to ten employees.

Much like the severity of the recession, the degree of potential government change is a historic first for many business owners.

“When they went into business this isn’t something they considered,” says Rys.

The American Chamber of Commerce’s latest economist forecast cited similar impediments.

“To create jobs we must ease the uncertainty over tax increases as well as health, environmental, labor, legal  and fiscal policies,” the group’s president and CEO Thomas J. Donohue said in a speech Tuesday.

Chamber members are predominantly small companies with ten or less employees.

In a recent interview with CNBC.com, the group’s chief economist, Martin Regalia, described a paralyzing uncertainty over policy issues, saying that many members “had adopted an attitude of survival” and “few talked about net new hiring.”

If so, that will not go unnoticed. Small businesses were hemorrhaging jobs in the first quarter of 2009 when the recession was cutting deep into the economy.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, companies with 1-4 employees lost 140,000 jobs in that period; firms with 10-19 employees shed 220,000 jobs. (That’s the most recent period covered by the data.)

Some of those jobs as well as new ones would normally be created in the coming year.

Coming out of the previous two recessions, companies in the two groups were responsible for net job gains relatively soon after the downturn had ended and picked up momentum as the recovery was established.

In the third quarter of 1993, the 1-4-employee group created about 120,000 jobs, while the 14-20-person group added 60,000. That may not seem like a lot, but the workforce was much smaller then.

Near the peak of the last economic recovery, the two groups were combining for more than 140,000 jobs a quarter.

Though data for the past three quarters isn’t available, people who follow small- and medium- sized business say anecdotal evidence from owners is compelling

“A lot of small, medium sized businesses are waiting to see what health care is going to mean, in terms of cost,” says John Challenger, of the outplacement firm Challenger, Grey and Christmas, “I think they’re also waiting and seeing on the estate tax. The other one I hear the most about is the union issue—the worry that there could be much higher labor costs, that might curtail hiring.”

Amid the massive uncertainty, there are levels of certainty.

It’s unclear, for instance, what health care will cost small businesses, which tend not to provide it to employees. There’s talk of some kind of exemption, but it’s not clear yet.

The cost for those providing insurance will go up—at least in the short term; fees for health insurers, medical devices and branded drugs, for instance, start to kick in 2011 and work their way into the broader cost chain.

On another front, the Obama administration has said it intends to introduce some 90 new workplace rules this year.

Two thousand and ten may also bring the approval of cap-and-trade legislation, which given the complex scientific and economic models involved, will create another long list of question marks.

Changes in tax law are almost a certainty, even if the specifics are still unclear. The estate tax, which—as part of the Bush tax cut plan—is zero in 2011, is expected to be raised in future years and that change may even be made retroactive.

Income taxes for the two highest tax brackets are expected to rise; the Obama administration at various times has said taxes will be increased on people earning 200,000 or $250,000.

“When people talk about who’s making above $200,000, it tends to pull in a lot of small business people,” says Mark Calabria of the Cato Institute, a former senior staffer on the Senate Banking Committee.

Budget-strapped states have already raised taxes or intend to do so.

Unlike the complex tax structure of global corporations, there are few or any loopholes.

“If you are talking about the entrepreneurial class, they run a small business, have a handful of employees and they just report that as regular income,” adds Bethune.

Less income, more expenses—it’s hardly a prescription for expansion, says experts.

Small- and medium-sized business owners are still recovering from the real estate collapse and the credit crunch; it is not uncommon for them to use real estate as collateral or credit lines to make payroll.

On top of that, like big business, they’re still waiting for a return in demand

“It may mean you take less investment chances,” says Challenger. In that context, jobs are looking might chancy.”

“Over the next three months, 15 percent said they plan to reduce employment, while eight percent plan to create new jobs.” There’s your practical definition of ‘one step forward, two steps back.'”

“Less income, more expenses—it’s hardly a prescription for expansion.”  There’s your expression of common sense that Democrats will never comprehend.

Now, you might well be dumber than stupid, and continue to blame Bush for the economic collapse rather than placing much of the blame squarely on Democrats where it belongs, but the fact remains: Republicans have been saying this from day 1.  And they were right, and Democrats are being proven to be 100% wrong.

Obama’s claims of “shovel-ready jobs” should be greeted by hysterical mocking laughter, if only the man’s utter failure wasn’t creating so much misery and suffering.

We find that that the country’s that ignored Obama’s government stimulus mindset have done far, far better than the countries that paid attention to the community organizer.

Obama says “green jobs” are the answer.  But Obama is an idiot.

When you take the “National debt road trip,” you’ll find Obama driving the debt like a drunken, raving maniac.

Obama and the Democrats have also lied about damn near everything.

And the result of the Obama administration – from his opening porkulus to the present moment – is that he has done everything imaginable to drive employment down and the employment rate up.

The simple fact of the matter is that Obama – not Bush, Obama – has now presided over more jobs lost than any president since 1940.

And all our failure-in-chief can do is change an already sick twisted joke of a “job counting” system related to his stimulus (the category of “saved” jobs had NEVER existed prior to Obama inventing it as a self-marketing ploy – and the lamestream media revealed that they were dishonest propagandists by allowing the bogus category to be used on their airwaves).  Obama has finally abandoned the continuous campaign of lies and incompetence used to calculate how many jobs he “created or saved,” only to now embrace an even WORSE standard: from now on, Obama will take credit for any job that got any stimulus money at all.

So if you had your job before the Obama stimulus, and you would have had your job AFTER the Obama stimulus, if the place you work for got any stimulus money, Obama will claim credit for your job.

I’m sick of this man’s demagoguery.  I’m sick of his Bush-blaming.  I’m sick of his self-serving excuses.  I’m sick of his idiotic lies.

And I’m utterly heartsick at the massive damage this clown is doing to our country.

I got into blogging due to the revelations about the “reverend” and “church” that Obama chose to join and associate himself with for 23 years.  I had never been particularly involved with politics up to that time.  But as I watched hateful statement after hateful statement emerging from Obama’s church and from Obama’s pastor – to the cheering of the vile congregation – I knew that Barack Hussein was an evil man who would destroy this country if he were elected president.

And a year after his misrule, every single thing I feared when I saw Obama’s pastor spout evil, hateful, racist, unAmerican, Marxist filth back in March of 2008 has come true in spades.