The United States should consider raising taxes to help bring deficits under control and may need to consider a European-style value-added tax, White House adviser Paul Volcker said on Tuesday.
Mark Levin and Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann discussed Paul Volcker’s statement and tomorrow’s big rally at 2 PM Central Time (you can watch it live at that link).
Post-9/11, the media berated President George W. Bush as unemployment rose to above 6 percent. His 2003 tax cuts improved the economy, despite the costs of fighting two wars, yet unchecked existing entitlement programs and additional government spending increased the deficit so the media pounded on him for that.
Under Obama, unemployment is double what it was four years ago, he is spending like a drunken sailor, the deficit is spiraling out of control, and the mainstream media is still hooked on hope and change.
Update: News report and some decent video of the event here.
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Michelle Bachmann is great! I don’t care what the Free Republic trolls say!
If a clone of Ronald Reagan was discovered, the trolls would whine he once was a Democrat.
If Big Oil developed synthetic petroleum from the air and provided us with gasoline at 1/4 the current market price, but doubled their profit in the process, this Administration would besmirch the profits.
Although Conservatives, including myself, are quick to point out that they did not support many of the Bush Administration fiscal policies because they represented considerable superfluous spending that contributed to increased budget deficits he did preside during a period that represented the longest period of job creation on record. In fact at one point the Labor Department erroneously reported a decrease in jobs which marked the end of job growth created by the 2003 tax cuts. It was second to the growth created by the Reagan 1986 tax cuts but after the revised statistics listed an uptick in job creation the Bush record stands as the longest sustained period of growth since the inception of record keeping and that was despite the tragedy of 9/11.
What did the Democrats have to say about this? They pointed out that low unemployment and rising wages were an indicator of certain inflation. It never came. In fact the economy was so strong that even during the beginning of the housing crisis America was still creating jobs. When Harry Reed was the minority leader he echoed the classical Democrat whine and spin. “Under their economic policies the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and the middle class is getting squeezed. President Bush may be pleased with what his economy has done but hard-working families know America needs a new direction”. The Washington Compost reported the tax cuts were a windfall for the rich and a hole in the Federal Budget.
In all honesty budget deficits grew but so did GDP and that supplied outstanding tax revenue for the treasury. In fact I expected a budget surplus at one point (as seen with Clinton) but under a democrat controlled Congress it failed to materialize; unfortunately they always find new and more inefficient ways to spend and waste. The notable reason why the economy grew was tax cuts. They are inspirational. Even during Clinton’s years the economy moved forward. Clinton may have been one of the most unethical, lying politicians that the country endured but the one truthful thing he did say was “that I think I raised your taxes too much” and under a Republican congress he reduced the long term capital gains tax from 27% down to 20%. Bush then reduced it to 15%.
This economy tanked because the residue of the Clinton Administration started their own, inside the government, crooked business that was beyond the reach of real market forces of supply and demand. Franklin Raines, Jimmy Johnson and Jamie Gorelick took over Fannie Mae and with the help of Andy Cuomo and the deliberately reluctant Democrat congressional majority failed to contain the incredibly inane lending policies. Also pivotal to this was a Federal Reserve easy money policy. Fannie Mae processed trillions in weak mortgages that supported inflated properties. Yes, the investment houses created a superstructure network of derivatives and credit default swaps that were traded in all manner of ways but they would have survived if the underlying mortgages were sound to begin with.
Bush’s popularity fell to below 30% because of domestic surveillance, the cost of energy, the Katrina effect, the Iraq war, budget deficits and a media that worked the material over and over each and every day.
What we face today is an economy created by a liberal socialist utopia entitlement mentality that can neither be maintained or sustained. Worst of all is that the short sighted among them (all of them) believe that tax increases will create a prosperity to support a goliath entitlement state. Even worse is that their chief ideologue, the POTUS, additionally believes that taxes should be used to punish the risk takers and achievers. He dislikes them.
All those European socialist utopias are populated by subjects in an economic coma. There is no dynamic vitality. America was an economic atheite because of her freedom. Exceptionalism is a result of freedom. The longer you are free the less likely you are to give it up so utopians generally steal it in small increments because you perceive less with an incremental loss. Conversely the longer you remain an uninspired drone of the State the less likely that you aggressively pursue economic freedom.
Prosperity is about commerce, which is what makes an economy. An economy that is unmolested by government is what freedom is all about. Liberty (freedom) is directly related to the pursuit and use of property. Only the criminal or the government can diminish your freedom. Jefferson once stated that we have a Constitution to prevent the later from becoming like the former (by pacing chains around it). I might add that besides protecting us from itself government’s job is to also protect us from the criminal. And what it protects us from is the loss of liberty and that means the loss of freedom to be able to pursue and use property. Needless to say a hard tyranny goes beyond and does much more but soft tyrannies have often been the prelude and all hard tyrannies encompass an economic soft tyranny as well.
The real problem is that these data are only the tip of the iceberg. The real problems are that teen unemployment is at an all-time high. Cities like Detroit are at 50% unemployment. In fact, cities generally have higher unemployment. Might that be due to the fact that they also are generally higher tax areas?
We really need to jump-start the economy, not give out pork to areas that are either Democrat or swing areas. The latter method is the Obama approach.
Government cannot really create jobs. But they can get out of the way and release the creative instincts of everyday ordinary Americans starved to work hard for the benefit of themselves and their families. People do not work hard for the sake of strangers but strangers benefit as a result of the spin. Conversely people who are required to work with others in mind and at the expense of their own benefit will lose incentive and underperform or not perform at all. Right now people are afraid of government and it should be the other way around. Health providers are the most altruistic of all but they are not going to commit economic suicide for the sake of the IRS and agencies that wish to regulate and dominate their services and confiscate their productivity.
This Administration prefers the consumer to the lender, the union to the corporation, government jobs over private sector jobs, massive spending and timeless deficits over sensible austerity and black ink; they prefer government subsidized, inefficient protected corporate hybrids over free market capitalistic firms that survive by delighting the consumer. I have never seen such an attempt to entrench anti-free market concepts into the fabric of American commerce. Take a look at your paycheck and your tax return and then multiply that by millions more and you will understand why people do not wish to risk capital and get up and work when the largest bills they have is from tax collectors who, when you think about it, are nothing more than slave masters.
Socialism, Marxism, Communism and all its variants are only great if you are the one imposing it! So Socialism does NOT adversely affect Obama, and his ilks. More tax? Why? Obama, Reid, etc pay their tax accountants to minimize their tax payable! Well, for some like, Geitner, just evade paying the ever escalating taxes altogether. But Geitner, remember, expect, YOU, the American citizen, to pay your taxes Get the drift? They are exempted from the lifestyles inposed by what they impose on the rest of Americans! If they are not, they would not be pushing this ideology. HYPOCRITES!