Obama Raising Taxes $26,000 per year on Tax Paying Families Over Next Decade

Don’t look behind the curtain.  These are not the tax cuts you’re looking for.  What we’ve got here is failure to realize your failed communist policies have failed every time in history they have been tried.  Our wannabe-communist liberals believe that the only reason communism failed is that not enough freedom was taken, not enough taxes were confiscated, and not enough money was spent.  Well, now they have their chance to prove their point and have ALREADY demonstrated the historic truth that communism and socialism are simply and demonstrably failed ideologies.  Over spending and borrowing what you can’t afford to pay back are what got America into its current mess.  So why is it suddenly a good idea to borrow TRILLIONS of dollars we can’t afford to pay back just so we can spend most of it on pork projects designed to get politicians re-elected? These lying, power-hungry scumbags are taxing and spending us into oblivion.  We can’t afford any more of Obama’s  lies or broken promises.  We can’t even afford for Uh-Bama to tell the truth.  The few times he’s honest, we get a glimpse into the “1984” Big-Brother future he has planned for us.  He promises to raise a civilian security force as well funded as the military (Brown Shirts).  He promises to destroy the coal mining industry in this country.  He promises to make other countries like us again (by destroying us so we are no longer the lone super power).  America can not afford Obama.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  TERM LIMITS. The liberals are shredding the constitution as fast as they can feed it into the shredder.  What is it going to take to MAKE THEM STOP?

Obama’s $163,000 Tax Bomb

Families well below the president’s ‘no-tax’ threshold will get a six-figure bill.

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN

The House and Senate are preparing to pass President Barack Obama’s radical budget blueprint, with only minor modifications, by using (abusing would be more accurate) the budget “reconciliation” process. This process circumvents the Senate’s normal rules requiring 60 votes to prevent a filibuster. Reconciliation was created by Congress in the mid-1970s to enforce deficit reduction, the opposite of what the president and his party are aiming for.

AP

The immense increase in nondefense spending and taxes, and the tripling of the national debt in Mr. Obama’s budget, have been the subject of considerable scrutiny since it was announced. Mr. Obama and his economic officials respond, not without justification, that he inherited an enormous economic and financial crisis and a large deficit. All presidents present the best possible case for their budgets, but a mind-numbing array of numbers offers innumerable opportunities to conjure up misleading comparisons.

Mr. Obama’s characterizations of his budget unfortunately fall into this pattern. He claims to reduce the deficit by half, to shave $2 trillion off the debt (the cumulative deficit over his 10-year budget horizon), and not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year. While in a Clintonian sense correct (depends on what the definition of “is” is), it is far more accurate to describe Mr. Obama’s budget as almost tripling the deficit. It adds $6.5 trillion to the national debt, and leaves future U.S. taxpayers (many of whom will make far less than $250,000) with the tab. And all this before dealing with the looming Medicare and Social Security cost explosion.

Some have laid the total estimated deficits and debt projections (as more realistically tallied by the Congressional Budget Office) on Mr. Obama’s doorstep. But on this score the president is correct. He cannot rightly be blamed for what he inherited. A more accurate comparison calculates what he has already added and proposes to add by his policies, compared to a “do-nothing” baseline (see nearby chart).

The CBO baseline cumulative deficit for the Obama 2010-2019 budget is $9.3 trillion. How much additional deficit and debt does Mr. Obama add relative to a do-nothing budget with none of his programs? Mr. Obama’s “debt difference” is $4.829 trillion — i.e., his tax and spending proposals add $4.829 trillion to the CBO do-nothing baseline deficit. The Obama budget also adds $177 billion to the fiscal year 2009 budget. To this must be added the $195 billion of 2009 legislated add-ons (e.g., the stimulus bill) since Mr. Obama’s election that were already incorporated in the CBO baseline and the corresponding $1.267 trillion in add-ons for 2010-2019. This brings Mr. Obama’s total additional debt to $6.5 trillion, not his claimed $2 trillion reduction. That was mostly a phantom cut from an imagined 10-year continuation of peak Iraq war spending.

The claim to reduce the deficit by half compares this year’s immense (mostly inherited) deficit to the projected fiscal year 2013 deficit, the last of his current term. While it is technically correct that the deficit would be less than half this year’s engorged level, a do-nothing budget would reduce it by 84%. Compared to do-nothing, Mr. Obama’s deficit is more than two and a half times larger in fiscal year 2013. Just his addition to the budget deficit, $459 billion, is bigger than any deficit in the nation’s history. And the 2013 deficit is supposed to be after several years of economic recovery, funds are being returned from the financial bailouts, and we are out of Iraq.

