CNS News is reporting today that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is predicting that if tax rates rise in 2013, the economy will slip back into recession. Unless Congress acts, there will be a significant tax increase on January 2013.
The article points out that Congress will not act to change the projected increase in taxes until after the election. Great. Translated loosely, that means that Congress does not want to take responsibility for any actions they might take regarding taxes. As you know, President Obama is already saying that he won’t do anything to stop the drastic defense cuts included in sequestration unless the Republicans agree to raise taxes. Does anyone honestly believe that additional tax revenue will be used to pay down the deficit? In the past, when taxes have been raised, has spending ever actually remained the same or been cut?
The article concludes:
While CBO included mandatory spending cuts from the federal budget sequester (the “fiscal cliff”) in its analysis, the vast majority of the impact to the economy will come from the tax increases – the expiration of the Bush tax cuts — due to their sheer size.
CBO estimated that the combination of spending cuts and tax increases would reduce the federal deficit by $487 billion in fiscal 2013, with the vast majority of that figure coming from tax increases.
CBO projects that if current tax policies are kept in place and do not expire in 2013 as scheduled, revenues would be $5 trillion less between 2012 and 2022.
Congress is not expected to address either the mandatory spending cuts or the expiration of the Bush tax rates until after the election.
We need to examine the way that we look at taxes, tax rates, etc. The American public has been fed a line that somehow the government has a legitimate right to the earnings of the American people. It does not. There is nothing greedy about wanting to keep money that you have worked hard to earn. There is something basically wrong about taking money from people who have worked hard to earn it and giving it to people who have chosen not to work. I am sure we have all heard stories about people who refused to take low paying jobs because they could make more money simply by being on welfare and they didn’t have to go to work all day. Because of the amount of taxes taken out of all of our paychecks, the line between making money at the bottom of the economic spectrum and collecting welfare has become very blurred.
It’s time to remember that money belongs to the people who have earned it–no one else is entitled to it–not even the government. Unless we elect an administration that understands that people are entitled to the rewards of their hard work (they did build that!), we are going to wind up in the same place as the bankrupt countries of Europe.
