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Two-year extension a mistake
Democrats and Republicans alike have gone to great lengths over the past 10 days to compliment one another over a deal brokered by President Obama and congressional Republicans to extend the Bush era tax rates for another two years.
The two-year extension was a mistake.
Instead, the Congress should have acted to make permanent the income tax rates the Congress first approved during President George W. Bush's first year in office. Those rates, which will continue through 2012, range from a low of 10 percent to a maximum of 35 percent. Those rates are fair and just.
Let us recall that candidate for president Barack Obama often complained that the Bush era tax rates benefitted the so-called wealthy at the expense of the middle class and the working poor. He changed his tune to some degree after the American people, by and large, spoke during the November mid-term elections. They spoke by handing Republicans control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Republicans also picked up enough seats in the U.S. Senate to earnestly thwart Obama's liberal agenda.
To surmise, the American people told Obama and the liberal Democratic congressional leadership that it had had a belly full of out-of-control deficit spending and it was in no mood to embrace an increase in taxes. Unfortunately, extending the Bush era tax rates for another two years will add to the country's deficit. That will be the case because the Congress has not exhibited a willingness to cut spending. In time, hopefully, that will change.
In approving a two-year extension of the Bush era tax rates, the Congress signaled to the American people that income taxes could rise in the near future. In other words, the Congress created uncertainty.
With its two-year extension, the Congress also tipped its hand that it has no intention reining in spending on government programs that are crippling the federal government financially. Of course, we are referring to Social Security and Medicare and spending on defense.
It is without a doubt that the U.S. government is en route to insolvency. That's certain to occur unless the Congress gets serious about its propensity to spend the taxpayers' money as if there exists an endless supply of it.
We remain adamant in our position that the Bush era tax rates provide sufficient revenues to operate government in the United States. However, the Bush tax rates do not generate enough revenues to finance the size and scope of government as it exists today in America. That's what needs to change. |
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