The above video by Bill Whittle from 2011 illustrates how deep in the hole we are when it comes to annual deficits. The idea of the Obama administration that the Bush tax cuts must expire for “the rich” earning over 250K (In Chicago that would be a cop and his schoolteacher wife.) has everything to do with politics and almost nothing to do with deficit reduction. Here is why.
If you abolished all of the Bush tax cuts for “the rich” earning over 250K a year, and assuming they did not come up with ways to legally avoid the additional tax by deferring income, the Treasury, further making the rash assumption that increasing taxes does not have any negative impact on the economy, would receive about 70 billion dollars in additional taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office. This year our deficit is approximately 1.1 trillion dollars. If we eliminate the Bush tax cuts for all taxpayers, the increase in taxes would be about 370 billion, according to the CBO, assuming, rashly, that increasing taxes on the middle class would not have a negative impact on the economy and swell the ranks of people qualifying for “freebies” from Uncle Sucker.
If the economy does slide into recession, which I think might be an optimistic view of what lies in store for us, we might very well view the 2012 deficit of 1.1 trillion dollars as being the highpoint of the frugality of the Obama administration. We can’t tax our way out of our fiscal mess. What we must do is slash federal spending to the bone. What will happen I suspect is that the fiscal cliff will be avoided through taxes increasing on “the rich”, that will produce revenue that amounts to a rounding error in today’s federal budget, with completely illusory spending cuts. In short, the can will be kicked down the road. Unfortunately for the nation, the end of the road is almost here.
Maybe it’s time to make “fiscal cliff diving” an Olympic sport….
Elaine, Medals of paper, tin foil, and CD’s of sounds of insane laughter from politicians/government spenders with a back beat of their footfalls running for cover as ill-gotten gains jingle in their pockets thinking they won the game.
With the lying, liberal (I repeat myself again) media 24/7 fabricating facts it is impossible to guide popular opinion or to make known the truth.
The problem is too many people want to believe that 1+1=1,000,000,000. Either we need a populace with better knowledge of arithmetic, or we ride the delusion to its inevitable conclusion.
[…] The Fiscal Cliff – Donald McClarey, American Catholic […]
Wow!! What an anti-Catholic sentiment. What a shame that many so-called Catholic web-sites like this one have become a champion of the greedy and corrupt. The republican econoimc platform is precisely what Thomas More called in “Utopia” a “a conspracy of the rich”. Church doctrine has alays suported left-leaning economic theory. Including such great Popes as Pius XI, John XXIII and John Paul II. We have consistently suported labor rights and government assistance in bringing about economic equality. You seem to support the same type of wealthy, elite, fascist government that got Oscar Romero murdered in San Salvador. How dare you call youreslf Catholic.
Ah Stephen, your comment should be preserved in amber to represent the mind set of leftist Catholics at the dawn of the second decade of the twenty-first century! Of course you wasted not a moment in dealing with the substance of the post which is that the tax increases asked for by the President I am confident you voted for will do absolutely nothing to solve our basic budget problem of attempting to spend money that we do not have. Screeching insults against those who do not share your political ideoplogy will do nothing to alter reality, although I am confident you will attempt to continue to do so.
I think Gerald L. Campbell has a spam generator.
I call them hard-working, diligent, responsible. Stephen calls them “greedy and corrupt.”
I can’t go on.
Stephen is exempli gratia for my comment of 1130 hours, 30 November:,
“With the lying, liberal (I repeat myself again) media 24/7 fabricating facts it is impossible to guide popular opinion or to make known the truth.” Add to the “lying, liberal” media, the brain-washing, so-called public schools and higher education systems.
Again, in November 2008, they prove they are not racists. On November 6 and again on December 7, Stephen proves he is an imbecile.