Taypayer Handouts and Ripoffs

An estimated 47% of Americans pay no taxes at all… and the fat cats at the top of the oligarchy ladder certainly get a lot more out of the system than they put in. So that leaves the “suckers” in the middle (i.e. you and me) to pay the final tab. For all of it. The whole rotten thing. To be honest, I don’t really know what to think of my country any more. This ridiculous, debauchery-ridden, quasi-socialist Ponzi-scheme of a recovery is going to end in absolute disaster. Crushing deflation, hyperinflation, heck, maybe even martial law… it could all be coming down the pike, in wave after debilitating wave, when the music finally stops. - Justice Litle, Is America’s Economic Recovery on the Whole Based on a Rotten Sham?, Daily Markets, April 20, 2010

State of Union Address: Obama Calls for Tax Increase, Five-Year Spending Freeze

January 26, 2011

CNSNews.com – President Barack Obama’s proposed five-year freeze on the federal budget is not enough to put the nation’s fiscal house in order, Republican lawmakers said, particularly in light of his call for new government spending and eventual tax increases.

“The analogy I would use is closing the barn door after the horse is already out,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told CNSNews.com.

“The run-up in spending that we’ve seen the last two years would be enshrined, and even though he talks about freezing spending for the next five years, we’ve increased spending in the last two years, 21 percent at a time, when inflation of the overall economy is 2 percent,” Thune said. “We’ve grown government at 10 times the rate of inflation. It’s going to take a much more aggressive effort to get this situation under control.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) called it fiscally irresponsible to "increase spending as the President has done over the past two years and then freeze it. Instead, we should pull spending levels back to where they were before the massive increases and then freeze it."

The president acknowledged the freeze would only affect 12 percent of the federal budget, not touching entitlements such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Obama proposed a three-year spending freeze in his 2010 State of the Union address. However, that freeze never materialized.

During Tuesday’s State of the Union speech, Obama proposed that:

“Starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. Now, this would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president.”

After a bipartisan agreement during the lame-duck session of Congress extended the Bush-era tax rates for another two years, Obama on Tuesday called for raising taxes. But he did not specify when he wanted to end the Bush-era rates.

“If we truly care about our deficit, we simply can’t afford a permanent extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans,” Obama said. “Before we take money away from our schools or scholarships away from our students, we should ask millionaires to give up their tax break. It’s not a matter of punishing their success. It’s about promoting America’s success.”

Raising taxes is the wrong move, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said.

“I would extend them permanently. The point is that the marketplace has made the decision and is basing their business decisions on lower taxes,” Paul told CNSNews.com. “Anything you do to raise taxes will give a bad signal to the marketplace that’s already brought these (current tax rates) to their business calculations. In Kentucky, we have 10 percent unemployment. We are still in the midst of a great recession. The other side needs to fully and truly understand that they need to embrace the marketplace and not government. They still see government as the solution to everything.”

Earlier Tuesday, the Republican-controlled House voted to scale back federal spending to Fiscal 2008 levels, before emergency measures such as the $700-billion financial bailout and the $787-billion stimulus were enacted.

“I recognize that some in this chamber have already proposed deeper cuts, and I’m willing to eliminate whatever we can honestly afford to do without,” Obama said. “But let’s make sure that we’re not doing it on the backs of our most vulnerable citizens. And let’s make sure that what we’re cutting is really excess weight. Cutting the deficit by gutting our investments in innovation and education is like lightening an overloaded airplane by removing its engine. It may make you feel like you’re flying high at first, but it won’t take long before you feel the impact.”

Obama mentioned his own fiscal commission, co-chaired by Republican Alan Simpson and Democrat Erskine Bowles, that called for tax hikes and spending cuts to reduce the deficit and federal debt. But he did not endorse the report, nor did he specify what aspects of the commission’s plan he supports and opposes.

“The bipartisan fiscal commission I created last year made this crystal clear. I don’t agree with all their proposals, but they made important progress,” Obama said. “And their conclusion is that the only way to tackle our deficit is to cut excessive spending wherever we find it -- in domestic spending, defense spending, health care spending, and spending through tax breaks and loopholes.”

Obama’s ‘Investment’ Proposals Remind Republicans of Failed Stimulus Spending

January 26, 2011

CNSNews.com – President Barack Obama called for increased spending, or “investments” in infrastructure and alternative energy -- part of his “winning the future” theme in Tuesday’s State of the Union speech. But Republicans said such expenditures amount to a second stimulus act.

