Filed under: Capitalism, Democrat Corruption, Economy, Election 2012, Freedom, Progressivism, Statism, Taxes | Tags: Obama Campaign Strategy, The Bush Tax Cuts, The Romney Economic Plan
The President whose record is so bad that he can’t find anything to run on except attack ads, has found a new strategy. My record isn’t so good, but headwinds, Bush’s fault, do we really want to return to Republican’s disastrous policies that got us into this mess in the first place?
Well, yes. We absolutely do. Republicans policies were not disastrous. It’s called “The Big Lie.” If you tell a big lie and keep repeating it, the people, pretty soon, will start believing it. Congress voted the other day on Obama’s tax proposal which involves raising the taxes on anyone making more than $200,000 as an individual or $250,000 as a family, and continuing the Bush tax cuts for everyone making less.
The Bush Tax Cuts, which Democrats have tried to portray as just tax cuts for the rich, were across the board tax cuts with the largest cuts for the poor and middle class and the least for highest quintile. The Bush tax cuts are set to expire on January 1, which means that everyone’s taxes would go up.
Republicans are adamant about raising taxes on anyone now. You just don’t raise taxes in the middle of a recession, and we seem to be sinking back. Some say we are in a real depression. In Congress they voted against the proposal that the tax cuts would be extended for everyone but those making more than $200,000 and $250,000 (Obama’s numbers). So Obama can now claim that Republicans voted to raise taxes on the Middle Class. It’s true in a smarmy way because they did vote against Obama’s quest to raise taxes on “the rich,” because they won’t agree to raise taxes on anyone. Here’s the new line:
You have a choice to make. It’s a choice between two very different plans for our country. Governor Romney’s plan would cut taxes for the folks at the very top. Roll back regulations on big banks. And he says that if we do, our economy will grow and everyone will benefit. But you know what? We tried that top-down approach. It’s what caused the mess in the first place.
The whole thing is a colossal, humungous lie, and shows the presidents contempt for his audience. Extending the Bush tax cuts is not a tax cut. Everyone would pay just what they are paying now. Nothing would change. Cancelling the Bush tax cuts on those reporting $250,000 in income would raise taxes on 1.2 million small businesses who report their business income on their individual returns. These are the growing small businesses that are the engine of employment in the economy. Obama describes the Bush economy as ‘more tax cuts and deregulation’ which he calls the cause of the recession. Another whopper.
The agreed-upon cause of the financial crisis was the collapse of the housing bubble. See Gretchen Morgenson’s Reckless Endangerment, which gets to the heart of the mortgage crisis. And guess what Community Organizer was organizing his charges to demonstrate and protest banks to get them to issue more mortgages to people who couldn’t afford to pay them back. Obama didn’t cause the housing collapse, but he was complicit in the activities that ended up promoting it.
Republican ‘deregulation’ didn’t happen. Bush called 17 times for financial regulation, reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants, and Democrats refused each time. What brought the economy down was overregulation of the mortgage industry, forcing subprime loans, through the Community Reinvestment Act. The Bush tax rate cuts of 2003 sparked a 46-consecutive-month boom in small business job gains. Bush said:
In January 2003, I called on Congress to accelerate the tax cuts from 2001, which had not fully taken effect, and to pass further tax cuts that would encourage business investment and job creation.
He was right. The tax cuts took effect in May 2003, and by September the economy was averaging unemployment of 5.3% which is considered full employment.
Economist Glenn Hubbard, dean of Columbia Business School, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, said in the Wall Street Journal that we can fix our economy’s growth and jobs machine.
The president’s choices cannot be ascribed to a political tug of war with Republicans in Congress. He and Democratic congressional majorities had two years to tackle any priority they chose. They chose not growth and jobs but regulatory expansion. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act raised taxes, unleashed significant new spending, and raised hiring costs for workers. The Dodd-Frank Act missed the mark on housing and “too-big-to-fail” financial institutions but raised financing costs for households and small and mid-size businesses.
It didn’t have to be this way. The Romney Plan for economic reform, Glenn Hubbard says, can create 12 million new jobs in his first term alone. That’s 1 million more than I said we needed to get back to where we were in December 2007. The President is convinced that he can lie his way into a second term. It’s not an attractive position.
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