Fighting to Preserve Liberty in America
Photo by roberthufstutter
Throughout out the Republican campaign process, Herman Cain has been portrayed as an interesting candidate, but with no serious chance of winning the Republican nomination. What I found was the most curious logic was on the O’Reilly Factor the other night. Bill’s reasoning that Herman Cain won’t win the nomination was because the most important thing to Republicans was to unseat Obama and that independents won’t vote for Cain because he is too conservative.
Compare the address below in honor of our wounded heroes with Michelle Obama’s famous statement that she was proud of her country for the first time in her adult life after her husband was nominated as the Democrat party presidential candidate.
To no one’s surprise, President Obama followed his lame first attempt at a budget with the same tired class warfare “taxing the rich is the solution plan”. The problem is spending. This problem is not going to get fixed until we: a) stop spending more; b) start spending less; and c) spend less than we take in until the debt is paid off. Yes, I said paid off. We are the wealthiest country on earth. We should be able to live within our means and not have to borrow to keep a bloated, inefficient, unaccountable government in Washington growing and growing.
Let’s take a look at the facts. The following three charts show how much of Adjusted Gross Income is earned by the most productive 1%, 5%, and 10% (the blue bars) and what share of total income taxes they pay (the red bars). This is over a twenty year period:
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 1 Percent
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden
Share of Income vs Share of Tax Burden of Most Productive 10%
What is clear from all three of these graphs is that over the past twenty years if you look at the trend lines, while the most productive amoung us produced more, the share of the tax load they paid grew even faster. So let’s stop the sleight of hand about how many dollars the changes in tax law affect Mr. Obama personally and let’s be clear, to use Mr. Obama’s favorite phrase, there was no tax cut voted in December, the vote just maintained the status quo. So, Mr. President, level with the American people. Just what percentage of total income taxes do you want the most productive 10% of Americans to carry? Since you feel 70%, the amount they carry today, is not enough, what do you think is fair? 80%? 90%? 100%? Should the most productive 10% of Americans pay all of the income taxes while the other 90% pay none? Stop dancing around and be straight with the American people and tell us how much of the total pie is fair for the most productive to pay?
But we don’t have enough revenue because of the Bush tax cuts, you say. Okay, let’s put that one to rest as well.
Federal Government Revenue over Time
It is clear that the tax revenue collected hit its peak after the Bush tax cuts. They fell off after the start of the recession, which is expected, but it appears they bottomed in 2010 and the Bush rates were extended (not increased, not decreased). It’s the spending, stupid!
Trying to raise more money through raising tax rates runs into Hauser’s Law. As I explain in Liberty’s Lifeline, W. Kurt Hauser looked at eighty years of revenue data and concluded that tax revenues will not exceed 20% of GDP no matter how high the rates. If spending continues at 24% of GDP where it is now, we will be digging a hole out of which we will never escape. It’s the spending, stupid!
Instead of leading, President Obama, came out yesterday with Budget 2.0, and basically made a campaign speech instead of a serious policy statement demonstrating leadership. Here is Charles Krauthammer’s analysis:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR0E3trOF-k
President Obama ran for office with the promise of bipartanship. He promised to change the tone in Washington. He has not even been able to change his role from campaigner-in-chief to chief executive and instead has become punter-in-chief. He punted his responsibility to put together a budget to a bipartisan commission. He didn’t like the yucky medicine his commission offered up and so he dismissed their recommendation. He now talks of a new bipartisan commission.
He also likes to follow the instructions of his mentor Saul Alinsky, “pick a target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it.” He did it to the members of the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address after the Citizens United v FEC decision by calling them out as they sat immobile in front of him. He repeated it yesterday by inviting Paul Ryan and other Republican leaders to this speech and then attacked them.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JjGGnwe6UQ
When I started writing this blog in 2008 it was primarily because I saw the candidate Obama as someone with no executive experience, a few years in the Illinios senate where he voted mostly present, less than a full term as a U.S. Senator before he bailed out to run for president, and the author of a couple of books and I was stunned that people across America actually believed this man, who may be great guy to have a beer with or play a game of basketball or golf, could actually handle the job. Well, as another of his mentors, Reverand Wright, once said, our chickens are coming home to roost. I would much rather have Jimmy Carter sitting in the Oval Office today than this man, and that’s saying something.
