by The Wall Street Journal says what I’ve been saying all along, that we can’t afford to allow Barack Obama to implement his idea of "economic fairness".
Obama economic advisers Jason Furman and Austan Goolsbee noted that taxpayers whose incomes exceeded $250,000 would face an additional Social Security payroll tax increase of four percentage points (in addition to a five-percentage-point increase in the top marginal income tax rate). This new payroll tax plan would affect the top 3% of earners.
The new payroll tax hike is more modest than the one Mr. Obama hinted at last fall, which might have uncapped the payroll tax entirely. But it would also do very little to shore up Social Security, since it means that no more than 15% of Social Security’s long-term funding gap would be closed. Thus, if Mr. Obama is indeed opposed to reductions in Social Security spending growth, he is necessarily committed to large future payroll-tax or general income-tax increases.
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In a June 26 interview on the Fox Business channel, Mr. Obama said he wanted to roll back the Bush tax cuts for those in the top 5% of incomes — that is, about $145,000 per year. He also voted for the Democrats’ fiscal year 2009 Budget Resolution, which would raise taxes on individuals earning $42,000 or more.
John McCain may count people earning $5M as being "rich", but Barack Obama seems to feel that number is quite a bit lower than McCain’s.
It should be obvious to all but the most casual observer of economics that as a nation we cannot continue to spend money that we don’t have. The buck has to stop somewhere and it should be with the next president and Congress.
Bush has been a fiscal disaster and the spending spree he allowed and encouraged during his watch needs to be scaled back to affordable levels. Phil Gramm was booed out of John McCain’s inner circle for telling the truth, that too many Americans want the government to provide them with a lifestyle that they cannot earn based on their own merits.
If Barack Obama truly wants to represent change for the better he should put Phil Gramm in charge of his economic advisors, map out a plan to balance the federal budget (without relying on faked Enron-esque profits as a tax base), and use his oratory genius to remind the American people what they must do in order to live in a financially responsible manner.
Not going to happen.
Van Helsing says:
His policy of taxing the productive to grow the unproductive means there simply won’t be enough wealth to stand up to the Chinese, the Iranians, the Russians, or even Hugo Chavez.
Indeed.
The problem with Mr. Obama’s fiscal plans is not that that they lack vision. On the contrary, the vision is plain enough: a larger welfare state paid for by higher taxes. The problem is not even that they imply change. The problem is that his plans are statist.
And expensive.
