You're such a retard. This is Bush's deal and it always has been, so turn off FOX news for a second and educate yourself. The huge deficit was there long before Obama took office and he's done everything his economic advisers has advised him to do, but the damage caused by Bush was too extensive. Unemployment was skyrocketing straight up and passed 8% before Obama had even settled in. It was on a 20+month increase with no sign of it leveling off. But that was Obama's fault right? The scare tactics of "socialism," funded by the fear-mongers on the Right, have resonated with ignorant Americans everywhere it seems. It is the same tactic used by idiots like Era Taft Benson who opposed the Civil Rights movement, calling in an unconstitutional encroachment of government.
Nothing really to say to this, except move along...
Graham is an utterly fantabulous propagandist displaying jaw dropping intellectual fatuity who probably rivals Chomsky himself for making it up as he goes along.
Despite that fact that most of the above is empirical nonsense, and can be easily refuted by spending thirty seconds with Google, does this person actually expect educated Americans to believe that the 3.3 trillion deficits accumulated under Bush are in the same ballpark as the 7.6 trillion budget deficits that, if he is not stopped, will accrue to him by the end of his second term? These are budget deficits that will approach 90% of GDP by 2020.
Oh, but this is just the beginning. Bush left us with a $750 billion "stimulus" plan that Obama then expanded to a $1.2 trillion stimulus plan, followed by TARP, the bailout of two unsustainable auto giants, his government takeover of American health care (another cool trillion) and relentless borrowing that has ballooned the federal
debt out to some $
15 trillion. Obama has added more federal debt to the economy, against the future prosperity and economic potential of our children and grandchildren, that all American presidents combined.
But he's just beginning, of course. Here's ATR's breakdown of the pyroclastic flow of tax increases coming to the economy beginning in roughly three months. Consider the projected national deficits and national debt now set to accrue under Obama, and now add too this both the wealth and job destroying effects of the following:
First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief
In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families. These will all expire on January 1, 2011:
Personal income tax rates will rise. The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed). The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent. All the rates in between will also rise. Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates. The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:
- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%
Higher taxes on marriage and family. The “marriage penalty” (narrower tax brackets for married couples) will return from the first dollar of income. The child tax credit will be cut in half from $1000 to $500 per child. The standard deduction will no longer be doubled for married couples relative to the single level. The dependent care tax credit will be cut.
The return of the Death Tax. This year, there is no death tax. For those dying on or after January 1 2011, there is a 55 percent top death tax rate on estates over $1 million. A person leaving behind two homes and a retirement account could easily pass along a death tax bill to their loved ones.
Higher tax rates on savers and investors. The top capital gains tax will rise from 15 percent this year to 20 percent in 2011. The top dividends tax rate will rise from 15 percent this year to 39.6 percent in 2011. These rates will rise another 3.8 percent in 2013.
Second Wave: Obamacare
There are over twenty new or higher taxes in Obamacare. Several will first go into effect on January 1, 2011. They include:
The Tanning Tax. This went into effect on July 1st of this year. It imposes a new, 10% excise tax on getting a tan at a tanning salon. There is no exemption for tanners making less than $250,000 per year.
The “Medicine Cabinet Tax” Thanks to Obamacare, Americans will no longer be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account (FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines (except insulin).
The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike. This provision of Obamacare increases the additional tax on non-medical early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain at 10 percent.
Brand Name Drug Tax. Starting next year, there will be a multi-billion dollar tax assessment imposed on name-brand drug manufacturers. This tax, like all excise taxes, will raise the price of medicine, hurting everyone.
Economic Substance Doctrine. The IRS is now empowered to disallow perfectly-legal tax deductions and maneuvers merely because it judges that the deduction or action lacks “economic substance.” This is obviously an arbitrary empowerment of IRS agents.
Employer Reporting of Health Insurance Costs on a W-2. This will start for W-2s in the 2011 tax year. While not a tax increase in itself, it makes it very easy for Congress to tax employer-provided healthcare benefits later.
