Complain about spending too much, only if it’s against their ideology.
And for no other reason.
Take the “Bush” Tax cuts.
The democrats know that the tax increases from this will hurt the economy badly, but because it’s Bush, they can’t stomach extending them so they play the “deficit” card which is hilarious since they just spent weeks bashing the Republicans for being “mean” and “heartless” because they wanted the unemployment benefits extension paid for instead of adding to the deficit!
In the end, the Democrats just passed it anyhow.
So they can raise the deficit for unemployment benefits (now going over 100 weeks straight with the average being 37) but keeping a tax cut with Satan’s name attached to it is not worth adding to their massive spending.
New estimates from the White House on Friday predict the budget deficit will reach a record $1.47 trillion this year. The government is borrowing 41 cents of every dollar it spends.
That’s taking partisan ideologicial politics to a new low.
The Democrats are effectively saying, if it doesn’t benefit them politically it’s not worth doing.
I also think they want to saddle the Republicans with it.
They know they are going to lose massively in November so what better way to play it than stick your opponent with the mess and then when the 2012 tax season rolls around and people are hit full-on in the face with the 2011 income tax increases you can have “sympathy” for them in the 2012 Presidential election and make it look like it was all the Republicans fault.
Or Bush’s fault.
Now is that too cynical? I think not.
Through the end of this year, the federal estate tax rate is zero — thanks to the package of broad-based tax cuts that President Bush pushed through to get the economy going earlier in the decade.
But as of midnight Dec. 31, the death tax returns — at a rate of 55% on estates of $1 million or more. The effect this will have on hospital life-support systems is already a matter of conjecture.
Resurrection of the death tax, however, isn’t the only tax problem that will be ushered in Jan. 1. Many other cuts from the Bush administration are set to disappear and a new set of taxes will materialize. And it’s not just the rich who will pay.
The lowest bracket for the personal income tax, for instance, moves up 50% — to 15% from 10%. The next lowest bracket — 25% — will rise to 28%, and the old 28% bracket will be 31%. At the higher end, the 33% bracket is pushed to 36% and the 35% bracket becomes 39.6%.
Yes, it raises taxes on anyone who pays taxes, Period. Even the “poor”. So I guess he wants to pander to the 47% who don’t pay taxes, women, and minorities in his apparatchik class and everyone else can just screw themselves…
But the damage doesn’t stop there.
The marriage penalty also makes a comeback, and the capital gains tax will jump 33% — to 20% from 15%. The tax on dividends will go all the way from 15% to 39.6% — a 164% increase.
Both the cap-gains and dividend taxes will go up further in 2013 as the health care reform adds a 3.8% Medicare levy for individuals making more than $200,000 a year and joint filers making more than $250,000. Other tax hikes include: halving the child tax credit to $500 from $1,000 and fixing the standard deduction for couples at the same level as it is for single filers.
Letting the Bush cuts expire will cost taxpayers $115 billion next year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and $2.6 trillion through 2020.
But even more tax headaches lie ahead. This “second wave” of hikes, as Americans for Tax Reform puts it, are designed to pay for ObamaCare and include:
The Medicine Cabinet Tax. Americans, says ATR, “will no longer be able to use health savings account, flexible spending account, or health reimbursement pretax dollars to purchase nonprescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).”
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. “This provision of ObamaCare,” according to ATR, “increases the additional tax on nonmedical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10% to 20%, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10%.”
Brand Name Drug Tax. Makers and importers of brand-name drugs will be liable for a tax of $2.5 billion in 2011. The tax goes to $3 billion a year from 2012 to 2016, then $3.5 billion in 2017 and $4.2 billion in 2018. Beginning in 2019 it falls to $2.8 billion and stays there. And who pays the new drug tax? Patients, in the form of higher prices.
Economic Substance Doctrine. ATR reports that “The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks ‘economic substance.’”
A third and final (for now) wave, says ATR, consists of the alternative minimum tax’s widening net, tax hikes on employers and the loss of deductions for tuition:
• The Tax Policy Center, no right-wing group, says that the failure to index the AMT will subject 28.5 million families to the tax when they file next year, up from 4 million this year.
• “Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly deduct, or ‘depreciate’) equipment purchases up to $250,000,” says ATR. “This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be ‘depreciated.’”
• According to ATR, there are “literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place,” plus the loss of some tax credits. The research and experimentation tax credit will be the biggest loss, “but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.”
• The deduction for tuition and fees will no longer be available and there will be limits placed on education tax credits. Teachers won’t be able to deduct their classroom expenses and employer-provided educational aid will be restricted. Thousands of families will no longer be allowed to deduct student loan interest.
Then there’s the tax on Americans who decline to buy health care insurance (the tax the administration initially said wasn’t a tax but now argues in court that it is) plus a 3.8% Medicare tax beginning in 2013 on profits made in real estate transactions by wealthier Americans.
