Obama’s tax stand puts ideology ahead of practicality
October 27, 2012 at 4:15 pm in News by Dustin Siggins 16 Comments
Once again, President Obama is threatening to put ideology ahead of practicality. In this latest iteration, the President has declared there will be no deal on the so-called “fiscal cliff” starting in January 2013 unless taxes on the richest Americans go up.
Tea Party Patriots know taxing the rich is a useless policy when it comes to fairness or deficit reduction, but here are four points for convincing your friends.
1. Raising taxes on the rich have historically trickled down to impact the middle-class. Consider that the individual income tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax https://www.teapartypatriots.org/2012/09/what-about-the-amt/ (AMT http://www.justfacts.com/taxes.asp#alternative) went from hitting only the wealthy to hitting many middle-class earners, for two prominent examples.
2. The top one percent of earners pay 1,500 times http://hotair.com/archives/2012/08/07/do-the-rich-pay-their-fair-share/ the taxes of the bottom 20% of earners. That’s not enough?
3. Taxing the rich simply won’t bring in much more tax revenue. The much-ballyhooed “Buffett Rule,” which would hike taxes on the wealthy to 30%, would bring in $47 billion over ten years, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation. For a point of comparison, we’ll borrow that much money by Halloween.
For another point of comparison, if Washington took every dollar from every American earning at least one million dollars annually in 2009, only $235 billion http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/60717.html more would come into the federal coffers. This barely covers one-fifth of the Fiscal Year 2012 deficit.
4. There are two other, more effective, ways to bring in more revenue to the federal government. The first is to enact tax reform that eliminates loopholes and does some combination of direct deficit reduction and lower rates. The second is to create opportunities for economic growth, which would increase incomes, which would increase money taken in by the federal government. Tax reform would, of course, greatly help create more opportunities for economic growth.
The simple fact is that America’s debt problems were not created by a lack of federal taxation. We must curtail spending, and any policy that fails to address this root cause of our massive debt is either dishonest or lacking simple facts. Since the President has access to some of the best facts available related to the national debt, I know which way I’m leaning…
Whats wrong with going to a sales tax and doing away with the IRS and and all the problems with those that don’t pay taxes like the drug dealers and the illeagles. everybody would pay the same rate peroid. The rich would pay more because they buy more, and it would be fair to everyone. It would go a long way in decreasing the size of our money sucking goverment.
M, Im thinking that we would be paying around 60% sales tax. I think that’s what it would take to make up for all the lost revenue by doing away with income tax. Because as it is about 42% of each dollar of revenue is going to pay the interest on our debt. Sounds simple and sounds appealing but we have spent and borrowed our way into a real mess and if people saw 60% sales tax I think there would be a real revolt. We need more jobs to create more income tax as revenue which means more money to pay our bills.
Flat taxes for ALL!
Why can’t we do all three? Tax reform that increases taxes on certain parties, closes loopholes, and decrease spending sounds like the best plan for solving our problems.
Hell, raise taxes on campaign contributions. That alone should pull the nation out of debt.
What Obama wants to do is destroy our economy, and he’s done that very well.
A plan will be implemented when the economy collapses.
Homeland Security “Doctrine” is somehow involved.
Craig , afraid you are right and that is the scariest thought of all. Obama and his crew get filthy rich by running this economy in to the ground. All the while rallying the vote by blame blame blame, Blame the republicans, blame bush, blame the rich, keep the focus on the other guys while promising one thing and doing the opposite. Seems to be the mode of operation. And so many people are out of touch and just don’t research anything they want a simple answer and someone to blame.
You guys are both fools. Neither Obama, Romney, Pelosi, et al want to destroy the economy. This villainization of both candidates has gotten out of hand. Disagree with them on their policies, but don’t delude yourself that they are trying to enact sha ria law or selling the country to the chinese.
Obama and Pelosi are Marxists and the all versions of Marxism require the destruction of free markets/capitalism.
(I know, it’s necessary to deviate from the pure Marxist theory in order to bring about the revolution that will then, after generations of tyranny, ultimately bring about true communism)
You are a fool, or, more likely, what Lenin called a “useful idiot”.
You, sir, are either uneducated or a liar. Either way, you are wrong.
Wrong that they are Marxists, or wrong that they want to destroy the economy?
Both. If you believe that is their aim or their goal to destroy America’s economy, you’ve deluded yourself into seeing Obama and Pelosi as villains. You need to read more than far right media to get the full picture.
I never read (or listen to) the far right media.
Pelosi was a radical revolutionary Marxist in the ’60s. Nothing I’ve learned about her since has changed my mind about that.
Obama hung out with and learned from, radical revolutionary Marxists- all his life. He filled his administration with them.
What would anyone expect radical communists to do? Try to save free markets and Constitutional government? Of course they want to destroy what they call “capitalism”.
Perhaps you’re deluded by your Marxist ideology, or blinded by it.
If you believe all that, then you are listening to far right media and not knowing it. Uneducated it is, then.
You’re certainly welcome to try to present Pelosi and Obama as something other than Marxists.
Perhaps point out things in their records that indicate they really do like free markets and Constitutional limited government.
Of course, that’s not possible, since everything they’ve done indicates they hate free markets and our Constitution, so your entire argument is that I must be uneducated.
Pitiful.
. President Obama, who will provide Jobs right away and jobs, will go to the people who are suffering now. The comment that president Obama is not going to take care of the debt and deficit Grand bargain it not true. He has comprised many times so that people could eat. Why can’t we have honest discussions instead of making up things? It is hard to decide what to do when you’re read things that are not true about a candidate when you KNOW is not true. We keep talking about the candidates who are dishonest what about us.
My review of Governor Romney is an Austerity program, which is give the more Tax cuts to the so called job creators to spur growth who have 6 Billion overseas waiting to find out if we are going to give people jobs and partner with business to create certainty. I don’t want an Austerity program for this country because it will hurt the American Job market because they will pay you low paying jobs. They have gotten accustomed to low wages and they now want Americans to work for less. I don’t trust business they have gotten to greedy.
I know the job market is changing but right now we need to make sure there are high wages, Romney say jobs but he makes no claim to keep wages above poverty level. Math does not add up. We know that everyone who worked on the Affordable Care act got good wages.
You think government central planning of economies actually works? Were you born yesterday?