Third Wave: The Alternative Minimum Tax and Employer Tax Hikes
When Americans prepare to file their tax returns in January of 2011, they’ll be in for a nasty surprise—the AMT won’t be held harmless, and many tax relief provisions will have expired. The major items include:
The AMT will ensnare over 28 million families, up from 4 million last year. According to the left-leaning Tax Policy Center, Congress’ failure to index the AMT will lead to an explosion of AMT taxpaying families—rising from 4 million last year to 28.5 million. These families will have to calculate their tax burdens twice, and pay taxes at the higher level. The AMT was created in 1969 to ensnare a handful of taxpayers.
Small business expensing will be slashed and 50% expensing will disappear. Small businesses can normally expense (rather than slowly-deduct, or “depreciate”) equipment purchases up to $250,000. This will be cut all the way down to $25,000. Larger businesses can expense half of their purchases of equipment. In January of 2011, all of it will have to be “depreciated.”
Taxes will be raised on all types of businesses. There are literally scores of tax hikes on business that will take place. The biggest is the loss of the “research and experimentation tax credit,” but there are many, many others. Combining high marginal tax rates with the loss of this tax relief will cost jobs.
Tax Benefits for Education and Teaching Reduced. The deduction for tuition and fees will not be available. Tax credits for education will be limited. Teachers will no longer be able to deduct classroom expenses. Coverdell Education Savings Accounts will be cut. Employer-provided educational assistance is curtailed. The student loan interest deduction will be disallowed for hundreds of thousands of families.
Charitable Contributions from IRAs no longer allowed. Until this year, a retired person with an IRA could contribute up to $100,000 per year directly to a charity from their IRA. This contribution also counts toward an annual “required minimum distribution.” This ability will no longer be there.
And because we're a country of racists and idiots who demand instantaneous change only when the President is Democrat, black, or both, you refuse to understand the problem on its own terms and choose to use the darky as the scape goat and regurgitate the idiotic talking points, like the script Paul Rand just ripped off from some Right Wing think tank.
You have the intellectual capacity of a bon bon.
Utterly fantastic...
And yes, I've seen the signs at the tea parties, up close and personal. Never seen so many pissed off white racists in all my life. The Tea Party is at least 97% white. And that is a fair representation of "we the people"?? The Tea Party was formed and funded by a few Right Wing billionaires just weeks after Obama took office.
Been watching those grainy indy documentaries on Link TV again Kevin?
Anything but serious reading, study, and thought will do, I know.
In reality the Tea Party movement is thoroughly grassroots to the core, fueled by the Internet, the Meetup phenomena, and the ability of modern Americans to network and organize with great rapidity. This is in stark contrast to the Left, which is, contra Graham, almost utterly "teflon" in nature and funded by extremely well heeled ideologists such as Soros and the vastly wealthy leftist foundations (many of whom, such as Tides, are really nothing more than money laundering entities for anonymous funds filtering through to third parties).
Coincidence? It took off before Obama had the chance to do anything wrong, but they already knew what they were going to blame him for long before he stepped foot in office. The beauty of the deception is that it worked. They actually have millions of ignorant Americans thinking Obama is to blame for our current plight.
I could go on and on with this guy. Interestingly enough, no conservatives of which I'm aware have ever let Bush off the hook for the deficits or reckless spending of his two terms. But Obama's deficits, national debt, spending, and tax increases utterly dwarf those of Bush, and his cumulative national debt, if allowed to actually go on unopposed, will, by the end of the decade, reach economically catastrophic levels.
We don't know what Bush would have done had he remained in office another eight years, but we do know, and the CBO knows, what Obama has done and is going to do, and it makes Bush's fiscal irresponsibility look like a frat house prank.
But what I love is how every Right winger and their dog claims to be "Constitutional Conservatives" now, even when half of them couldn't tell me what the first amendment says, including that dim-wit Christine O'Donnell.
Yawn...
The irony is that most of these folks claim to know the constitution and the Bible. There is nothing
I'll snip the rest of this quite typical Graham rant so that you might be spared the ravings of, quite literally, a madman.