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Story Archives: Insanity in motion
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Insanity in motion
 President Barack Obama's proposed $3.8 trillion budget for the 2011 fiscal year raises taxes on businesses and so-called wealthy Americans while it would slightly trim some government spending.
To top it off, the Obama blueprint for spending taxpayer monies in the next year would add roughly $1.6 trillion to the country's debt.
It's a loser from the get-go.
In what would appear to be a jab at appeasing the have-nots and the radical Left, Obama desires to allow tax cuts the Congress approved in 2001 and 2003 to expire beginning Jan. 1. The affected -- families who make at least $250,000 per year -- would see their marginal income tax rates rise to 36 percent and 39.6 percent from 33 percent and 35 percent, respectively. Capital gains and dividend tax rates would jump to 20 percent from 15 percent.
In all, the so-called wealthy would pay an additional $1 trillion in new taxes over the next 10 years.
There's more.
To help pay for government's overreach, the Obama budget entails new fees (taxes) on banks and multinational corporations. Also, oil companies would lose $36.5 billion in tax breaks over the next decade.
Many Americans probably fail to realize that tax breaks for oil companies adversely affect independents like D&D Drilling Co. in Concordia Parish, which employs people locally, conducts business locally and pays taxes locally. Instead, too many Americans listen to the Left and the media elite, which would have us believe that all oil companies make money like Exxon.
To put it bluntly, we're looking at roughly $1 trillion in new taxes on businesses over the next 10 years. That makes about as much sense as taxing Social Security benefits, which the Congress agreed to do back in the day when Bill Clinton was president.
While Obama should be commended for recently announcing a "freeze" on domestic discretionary spending over the next three years, he should acknowledge that his proposed "freeze" affects only 17 percent of all federal government expenditures. It's a drop in a bucket, and it's literally meaningless.
What's not meaningless are Obama's proposed cuts for agriculture and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In other words, the men and women in America who feed the world and the men and women who protect us from flood waters will have to make do with less in the next year so the administration and the Congress can spend more money on the so-called "green" movement and the like, including those government-sponsored "programs" that the have-nots often establish to rip off America's taxpayers.
That's exactly what the Obama budget for 2011 entails, though I suspect Congressman Rodney Alexander and Louisiana's two U.S. senators will have a thing or two to say about Obama's plan to stick it to farmers and the Corps. At least let's hope they raise hell about it.
Yet, the $2 trillion in new taxes that Obama intends to levy on the so-called wealthy and the business community will leave the government far short of balancing its books when 2020 arrives. Instead, the country's debt will rise from about $7.5 trillion to roughly $18 trillion.
Why?
Simply put, economic growth is expected to lag over the next several years, unemployment is expected to hover between 8 percent and 10 percent during that time frame and the country is older. In other words, the number of people collecting Social Security and Medicare benefits will rise at a rapid clip over the next 10 years as the Baby Boomer generation gets old.
What does an $18 trillion debt mean?
In short, it means the United States will stand at the edge of financial calamity in just 10 short years when the country's $18 trillion debt will account for 77 percent of all gross domestic product. It is not sustainable in the long-term.
What Obama and members of the Congress (Democrats and Republicans) are not telling the American people is we have some very serious decisions to make as a people in the not-too-distant future.
We can all pay far higher taxes for the government services we enjoy today or the Congress must drastically cut the size and scope of government. It's that simple.
The current course we've plotted as a nation can best be described as insanity in motion. |
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