In a typical yet clever way to halt his falling popularity, the Obama administration is framing the current tax debate from the Bush tax cuts to Obama’s tax cuts.  The reality is, the only tax issues on the table right now are tax increases ‘for the rich.’

A non-revisionist history lesson will show that the current tax rates are what they are right now after having been cut for all Americans by the previous administration.  That is why President Obama wants to keep the lower tax rates the same, and call them tax cuts, and raise the higher tax brackets on ‘the rich,’ making them pay (according to the Dear Leader) ‘their fair share.’ Committing class warfare and wealth envy is what community organizers do.

The last time I checked, poor people typically don’t hire the unemployed. And increasing taxes on the people who do, and expecting that to generate private-sector jobs, is what economic ignoramuses do.

‘Recovery summer’ was a bust. Obama has moved the deck chairs around and replaced Christina Romer as the head of his Council of Economic Advisers with yet another university professor with zero real-world business experience, Austan Goolsbee.

It doesn’t take a professor of economics to see that the jobless rate is likely to remain high. Unless Obama’s economic policies take a 180, high unemployment will be the new norm.

Link: Obama adviser: Jobless rate likely to remain high – Washington Times.

Barring any legislation to the contrary, the largest tax increase in American history coming in January!

If you thought that the only people in danger of tax increases planned by Congress were rich – think again!

Buckle your seat belts and hold on for the plunge the economy will take when government grabs a lot more money from the poor, the middle class, businesses… and yes… the investor class.

As Ryan Ellis of Americans for Tax Reform painstakingly details below, every part of the American family is about to get socked with big – really big – tax increases. Not only will every rate go up but every employee with company provided health care will discover next year that the value of those benefits will be added to annual income totals by the IRS!

That’s right. You get to pay income taxes on the value of your health care benefits on top of higher rates, reinstitution of the marriage penalty and a loss of deductions for a range of costs including tuition costs, student loans interest payments and health savings accounts!

You don’t need an advanced degree in economics to predict what will happen to our already struggling economy when so much more money is taken from the American economy—and our pockets—to pay for federal government spending (including shiny new luxury jets for Congressional junkets!).

Hopes for new employment from small businesses will also be dashed when new rules require far higher costs from businesses to comply with absurdly increased new paperwork requirements, when investments are taxed at a dramatically higher rate and when most small businesses see their tax rates skyrocket.

The FairTax remains the best researched and most popular alternative to the destructive income tax and headlong rush toward a national economic cliff. Far short of the citizen support to force such a change on Washington, however, our campaign must reach out to every neighbor, friend, colleague and stranger with a positive message of hope, economic improvement, full employment and fiscal restraint.

The FairTax is good for all – not just investors, one party or another. Take the FairTax message now and share it with your most vexing political opponents, with candidates and with friends because without this sea change we’re about to suffer a tax tsunami.

Continue reading The Taxman Cometh, In January →

That echo from the early 90’s is bouncing off the fiscal wall again. It’s just much worse this time. The co-chairmen of President Obama’s debt and deficit commission gave an ominous assessment of the nation’s fiscal future, calling current budgetary trends a cancer “that will destroy the country from within” unless checked by tough action in Washington.

That we are headed for an economic calamity, unless drastic changes take place, is not a right-wing talking point. No amount of hope will change this picture. It will affect us all unless we take steps to live within our means.

Blaming W for this is getting old and, does not solve the problem. Nor does it justify increasing the debt from $1.3 trillion to $13-20 trillion over the next ten years like this Congress has done.

Let’s recognize one fact about this debt that Obama inherited. It was proposed and passed by a Democrat controlled Congress. Recall that Democrats took control of Congress in 2006. And it is Congress that makes all tax and spending legislation. They, Obama included, voted for every dollar of this debt that they have been blaming Bush for. In fact, they continually complained that he wasn’t spending enough. That Gawd awful prescription drug entitlement program and his doubling the size of government was not enough for the then minority party. If they are sincere in their blaming Bush for his spending now, please show me the news accounts of Democrats urging Bush to use his veto pen.  But I digress.

This graph, supplied by The White House Office of Management and Budget clearly shows that at present, current federal revenue (for those educated in government schools, that means the sum of all taxes) is fully consumed by just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, veterans, you name it,  — the whole rest of the discretionary budget is borrowed from China and other countries.

See anything there that you want to eliminate or cut back? Living within our means necessitates that we find things here to eliminate or cut back. For starters, ‘means testing’ should apply in every entitlement program. Walter Williams talks to this calamity too in his piece What Handouts To Cut?

This debt is too large for the country to grow out of and there is not enough economic activity to eliminate it even if the IRS tax rate was 100%. That should tell you that adding a VAT (Value Added Tax) isn’t the answer either.  On the contrary, adding or increasing taxes will only further depress the economy and increase the jobless population. Is there any doubt that this is what candidate Obama meant when he said he wanted to fundamentally change America?