President Barack Obama’s scant involvement with the Fiscal Cliff negotiations has been limited to his rigid insistence that the tax rate on the nation’s job creators be raised from 35% to 39.6%.
Tax reform – as a general principle and a way to raise revenue – is a presidential non-starter.
Now. Last year, the president said this:
“What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues, which could be accomplished without hiking taxes — tax rates — but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening the base.”
Funny, that’s what House Speaker John Boehner just proposed. $800 billion over ten years in additional coin for the realm. By loophole-eliminating, code-simplifying – and thus job creating – tax reform. Not via job-killing tax rate increases.
And the President’s tax hikes will kill jobs – 710,000 of them. While only raising the same $800 billion over the next decade.
Do not misunderstand – this is not a defense of Speaker Boehner’s revenue raise. The Feds don’t have a revenue problem – they have a spending one.
2007 Federal Budget: $2.73 trillion. Deficit: $161 billion.
Note: This was the last all Republican budget – the House, Senate and White House were at the time all run by the Rs.
2012 Federal Budget: $3.796 trillion. Deficit: $1.327 trillion.
If we simply returned to 2007 levels of spending, our trillion-plus dollar annual budget deficits would all but vanish.
The fact remains – we desperately need tax reform. The president used to agree. The question is – what tax code status quo is the president trying to protect?
President Obama and his Democrats in fact love our arcane, bizarre, totally anti-Reality tens-of-thousands-of-pages tax code. (And our millions-of-pages of laws. And our millions-of-pages regulatory code.)
The harder it is for businesses to do business (and citizens to conduct their lives) – the better they like it. And the cryptic, dense codified inanity creates tons of room for them to pick their preferred private sector losers at the expense of its winners – and slosh them hundreds of billions of Taxpayer dollars while they’re at it.
This isn’t Crony Capitalism – this is Crony Socialism.
To choose but one example, let us look at “energy” Crony Socialism.
Energy Subsidies Total $24 Billion, Most to Renewables
Renewable energy and energy efficiency accounted for $16 billion of the federal support, according to the Congressional Budget Office, while the fossil-fuel industry received $2.5 billion in tax breaks….
CBO said the $24 billion total is a small fraction of the hundreds of billions of the government’s various annual subsidies, which take the form of both grants and tax breaks.
[Excerpt emphasis ours.]
To one abysmal failure after another.
Since 2008, taxpayers have spent or provided loan guarantees of $6.5 billion for electric vehicles.
(There have been) more-than-$3 billion-in-federal-government-subsidies-alone for the Chevy Volt.
And the 2009 $787 billion “Stimulus” bill contained about $60 billion in additional “green” “energy” cash – ostensibly for “green” gigs. But as Newsweek then reported (emphasis again ours):
The working definition (of “green job”) paints a broad stroke: a job that’s good for the economy while simultaneously healing the earth. But that leaves lots open to interpretation – natural gas is technically a cleaner fuel than crude oil, but it’s still unsustainable.
Making it difficult, if not impossible, to measure whether eco-based jobs are being created and whether, as the administration has claimed, they’re the saviors of a sagging economy….
In large part, the very idea behind a green job ensures there will never be a full definition….
Well it appears the Obama Administration eventually arrived at a delineation.
Labor Dept. Counts Oil Lobbyists, Garbage Men, Bus Drivers as ‘Green Jobs’
This “green” “energy” government-money “investment” experiment has clearly been a multi-decade (ethanol, anyone?), trillions-of-dollars uber-failure.
Why would President Obama insist on job-killing, tiny-money-raising tax rate increases – while protecting such a gi-normous Taxpayer debacle?
80% of DOE Green Energy Loans Went to Obama Backers
Oh yeah.
“If we simply returned to 2007 levels of spending, our trillion-plus dollar annual budget deficits would all but vanish”
anybody who thinks republicans have the country’s best interests at heart ought to ask themselves why this was never stated during the campaign.
The reason, of course, is that republicans don’t have the country’s best interests at heart; they have their pocketbooks and their power at heart. Yes, there is a difference between them and the demokrats, but it isn’t much. The demorats are hardened violent felons. The republicans are just common felons.
and it’s neither crony capitalism nor crony socialism, it’s crony fascism. That’s where the government controls private industry through threats, intimidation, bribery and payoffs, rather than directly owning the means of production. It is EXACTLY the system we are currently suffering under. Socialism is actually better, because then the criminals cannot as easily hide their theft and incompetance. Under fascism, the crooks simply blame whatever happens on “capitalism”. Again, exactly what happens under the 100% corrupt system that is looting the greatest and wealthiest country that ever exited.
