Senate Democrats aim to replace sequestration with tax hikes
February 14, 2013 at 1:24 pm in Blog, News, Senate by Tea Party Patriots 19 Comments
On Tuesday, President Obama called for tax hikes to replace some of sequestration’s spending reductions. Today, Senate Democrats are taking that call one step further, and are planning on $60 billion in tax hikes in 2013:
CBS News has learned that the Senate Democrats’ long-awaited plan to avert the sequester, which leaders will present to their caucus today, would replace the 10-year sequester for the rest of 2013 — 10 months — with $120 billion in spending cuts and new tax revenue, split 50-50.
Most of the revenue would come from implementing what’s known as the Buffett Rule, named after investor Warren Buffett. The rule would cap deductions and loopholes for millionaires so they pay at least 30 percent of their salary in taxes. Senate Democrats tried and failed to pass the Buffett Rule last year.
The spending cuts would come from eliminating agriculture subsidies and from trimming the defense budget, though not as drastically as the sequester would.
Specifics won’t be out until later, but this is already an egregious attempt to avoid a modest corralling of federal spending. While it is a good thing defense and agriculture subsidies would be trimmed, replacing the rest of sequestration with tax hikes is unacceptable, for two reasons:
First, tax hikes just went into place two months ago. Where is the “balance” the President wants, that that will allegedly even out his tax hikes with an attempt at solving the budget’s actual problem – overspending?
Second, sequestration never actually cut spending. It merely cut projected growth. This means Senate Democrats are planning on lowering the spending reductions by about $25 billion (sequestration will cut $85 billion from March 1 through the rest of the calendar year), thus further growing the federal budget this year.
Here’s a little piece of trivia for the next time someone says the rich don’t pay enough in taxes: the bottom 20% of earners pay 1% of their income to taxes. The top 1% pay 28.9% of their income to taxes. Taken out further, the average person in the top 20% makes 10 times as much as the bottom 20%, but paid 221 times as much in taxes. The top 1% makes 50 times as much, but pays about 1,500 times as much in taxes.
Of course, the biggest supporters of overspending find the above plan too fiscally conservative. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), for example, claims “We’ve already had huge spending cuts.” A number of Senators want to replace the entire sequester with tax hikes totalling nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. Senator Boxer also says there are a number of loopholes to cut that “wouldn’t hurt anybody.” Obviously, Tea Party Patriots supports cutting loopholes to lower rates, and thus create a fairer, more efficient tax code – but let’s not pretend eliminating loopholes without lowering rates isn’t a tax increase on those who use the loophole, even if the loophole is a bad one.
One other thing on the original plan discussed above: I fail to see how mostly using the Buffett Rule for the tax hikes raises nearly enough money to replace half of the sequester, considering the Joint Committee on Taxation officially estimated the grand total value of the Buffett Rule at $47 billion over 10 years, averaging $4.7 billion annually. Tea Party Patriots has requests for comment and clarification from bothA clarification from Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray’s (D-WA) office and Ranking Member of the Budget Committee, Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL).
Congress returns to their home districts next week, and so far House and Senate Republicans have held strong on implementing sequestration. Let’s make sure we call our Members of Congress and tell them to implement sequestration in full, without taking more money from the American people.
All of which is why it is far better to not reopen debate on the sequester and let it happen as intended. Let’s secure those spending cuts now and then get to work looking for more.
I have little faith that we could possible gain more than we did when the sequester was crafted. It’s time to let go of sacred cows and recognize that spending is the problem.
Money is the means of exchanging goods and services, when you have a government that thinks it can succor itself off more goods and services than there is to tax-you get the likes of Harry Ried, Nancy Pelosi, Baraq Obama, and that real smart lady from Massachusetts that thinks she’s owed everything for being a Cherokee. Which she’s not, I asked the Cherokees.
Reid should read the Constitution. All bills for raising revenue must originate in the House (Article I, Section 7). There’s not a damn thing the Senate can do to raise taxes except to act on a bill the House passes first. If the Republicans in the House do their job, the Senate will never get that chance.
With only half the country paying income taxes, the first order of business should be increasing the percentage of people paying taxes. After that, a discussion about what the tax rates will be can occur.
The simple truth is, the “Buffet Rule” will not provide enough money to pay for the government. More people will have to pay income taxes to pay for the government.
The positive aspect of this is, if more people have to actually pay for the government they vote for, they won’t be voting for a bunch of Marxist lying frauds like we have running the Senate and White House today.
