Politics, Not
Policy,
Is All That Matters
Gary Gerard,
dumbhoosier.com
To me, the whole debt-ceiling/budget deficit
battle going
on in Washington boils down to a pretty simple
question.
Do Americans pay too few taxes or do politicians spend
to much?
Lots of people are going all Forrest Gump on the
question by saying,
“But I, I think maybe it’s both. Maybe both is
happening at the same
time.”
And I think that’s probably the way I feel about it.
Certainly the
government spends way too much. And certainly, the way
out of this
crazy $1.5 trillion-a-year deficit spending is going
to have to include
increased revenue.
In my view, more revenue might be better coaxed from
taxpayers by
reforming our ridiculously complex and cumbersome tax
code instead of
simply raising tax rates. Seems to me there are way
too many
exemptions, deductions and loopholes. There are
literally thousands of
them. These little tax dodges allow income to be
hidden or parked
offshore where the IRS can’t find it. They allow
write-offs and
write-downs and myriad other way to reduce tax
liability.
Nonetheless, Republicans and Democrats currently are
locked in a bitter
dispute. The government hit its debt limit in May.
President Obama and
the Dems want to raise the debt limit. But they can’t
do that without
the support of Republicans. Republicans say they won’t
raise the debt
limit unless a like amount is cut from the budget to
reduce the
deficit. The president wants to include tax hikes as a
way to reduce
the deficit. The Republicans say no, not during a
recession. Obama
wants to raise taxes. Republicans say no new taxes.
So let’s wind the clock back to August 2009. A
politician was speaking
to a local audience. After the camera op, the
politician was being
interviewed by Chuck Todd on NBC. The politician took
a question from
Scott, a local resident:
“Explain how raising taxes on anyone during a
recession is going to
help with the economy.”
Here’s how the politician answered:
“First of all, he’s right. Normally, you don’t raise
taxes in a
recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve
instead cut taxes. So
I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are
right. You don’t
raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in
a recession.”
But Todd pressed the politician on his answer because
the politician
earlier promised to raise taxes on rich people.
The politician responded:
“We have not proposed a tax hike for the wealthy that
would take effect
in the middle of a recession. Even the proposals that
have come out of
Congress – which by the way were different from the
proposals I put
forward – still wouldn’t kick in until after the
recession was over. So
he’s absolutely right, the last thing you want to do
is raise taxes in
the middle of a recession because that would just suck
up – take more
demand out of the economy and put business further in
a hole.”
OK, you all know where I’m going with this.
The politician, of course, was President Barack Obama.
He was
speaking
in Elkhart. Remember that? But that was then and this
is now, right?
The economy is so much better now, right? Really?
Because unemployment
is only marginally better – 9.2 today, 9.7 then – and
if anything, back
in August 2009, Obama probably thought the economy was
going to
improve. If he had any confidence at all in his own
policies, he had to
be thinking the economy was moving in the right
direction.
But today, he knows with a fair degree of certainty
that the economy is
close to a double-dip recession and there are no rosy
forecasts going
forward. So if raising taxes then was the “last thing
you want to do”,
why is the president demanding tax increases now?
And why, last December when President Obama signed the
deal that
maintained the Bush-era tax rates – for rich people,
too – did he say
this: “Millions of entrepreneurs who have been waiting
to invest in
their businesses will receive new tax incentives to
help them expand,
buy new equipment or make upgrades – freeing up other
money to hire new
workers.”
And the debt limit? Here’s what President Obama had to
say about
raising that when some other guy was president:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising
America ‘s debt
limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign
that the U.S.
Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that
we now depend on
ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to
finance our
government’s reckless fiscal policies. Increasing
America’s debt
weakens us domestically and internationally.
Leadership means that ‘the
buck stops here.’ Instead, Washington is shifting the
burden of bad
choices today onto the backs of our children and
grandchildren. America
has a debt problem and a failure of leadership.
Americans deserve
better.”
Hmmm.
Meanwhile, don’t think Republicans are any better.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, has
a proposal to
give the president the authority to raise the debt
ceiling while only
suggesting spending cuts instead of actually passing
those cuts.
Why would he do that?
He tells us: “[W]e knew shutting down the government
in 1995 was not
going to work for us. It helped Bill Clinton get
re-elected. I refuse
to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching
Republicans into a
position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy,
It didn’t work in
1995. What will happen is the administration will send
out notices to
80 million Social Security recipients and to military
families and they
will all start attacking members of Congress. That is
not a useful
place to take us. And the president will have the
bully pulpit to blame
Republicans for all this disruption. If we go into
default he will say
Republicans are making the economy worse. And all of a
sudden we have
co-ownership of a bad economy. That is a very bad
position going into
an election.”
Uh-huh.
Further cementing my cynical – yet readily apparent
and demonstrable –
contention that these guys really don’t give a damn
about what’s best
for America or its taxpayers.
It’s all about politics, getting re-elected and
retaining political
power – 100 percent of the time.
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