“At the same time he’s talking about freezing 12 percent of the budge, he’s talking about all kinds of new investments,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) told CNSNews.com. “These investments are basically government expenditures. I don’t think he’s quite gotten the message of the last election. The message of the last election is, we’re being consumed by debt. It’s going to take some bold thinking. I don’t think it’s quite enough.”

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) said the president was paying "lip service" to the deficit and reducing government spending:

"If you listened carefully, you heard the president’s true agenda when he spoke of making ‘investments’. That word ‘investments’ sure does sound good, but it’s really just a fancy way of saying ‘increase government spending’, because it isn’t his money he’s talking about, it’s yours -- the American taxpayer,," Inhofe said. "We’ve seen this type of ‘investment’ before from President Obama and the Democrats in Congress. It was called their Stimulus plan -- which by the way -- only strapped us with even more deficit spending."

Some Republican critics say the 9.4 percent unemployment rate is evidence that the Democrats’ $787-billion stimulus law -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act -- did not improve the economy, even though much of the money was funneled to infrastructure improvements and alternative energy.

“I think the interesting thing is, when you divide out all of the stimulus money, it’s like $400,000 per job,” Paul said -- referring to jobs supposedly created or saved by the infusion of taxpayer dollars. “Some of these jobs have gone to buy Chinese solar panels. Chinese companies got rich off of this. But it didn’t work. The reason it didn’t work is because you need to let the consumer decide where money is spent, not bureaucrats in Washington decide. We shouldn’t be deciding what energy source. We should be letting the market decide.”

But Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) believes the first round of stimulus spending was a success.

“We hear from mayors and governors that it saved a lot of jobs. It saved first responders. It saved teachers’ jobs,” Waters told CNSNews.com. “They all agree that it certainly helped their cities and their states.

“A lot of so-called shovel-ready projects did not seem to get off the ground, Waters admitted. “I’m not so sure they were shovel ready,” she said. “So it is baffling why the stock market is doing so well and the banks are making lots of profits but the unemployment numbers are not changing fast enough. Nobody knows how to figure that out right now, but the president concentrated a lot on jobs, infrastructure and all of those things you just alluded to.”

Obama, during his address to the nation, called for “rebuilding America.”

“South Korean homes now have greater Internet access than we do,” Obama said. “Countries in Europe and Russia invest more in their roads and railways than we do. China is building faster trains and newer airports. Meanwhile, when our own engineers graded our nation’s infrastructure, they gave us a D. We have to do better. America is the nation that built the transcontinental railroad, brought electricity to rural communities, constructed the Interstate Highway System. The jobs created by these projects didn’t just come from laying down track or pavement. They came from businesses that opened near a town’s new train station or the new off-ramp.”

Obama promised to “put more Americans to work repairing crumbling roads and bridges. We’ll make sure this is fully paid for, attract private investment, and pick projects based [on] what’s best for the economy, not politicians.”

Senate Republicans, anticipating Obama’s call for more government spending, noted the “poor track record” of previous stimulus investments. They compiled a list of projects they consider wasteful, including:

• $336,000 to collect plants in Ohio for a database.


• $219,000 to study the “sex patterns of college women” at Syracuse University.
  


• $1 million for the Sunset Strip in Hollywood.


• $50,000 to fix cracks in the city tennis court in Bozeman, Mt., that even Democratic Gov. Brian Schwetizer criticized, saying, “What they violated was that rule of common sense.”


• $300,000 for “mapping radioactive rabbit feces.”


• $325,000 to study “the mating decisions” of female cactus bugs.


• $535 million given to solar panel maker Solyndra of Freemont, Calif., which “scuttled its factory expansion in Fremont, a move that [would] stop the company's plans to hire 1,000 workers,” and would “eliminate 155 to 175 jobs in Fremont.”

During a speech on the Senate floor prior to the State of the Union address, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) criticized the president’s approach:

“And now we hear that he plans to stick with the same failed approach of economic growth through even more government spending with a call for 'investments’ in education, infrastructure, research, and renewable energy,” McConnell said.

“We’ve seen before what Democrats in Washington mean by investments. In promoting the failed stimulus, the president referred to that, too, as an investment in our nation’s future. Fourteen times alone during his signing statement, he referred to the stimulus bill’s ‘investments.’ We all know how that turned out.”