Finally, what of the claim not to raise taxes on anyone earning less than $250,000 a year? Even ignoring his large energy taxes, Mr. Obama must reconcile his arithmetic. Every dollar of debt he runs up means that future taxes must be $1 higher in present-value terms. Mr. Obama is going to leave a discounted present-value legacy of $6.5 trillion of additional future taxes, unless he dramatically cuts spending. (With interest the future tax hikes would be much larger later on.) Call it a stealth tax increase or ticking tax time-bomb.

What does $6.5 trillion of additional debt imply for the typical family? If spread evenly over all those paying income taxes (which under Mr. Obama’s plan would shrink to a little over 50% of the population), every income-tax paying family would get a tax bill for $163,000. (In ten years, interest would bring the total to well over $200,000, if paid all at once. If paid annually over the succeeding ten years, the tax hike per year would average almost $26,000.) That’s in addition to his explicit tax hikes. While the future tax time-bomb is pushed beyond Mr. Obama’s budget horizon, and future presidents and Congresses will decide how it will be paid, it is likely to be paid by future income tax hikes as these are general fund deficits.

We can get a rough idea of who is likely to pay them by distributing this $6.5 trillion of future taxes according to the most recent distribution of income-tax burdens. We know the top 1% or 5% of income-taxpayers pay vastly disproportionate shares of taxes, and much larger shares than their shares of income. But it also turns out that Mr. Obama’s massive additional debt implies a tax hike, if paid today, of well over $100,000 for people with incomes of $150,000, far below Mr. Obama’s tax-hike cut-off of $250,000 (over $130,000 in ten years and over $16,000 a year if paid annually over the following ten years). In other words, a middle-aged two-career couple in New York or California could get a future tax bill as big as their mortgage.

While Mr. Obama’s higher tax rates are economically harmful, some of his tax policies deserve wide support, e.g., permanently indexing the alternative minimum tax. Ditto some of the spending increases, including the extension of unemployment benefits, given the severe recession.

Neither a large deficit in a recession nor a small increase from the current modest level in the debt to GDP ratio is worrisome. And at a 50% debt-to-GDP ratio, with nominal GDP growing 4% (the CBO out-year forecast), deficits of 2% of GDP would not be increasing the debt burden relative to income.

But what is not just worrisome but dangerous are the growing trillion dollar deficits in the latter years of the Obama budget. These deficits are so large for a prosperous nation in peacetime — three times safe levels — that they would cause the debt burden to soar toward banana republic levels. That’s a recipe for a permanent drag on growth and serious pressure on the Federal Reserve to inflate, not the new era of rising prosperity that Mr. Obama and his advisers foresee.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

This story has been corrected. An earlier version included in two parenthetical statements calculations of additional taxes derived from the debt occurring over the period, rather than present discounted values.

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Obama Recovering After Closed Captioning ‘Mishap’

April fools?  I don’t think so.  As with all comedy, its foundations begin in truth.  If you have seen the compilation of Obama’s teleprompter speech gaffs, especially when combined with his total lack of social grace (giving the Queen of England an iPod loaded with Obama speeches and BOWING to the King of Saudi Arabia as if he were a subject, which he may be) you will agree that Obama is nothing more than an empty suit, totally devoid of CONSTRUCTIVE ideas.

by Mac Johnson (more by this author)

Posted 04/01/2009 ET
Updated 04/02/2009 ET

Bethesda, Md. — Doctors were said to be treating President Barack Obama at Bethesda Naval Hospital today for exhaustion and possible vocal cord injuries after a freak television accident occurred at the White House Tuesday evening.

Closed Captioning Counseling

According to a statement read by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, President Obama, noted for his near total dependence on the teleprompter when speaking, was leaving a practice session for an upcoming press conference when he happened upon a muted television set near the White House Briefing Room on which someone had activated the “closed captioning” function.

“Apparently, Mr. Obama mistook the captioning for his new flat screen teleprompter and began reading the text aloud,” Gibbs said. Gibbs stated that “what followed was a tragic marathon speaking session that lasted for nearly 14 hours before staff discovered Obama and disconnected the device.”

