Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Retire Bush Tax Cuts?
Ernst & Young has released a study it performed for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that analyzed the impact of the Bush tax cuts being eliminated for all those individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000 per year. People often lose sight of the fact that partnerships’ and S corporations’ earnings are passed through to individuals so the $200,000 or $250,000 annual income mark is very easy to reach in those situations for many small business owners.
The E&Y study said that 710,000 jobs would be lost and that total economic output would decline by 1.3% if the Obama proposal were to take effect.
There seems wide spread acceptance by many, at least in my circle, of the thought that government will not use newfound revenues to reduce current spending, but instead will simply increase spending.
The White House was quick to assert that this study missed the point of the President’s position and that it employed ‘flawed assumptions’. Among the ‘flawed assumptions’ appeared to be that the study “fallaciously assumes that the tax cuts are used to finance additional spending, ignoring the benefits of what the president actually proposed, which was to use the revenue as part of a balanced plan to reduce the deficit and stabilize the debt.”
Can we taxpayers be blamed for our skepticism in the face of ever-increasing spending even as our politicians claim they want to reduce spending? Is there any real possibility that money found lying about in Washington, D.C. would ever be used to reduce debt? I sincerely doubt that would occur based on the history of our increased spending.
The reality is that politicians continue to increase spending even when they have none of our money to spend, hence our ever-increasing debt to China.
The old phrase ‘fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ comes to mind as I listen to the claims from Washington, D.C. We have been fooled more times than I can count.
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