Mr. Obama’s tax hike obsession
President Obama has claimed that his “top priority” is seeing that middle class families do not have their taxes increased.
This is a complete and utter lie. He is trying to prevent middle class taxes from increasing, but that is not his main priority. If it was, he would just not increase them.
No, his top priority is making sure that taxes for the “wealthy” do increase.
The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. Mr. Obama is desperately trying to figure out a way to keep the tax cuts in place for the middle class while letting them expire for those earning over $250,000 per year.
Yet Mr. Obama, who arrogantly exclaimed in 2008 that “elections have consequences” and “I won,” does not seem to feel the same way in 2010 when the message was that he resoundingly lost.
He will try to brand Republicans as obstructionist when it is he himself and his rigid refusal to compromise that is preventing a deal.
He wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. The question is why.
He claims that America cannot afford the price tag. This would be laughable if he were not serious.
Barack Obama the model of fiscal restraint? The man is like a drunken widow on a Bloomingdale’s shopping spree. He has added 3 trillion to the debt, more than 4 times the price of the tax cuts.
Barack Obama has no interest in balancing the budget. He loves spending. He just wants the “right kind” of spending. His next binge after health care will be on creating a “green” economy that will destroy businesses but keep the greeniacs happy.
Extending the tax cuts will take money from him that he wants to spend on his priorities.
This is just another reason to extend the tax cuts, to keep his grubby mitts off the money.
Yet his motives run deeper. One motive is ideological.
Barack Obama is a Keynesian. Despite overwhelming evidence that supply side tax cuts work, Mr. Obama insists that liberalism actually works. He calls failure success as simple as he can claim up is down and night is day. He claims that the Bush tax cuts did not create jobs. This is downright nuts. The tax cuts created plenty of jobs, and the economy boomed from 2002 to 2007. About the time the Democrats retook Congress and began letting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to run wild was when things began to collapse. It was the Pelosiraptor and Barney Frankenstein who wrecked things, not the Bush tax cuts.
Barack Obama fails to create jobs, but insists that his policies “saved or created jobs.” He has no metric to prove that a saved job has ever happened because of anything he did. He just says it and hopes his new definition of economics takes hold. Meanwhile his predecessor cuts taxes and creates a few million jobs, which Mr. Obama simply says never happened.
Remember, Mr. Obama is not talking about cutting taxes for anyone. He is trying to avoid raising taxes on some people. If he were to refuse to raise taxes on the wealthy, he would be acknowledging that the policy would have been a bad move if he did. Barack Obama is determined to raise taxes on the wealthy because he deeply believes it from the bottom of rigid leftist soul.
Yet there is another reason he is fighting the tax cuts tooth and nail.
Mr. Obama’s entire presidential existence is criticizing his predecessor. If George W. Bush cured cancer, Barack Obama would complain about putting medical professionals out of business. It does not matter what the issue is. If 43 is for it, 44 must be against it.
Unless Mr. Obama fights the policy Mr. Bush enacted, his critics will accuse him of being an ideological soulmate of Mr. Bush.
Barack Obama kept Guantanamo Bay open and has aggressively targeted Al Qaeda with predator drones. H has refused to lift the ban on gays in the military. He has conservatives calling him a leftist (which he is) and leftists calling him a Bush clone (which is ludicrous, but liberals is as liberals does).
Mr. Obama would rather raise taxes in a recession and wreck the economy than allow an ounce of positive credit to be given to his successor. If Mr. Obama extends the tax cuts, and the economy rebounds, Republicans would have more ammunition to explain why they worked.
Barack Obama needs to have all the credit while his predecessor gets all the blame. This is part of his narcissism.
This happened in 1992 as well. Ronald Reagan cut taxes in 1983. The economy soared for 7 years. Millions of job were created. Then a recession hit in 1990, and Bill Clinton blamed “12 years of trickle down rule.”
If a Republican cut taxes in 2010, and a recession happened in 2030, or 2040, or 2050, the left would blame the tax cuts. They simply ignore years of sunshine, and the minute it rains they claimed that they knew it would rain all along.
Barack Obama has not defeated the business cycle. Nobody can. All he can and should do is look at what works.
Instead he spends every waking minute trying to get credit and deflect blame.
He hates the Bush tax cuts because he hates what they represent. He knows they succeeded.
He knows that his greeniac agenda will be every bit as destructive as his health care debacle.
He knows all of this. He also knows that if he blocks the extension of the tax cuts, and the economy rebounds, he can claim that he single-handedly saved us all by raising taxes on the wealthy.
If he blocks them and things get worse, he will just blame his predecessor anyway.
His predecessor acted on principle. He is acting on pure naked politics.
In the same way on foreign policy many liberals would rather lose a war than lose an election, Mr. Obama would be willing to obliterate America domestically as long as he can fundamentally transform America.
He despises the Bush tax cuts. This is personal.
Republicans and conservatives must hang tough on this one. They cannot allow this man to let the tax cuts expire and then blame them.
The solution is to make sure he is forced to extend all the tax cuts through clenched teeth.
The when they continue to work, Republican can remind everybody that George W. Bush passed them and Republicans extended them. As for Mr. Obama, he contributed to the process what he has positively contributed since the day he took office.
Absolutely nothing.
eric
November 15th, 2010 at 11:40 am
The broad and simplistic assertion that “supply side tax cuts work” (work at what?) just doesn’t cut it. The economy did much better when the rates were much higher, like back in the 50’s, or even the 80’s, or even a little higher, like in 90’s. Keynesian spending brought us out of the depression, via the massive spending on the WWII American war machine. Fortunately for us, however, we were able to profit from the aftermath of the war, essentially paying for it and more in the 1940’s, 50’s and 60’s, with Keynsian foreign investment in the rebuilding of the war-torn powers. Keynesian economis “work” when they offer return on investment. Keynesianism, contrary to the simplistic misinterpretations of the Right, is not about “distribution of the wealth.” It is about growing the economy via domestic, or even foreign, investment. New highways mean new towns mean new jobs mean new homes mean new people enjoying the American Dream. That’s the idea. Just endlessly cutting taxes is not an ideology or a philsophy. It’s just short-sighted selfishness.
JMJ
November 15th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Barack is a Keynesian…LOL
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/01/is-obama-a-keynesian-rall_n_777245.html