Well said, weo! Let me add, please, the type of crony fascism being practiced by the “progressive” oligarchy has much in common with extortion as practiced by organized crime families and cartels. The only difference I see is this: organized criminals don’t have the raw, unchecked monopolistic power of the feral government to enforce their threats and spare them the risk of arrest and prosecution.
Ultimately, I believe we’re watching blind hatred and opportunism extending their tentacles in many directions at once. The “progressive” hatred is for America, Americans, capitalism and those who succeed with it, individualists, constitutionalists, people who refuse the accept the validity of the skin color litmus test that’s become an integral component of the “new normal,” normal people who uphold non-”progressive” moral principles, and ultimately, the entire American way. The primacy of law and law itself having failed, voracious opportunism isn’t merely possible, but inevitable.
The “progressives” who spent a century and longer eviscerating our constitutional republic in all but name and cobbled together an oligarchy in its place are now avenging themselves upon the people and culture they’ve conquered. Though their “system”—a stretch, I concede—looks essentially fascistic today, I predict it will degenerate into this, that, or some other “system” or “systems” before much longer. I believe we’re looking at looting, arson, armed robbery, and Chicago-style gangsterism writ large. All of it is prodigiously destructive and self-destructive. None of it is stable.
The sole ray of hope I perceive in these developments is blind hatred rarely sees consequences in advance.
“2007 Federal Budget: $2.73 trillion. Deficit: $161 billion.”
Completely misleading! Completely misleading in the sense it dosen’t reflect what was happening at the end of 2007 that has carried over into each of the following FYs since. It also doesn’t account accurately for the WoT off budget supplemental methods of FY 2007. For example the federal budget report will show DoD:
$548.8 billion
When in reality if you look closer, the actual expenditure including off-budget supplementals was:
$673 billion, or 64% of the net discretionary budget. $124.2 deficit
Numbers don’t mean much unless correlated to something legitimate. Time and circumstances change and today is nothing comparable to 2007 nor can we arbitrarily declare it to be 2007 again.
of course 2007 is a legitimate comparison; it was a normal economic year. The extraordinary event happened in 2008.
You could make a case that 2008 impacted what happened afterwards, but not 2007. And in the case of 2008, four years is more than enough to have overcome that one-time event, which was certainly caused by the demokrats anyway, by deliberately forcing banks to make bad loans and therefore deliberately creating a future crisis. The only unknown was the exact time when the crisis would occur. The fact that it occured at the exact moment in time to get obama elected is all you need to know about the timing.
And don’t spout the marxist talking point crap about “the wars”. They were a financial blip of 1 to 2%, and some of that would have been incurred in routine training exercises anyway. Only insane idiots, and liberals (to be redundant) think that a 1 or 2% increase in spending is enough to bring an economy down. The current presidente’s spending “blip” is 1 trillion annually over a 14 to 15 trillion economy(more than 7% per year); one year of that insanity is about equal to all of the over budget military spending in all of the Bush years, and it has happened EVERY YEAR of the the criminal’s regime.
and Bush was a profligate spender. There isn’t a word for obama spending because there isn’t a single word for a deliberate effort to destroy the country.
Yet more conclusive evidence that the tea party people should stick to their social issues and far away from economic matters.
be a man and state your arguments, idiot.
Funny, that’s what House Speaker John Boehner just proposed. $800 billion over ten years in additional coin for the realm. By loophole-eliminating, code-simplifying – and thus job creating – tax reform. Not via job-killing tax rate increases.
What nonsense. Raising taxes is raising taxes. Closing loopholes doesn’t have a different effect on the economy than raising rates. Heh, just ask Grover Norquest.
And the reason that the president isn’t settling for closing loopholes is:
1) there isn’t as much revenue there
2) some of those “loopholes” are useful – you can’t get rid of all of them. No one believes that even the Republicans would be willing to.
Funny, that’s what House Speaker John Boehner just proposed. $800 billion over ten years in additional coin for the realm. By loophole-eliminating, code-simplifying – and thus job creating – tax reform. Not via job-killing tax rate increases.
What nonsense. Raising taxes is raising taxes. Closing loopholes doesn’t have a different effect on the economy than raising rates. Heh, just ask Gr0ver N0rquest.
And the reason that the president isn’t settling for closing loopholes is:
1) there isn’t as much revenue there
2) some of those “loopholes” are useful – you can’t get rid of all of them. No one believes that even the Republicans would be willing to.