Not all Americans may fully realize what’s in store come Jan. 1. But they should have a pretty good idea by the mid-term elections, and members of Congress might take note of our latest IBD/TIPP Poll (summarized above).
Fifty-one percent of respondents favored making the Bush cuts permanent vs. 28% who didn’t. Republicans were more than 4 to 1 and Independents more than 2 to 1 in favor. Only Democrats were opposed, but only by 40%-38%.
The cuts also proved popular among all income groups — despite the Democrats’ oft-heard assertion that Bush merely provided “tax breaks for the wealthy.” Fact is, Bush cut taxes for everyone who paid them, and the cuts helped the nation recover from a recession and the worst stock-market crash since 1929.
Maybe, just maybe, Americans remember that — and will not forget come Nov. 2. (IBD)
And there’s always the Tax that isn’t a Tax because it’s a “penalty” but in court it’s a Tax– The Health Care Mandate.
After all, known communist and fired “green Jobs czar” Van Jones recently said:
While the federal government sinks deeper into debt than any time since World War II, former White House “green jobs” adviser Anthony Van Jones said it was time to stop worrying about budget deficits and pressure Washington to take more money from American businesses to fund larger social and infrastructure projects.
“This is a rich country. We have plenty of money, and if you don’t believe me, ask Haliburton,” Jones told a group of progressive bloggers and activists at the Netroots Nation (Think Far Left Hatefest) convention Friday. “There’s plenty of money out there; don’t fall into the trap of this whole deficit argument.”
“The only question is how to spend it,” he added.
Speaking of spending remember TARP, that bailout that was supposed to save the universe and create jobs?
Well, not so much.
How’s that Troubled Asset Relief Program going? Not so well. A review of TARP found that homeowners aren’t avoiding foreclosure and the decisions to close car dealerships were politically based.
The Home Affordable Modification Program, infused last year with $50 billion in TARP money by the Obama administration, was supposed to help 3 million to 4 million mortgage holders with their problem loans.
But according to a government audit, it has failed to “put an appreciable dent in the foreclosure filings.”
Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the $787 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, told Congress on Wednesday that fewer than 400,000 homeowners have had their mortgages permanently modified under the program.
“It’s just not a program that’s working for homeowners,” Elizabeth Warren, chairwoman of a panel charged with overseeing the bailout, also told Congress on Wednesday.
“It’s not a program in some cases that’s working for investors. And most importantly, it’s not a program that’s working for the economy over all.”
Warren, who resides on the other side of the idea spectrum from us, said the problem with the program is “It’s too slow. It’s too small.”
But at least we have $20 Billion dollars in signs touting how great it is (each sign cost $10,000 a piece).
Her position is based on a faulty assumption: that the federal government, which is rife with fraud, waste and corruption, is able to effectively implement even a small program. She is expecting an unwieldy bureaucracy to do something that it cannot — and should not — do.
Another function of TARP, the auto dealership closing program, also took criticism in the review. More than 2,000 dealerships were closed as a cost-cutting measure in Washington’s bailout of Chrysler and General Motors. But the closings weren’t business decisions. They were political.
And they cost jobs.
“Treasury made a series of decisions that may have substantially contributed to the accelerated shuttering of thousands of small businesses and thereby potentially adding tens of thousands of workers to the already lengthy unemployment rolls — all based on a theory and without sufficient consideration of the decisions’ broader economic impact,” said Barofsky’s 45-page report.
According to the audit, the Treasury Department, which administers TARP, simply failed to show how the dealership closings were “either necessary for the sake of the companies’ economic survival or prudent for the sake of the nation’s economic recovery.”
The Barofsky report says some GM “dealerships were retained because they were recently appointed, were key wholesale parts dealers, or were minority- or woman-owned dealerships.”
Further underscoring TARP’s institutional problems is Barofsky’s finding that the government has been throwing taxpayers’ money at the country’s financial system that it wasn’t authorized to spend.
“Indeed, the current outstanding balance of overall federal support for the nation’s financial system has actually increased more than 23% over the past year, from approximately $3 trillion to $3.7 trillion — the equivalent of a fully deployed TARP program,” says the report.
The money has been allocated “largely without congressional action, even as the banking crisis has, by most measures, abated from its most acute phases.” Worse, much of the unauthorized expenditures was doled out to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the quasi-government mortgage institutions that are largely responsible for the 2007-08 financial meltdown.
Fannie and Freddie were explicitly excluded from the “financial reform” package.
It’s no coincidence that TARP has been a big part of one of the ugliest economic eras in American history.
We wouldn’t be surprised if historians one day look back and find that TARP was a significant contributor to the depth and length of the current slump.
Unless you’re a Journo-List Media biased ideological “journalists” or historian that distorts the facts to suit Big Brother’s Ideological Agenda that is.
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