The President’s accidental filibuster was said to have included a 2-hour episode of “The Biggest Loser,” a much anticipated “Law and Order: Special Victim’s Unit,” the local evening news, and a late night paid infomercial for “natural male enhancement.” The press later described Obama’s reading of the captioning as “eloquent” (New York Times), “historic” (CNN), and “emotionally moving” (Newsweek).

This event comes on the heels of several embarrassing teleprompter gaffes by Obama, including one in which he thanked himself for being invited to the United States when he accidentally read the teleprompter text intended for the visiting Prime Minister of Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day, his repeated mispronunciation of the written word “Orion” at an event for Orion Energy in Milwaukee (staff had apparently neglected to spell it phonetically on his teleprompter), a little reported campaign event in which Obama’s thoughts disappeared with his flickering teleprompter image, and a news conference in which Obama responded to complaints about his addiction to the teleprompter blocking the view of photographers by having a giant flat screen TV installed on the back wall and reading his thoughts from that.

When asked for an explanation of how such an event could occur to the President of the United States, Gibbs responded, “That’s a good question. We’re investigating now. How anyone could leave the closed captioning on like that is just inexplicable. The White House staff should know better by now.”

A source at Bethesda Naval Hospital, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the President was doing fine, but was “quite hoarse” and getting some much needed rest ever since doctors turned the screen on his heart monitor around so that he couldn’t read it anymore. “Before that he just kept saying ‘Heart rate 98, Heart rate 97, Heart rate 98…’” the source said, adding, “It was kind of weird, but since we removed that he’s been OK. Although I’d hate to see what would happen to this guy if someone accidentally left him alone in the room with the crawler on the Fox News Channel.”

Another source at the hospital commented that Obama’s dependence on the teleprompter was predictable given his earlier self-admitted addiction to his Blackberry, or “Crackberry,” as it is popularly known. “Those Blackberrys are like a gateway drug,” the source said. He added, “First you’re getting your jokes and ideas from that apparently harmless little toy, and the next thing you know, you can’t even speak like an adult unless someone feeds you your thoughts word for word on a giant television monitor hung right in front of your face. It’s sad — just sad.”

“Oh, and Happy April Fools’ Day.”

Cartoon by Brett Noel.

Mr. Johnson, a writer and medical researcher in Cambridge, Mass., is a regular contributor to HUMAN EVENTS. His column generally appears on Tuesdays. Archives and additional material can be found at www.macjohnson.com.

HR 1388 GIVE Act Aimed at “Re-Educating” and Indoctrinating Your Children

I started reading (yes, actually reading) the WHOLE bill last night. I’ve gotten about half way through it so far, and what I’ve seen so far SCARES THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF ME!

Here are some of things that scare me about what I’ve read so far:

• “Service Learning”: Thinly veiled wording for indoctrination. This follows the model of Soviet Russia with their “re-education camps.” Though the original language of this bill called the re-education/indoctrination centers “camps,” they have since changed the names to “campuses.”
• “Service Corps”: The more I read, the more these look like the basis for the mobs/militias that Obama mentioned in his campaign, but quickly covered up. He said he would form a security force funded as well as the military. Every dictator and despot ruler has had the same thing: a paramilitary force to “persuade” citizens to bend to the will of the despot.
• Backdoor attack on home schooling: The more I read, the more it becomes apparent that Obama intends to make attendance in public, government run schools mandatory. In recent years there have been increasing attacks on those who wish to home school their children in order to teach more conservative values to them. The communists/socialists have known for a long time that if you control the children, you will eventually bypass the parents and control the society.
• Prohibition on any display or exercise of religion: Sect 125 (a)(7) reads thusly…
  

  ‘(a) Prohibited Activities- A participant in an approved national service position under this subtitle may not engage in the following activities:
  (7) Engaging in religious instruction, conducting worship services, providing instruction as part of a program that includes mandatory religious instruction or worship, constructing or operating facilities devoted to religious instruction or worship, maintaining facilities primarily or inherently devoted to religious instruction or worship, or engaging in any form of religious proselytization.

The only way they’ll take my kids to these camps is over my cold, dead body.

I’m uncovering more and more bad stuff in this bill. Please read as much of this, and every other bill, as you have the opportunity to read. Expose what our corrupt politicians are trying to keep in the dark.

Read HR1388 here:
http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h1388/text

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