I just realized I wrote this and never posted it. I think I am overworked. Just pretend its tax day again.
With everyone’s minds on taxes it’s a good time to look at Obama’s tax policies and the effect they will have on people and how they will affect the future.
The first of these policies is that he will not raise taxes on those making less than 200,000. Forgetting the fact that technically he already has with the very large tobacco tax enacted earlier this year, this is a promise he just cannot keep. The Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have both pointed out that there just isn’t enough money above this level to cover all this administrations spending. Eventually we will see this ceiling dropped lower and lower.
A second policy that hasn’t been talked about too much is the death tax. Obama plans to bring this tax back after Bush spent the last 8 years slowly eliminating it. The Obama policy would bring the tax back at a rate of 45 percent if your estate is over 3.5 million. That means at your death, your family only gets to keep half of the assets you accumulated during your lifetime. Seem fair? Seem wise?
Another policy is higher taxes on income, capital gains, and dividends. This policy will punish those who wish to invest, which in turn will slow the economic recovery. It also hits a lot of small business owners who provide nearly half the jobs in this country. The other half are provided by those evil corporations. But with his trade and cap policy, Obama will get some more revenue from them as well. Luckily Congress looks like it will not push through this last piece of legislation. But they also look like they are not going to keep Obama’s “Making Work Pay” tax credit that was put into the Stimulus. Obama was actually asked a very direct question on this point and he did not answer it. Here is the dialogue from the press conference.
Jake Tapper - “Will you sign a budget if it does not contain a middle-class tax cut, does not contain cap-and- trade?”
Obama - “Well, I’ve emphasized repeatedly what I expect out of this budget. I expect that there’s serious efforts at health care reform, and that we are driving down costs for families and businesses, and ultimately for the federal and state governments that are going to be broke if we continue on the current path. I’ve said that we’ve got to have a serious energy policy that frees ourselves from dependence on foreign oil and makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy. We’ve got to invest in education, K through 12 and beyond, to upgrade the skills of the American worker so we can compete in — in the international economy. And I’ve said that we’ve got to start driving our deficit numbers down.”
Jake Tapper - “So is that a yes, sir? You’re willing to sign a budget that doesn’t have those two provisions?”
Obama - “No; I — what I said was — is I haven’t seen yet what provisions are in there. The bottom line is — is that I want to see health care, energy, education and serious efforts to reduce our budget deficit. And there are going to be a lot of details that are still being worked out. But I have confidence that we’re going to be able to get a budget done that’s reflective of what needs to happen in order to make sure that America grows. Okay?”
As you can see it was a pretty simple yes or no question that was not answered in 2 paragraphs of talking. Of course I guess you can take a lot away from the fact that he did not answer the question. You can also see he continuously talks about reducing the deficit when his policies do the exact opposite. In the next 10 years he only cuts down on the deficit spending he created, not his inherited deficit spending and it does not pay off our debt.
Not only is there too much initial spending but this spending is growing the government, which is not sustainable without raising more taxes. If these taxes were being raised temporarily to pay down our debt, that is one thing. But the truth of the matter is these taxes are being used to expand government programs. And this is a vicious cycle that ends abruptly when you run out of other people’s money.
Just some thoughts on this tax day. Here’s wishing you big refunds. Hope everyone is having a great tea party.