It’s about the spending, Mr. President, and if you don’t understand that, wake up Joe Biden and give him a turn at the wheel. It’s time to take your responsibility seriously and make some tough decisions. Right now 2012 is a pipe dream for you.
That’s my opinion; I’d like to know yours. Please comment below.
As indicated in a previous post, President Obama’s reelection effort depended on him walking a tightrope that required him to stem the hemorrhage of independent supporters while keeping the livid left on his side. His State of the Union address showed him confidently stepping out on the high wire, with lofty language extolling the virtues of America. But by the end of the speech it looked like the aerialist was leaning to one side, sticking his leg out on the other as a counterbalance while starting to pinwheel his arms backwards to avert a fall.
On the surface, President Obama’s State of the Union address was like many others, long on platitudes, short on substance. I had the opportunity to witness it at the studio of WNYC in New York. We were a handful of Tea Party members is a sea of progressives.
The talking points have been established that it was eight years, eight, of failed Bush and/or Republican policies that got us into this mess and President Obama and the Democrats are working hard to get us out of it. Let’s take a closer look.
What blew up in 2008? It was the housing market. The underlying cause of the problem has Democrat/liberal/progressive fingerprints all over it going back to Franklin Roosevelt who created Fannie Mae. Add into that mix Lyndon Johnson privatizing Fannie Mae to hide it from the budget and creating HUD; Jimmy Carter creating the Community Reinvestment Act; Bill Clinton pushing for more home ownership among those who could least afford it, Andrew Cuomo as HUD Secretary pushing Fannie and Freddie to take on riskier mortgages; Barney Frank and Chris Dodd fighting against regulation before they were fighting for it (and where have we heard that formulation before?); and when housing prices run out of gas and the house of cards that the Democrats built collapses, it’s all Bush’s fault.
Let’s look at the timeline. When he took office, President Bush was handed a recession from Bill Clinton resulting from the dot.com bubble. In less than a year we had 9/11. In spite of that, Bush pushed through tax cuts and got the economy to grow through most of his presidency. The Democrats took control of Congress in January 2007 and in December 2007 the economy went into recession. One year later Barack Obama is elected President of the United States. Now, more than a year and a half after Obama is in office the economy looks like it is slipping into a double dip recession, and this is the Republican’s fault? Who has been spending like a drunken sailor? Who wasted almost $1 trillion on a stimulus plan that was so ineffective the Obama administration had to invent a new statistic, “jobs saved”, to hide its dismal performance. They add on ObamaCare, which no one in Congress read before voting on it and no one knows what is in it and so no small business is going to hire anyone until they know what it costs. How is that the Republican’s fault or Bush’s?
We are just a few months away from the tax cuts put in place by President Bush expiring. President Obama wants them to expire. This will place an additional massive burden on small businesses and just about everyone else and he wonders why aren’t companies hiring? The man came into office with no executive experience and the year and a half he has been in office he hasn’t seemed to pick up any. Could it be because he is surrounded by advisors who have little to no executive experience themselves?
To my fellow Americans I say, hang in there it is less than 100 days to vote the bums out. Perhaps not all of them, but at least we can bring in some adult supervision. It’s time to stop steamrolling the American people with the socialist programs and to let “We the People” take back our government.
President Obama’s new tack on the campaign trail is to get people to forget the last year and a half and try to scare the voters by saying, “Remember who got us into this mess and who is getting us out of it.” Is that supposed to rally the voters to the Democrats jamming budget busting program after budget busting program down their throats? Let me make two points to any voter to whom that strategy may give pause.
So if you want to punish those who were in charge when the recession hit, with Bush gone, that leaves the Democrats. Fire away.