I absolutely agree we need more people working and paying into the system. If this administration is so happy melding in corporate finances lets do some real good. Lets reinvest some of the billions we are paying in unemployment benefits to a work-fair program. It would go something like this the government solicits companies to participate in this program be offering a small reduction credit to their corporate income taxes. Then they employer would participate in reducing the # of hours worked by their employees. Say for every 40 hour a week employee we reduce it to 32 hours instead of 3 8 hour shifts they create 4 6 hour shifts. Here is the fun part the government could pick up the difference in the pay for those workers by shifting some money from the unemployment fund. Then say a company having 300 employees working 3 shifts would now hire 100 employees to work the extra 6 hour shift those people would now be getting paid instead of unemployment and they would in turn be paying taxes. The companies could even reduce operating costs because now they would virtually eliminate overtime expenses even if they needed employees to work a 6th day. American companies would now be more competitive with foreign companies increasing profits paying more into the system as well. This is not just targeting one community but every community nation wide. Every city or town or municipality that has a factory would see growth. More people working, more people paying taxes, more people buying homes, cars, durable goods etc. And companies would be able to grow and compete against the unfair foreign traders that are dumping cheaper products on the American market.
David, that may look good to some workers but’s it’s only practical in a manufacturing where all the employees do the same job plus you are now getting close to exempting employees from full time status and losing company Health Insurance. Keep government out of corporate, they are alrerady screwing everything up.
Why don’t the Government just own everything and everybody works for minimum wage and of course all the disabled people …well you know.
10 million people volunteer 100 hour and help reduce the cost of government.
625,000 jobs at no cost to citizens.
After experiencing elation at the Tea Party
Tsunami that dominated the 2010 mid-term election, the last two years have met with continual disappointment as Republican office holders repeatedly give in to Obama and Senate Dems. I agree with Truth > Spin, better to opt for sequester, rather than let the Republican House give in again.
Its the political way of getting things done. Create a crisis and then get what you want by holding the country hostage until it happens. The debt ceiling / sequestration is the best thing ever for this process, as it crops up every couple of months until we have a budget (which doesn’t seem likely anytime soon.)
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The republicans were for smaller government and not having equal tax rates for everyone. Now that it is the 11th hour, the dems put a plan out, the plan the republicans put out was to let the sequester take effect and give Obama the right to decide how the cuts happen. Obama cannot vote on this as president. What a joke, they offer no plan, just let someone else handle it.
Is anyone else mad the people in congress get FREE healthcare and retirement. This should be the first to go.
Equal tax for all is not raising taxes. 25% for the middle class, 13% for miliionaires, something wrong here. It is not taxing people for being successful, it is tax equality.
Have a great day everyone!
Tom, that 13% is based on income BEFORE they give away millions, not their net income. Most people’s tax the work the same way. Look at a 1040 – you don’t pay taxes on your Top line, you pay taxes against your income after deductions like your mortgage interest. Geez.. By the way, I didn’t see anyone from the Federal Government helping me cooking and serving at the restaurant, why am I giving them 25%? Oh, so they can have more parties, open the borders to allow Mexicans to take my job, and so they can retire at full pay after 20 years for doing NOTHING! What BS!
Remember fellow patriots, our job is to hold fellow conservative lawmakers to conservative values, not to splinter the conservative right and give elections to the socialist left. a vote on the national elections for a tea party member only hurts the Republicans. vote tea party locally, vote Republican nationally.
How about some volunteer government like the old days?
We need to raise tax’s, because the people where I live do not have enough money
to get real drunk on our tax dollars, and they are always asking me for more smokes.
Some of which are doing better off on welfare then I.And when I ask them why they
should get more, their answer is that we owe it to them.Well I am off to work,so I can
pay them back.
Red State Legislatures must IMMEDIATELY recall faithless, corrupt, US Democrat Senators of their State. That they seek to ruin us and our posterity, we believe is now beyond question. Read the full proposition here: http://www.avoiceofthepeople.com
Obama says that there was no money to sent troops over to help our troops out
on 9/11/2013. I was in the miltary during the first Iraq war and spent 11 years in
the miltary. Not is he so full of shit, but saving our troops is one of his top jobs
which he failed to do. And not all the money in the world will change the outcome
with this president. I am sorry for our troops because not only were they let down,
they know that he is destroying our miltary one step at a time.
Nobody wants to say it so I will. Our society wont hire ex felons so they live off the government. everyone deserves a second chance or we should forgive but our society don’t. our politicians lie and steal go on TV and appoligize and its ok. they tell us there is 11 million illegals in our country but there is millions more they haven’t counted or don’t want to say it so the problem don’t seem so bad either way they are all over this country. taking American jobs and getting. government assistance and sending their. kids to our schools. illegal immigrants aren’t just field workers they have woven their way into every fabric of our workforce. they need to go and go now. all of them and their kids too. jobs would be plentyful. the unemployment rate would be non existant not to mention schools would have money to get good teachers ex felons could get back to work and not return to crime because they can’t get work because of a mistake they made and our society is heartless and unforgiving when it comes to felons. send the illegals back and watch our problems go with them. I’m not even going to comment on how many federal and state prisons are housing and feeding illegals. not going to talk about all the Mexican gang bangers we have in our country and I’m not going to talk about the Cubans that have taken Florida. Americans can’t get a job in south Florida unless they can speak Spanish. and I’m not going to talk about all instructions we get with all of our purchases are also in Spanish. do we do that for only 11 million people. give me a break.