The Bush tax rates were put in effect in 2001.
…and yet the government and most politicians are calling the current efforts to extend those rates and provisions tax cuts.
The “cuts” happened in 2001. Nine years went by. Anything other than extending these rates is a tax hike. Got it?
It would be different if it had been a few months or a couple years but I think it is fair and reasonable to say that rates in effect for nine years have become the de facto norm. The fact that they had an expiration date doesn’t change that for anyone that actually pays taxes – which is only about 53% of us these days, last I heard.
Senate leaders released an agreement crafted by the White House and Republicans to sustain Bush-era tax rates through 2012, set the estate tax at the lowest rate in 80 years, extend jobless aid and cut payroll taxes by 2 percentage points.
The legislation would add $857 billion to the federal debt over 10 years, government analysts said.
Another semantic error there folks. This legislation will not add anything to the federal debt. Federal spending above current revenue is what will add to the federal debt. Out-of-control spending. Wasteful spending. Spending tagged with the misnomer “investment” or “stimulus.”
No doubt, calculations of the billions that will be added to the federal debt are erroneously, arrogantly based on the premise that the revenue resulting from a future tax hike has already been spent.
Don’t even think about trying to tell us what this is going to “cost” the government. The extension will not “cost” the government anything. More and more Americans are waking up and and telling the federal government that it was not the government’s money in the first place.
A two-year extension of those rates would cost $407.6 billion, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation.
Listen, no one in the next five years, let alone the next two should be considering rasing taxes for anyone.
While short term fiscal and monetary policy that serves to increase liquidity is widely considered a good strategy, lowering taxes is the only proven strategy, in the long run, to stimulate growth. Continuing to flood our system with worthless dollars will not incent employers to hire any more than the last trillion – only lowering expenses and stabilizing the outlook on taxes for the long run will give employers the confidence to hire again. The continued efforts on the part of the fed to further reduce the value of the dollar via “quantitative easing” is politically motivated and will have no effect on unemployment.
You can be sure of one thing. The only reason Barack Obama and his rejected liberal posse are going along with anything resembling what they deem a “tax cut” for taxpayers earning more than $250K is that they have no politically palatable options to do otherwise.
Elections do matter.
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