It’s that time of year again. The clock is ticking toward December 31, and green energy special interests are discreetly lobbying for the extension of their choice handouts, credits, and grants. We must remain vigilant against these powerful interests. At the end of every calendar year, Congress passes a ‘tax extenders’ bill to temporarily reauthorize specific tax breaks that have not been permanently written into | Read More »
I just recovered from my weekend hangover celebrating our reward for raising the debt ceiling in August. All good things are worth waiting for, and after three and a half months, we got our vote on a balanced budget amendment! And you know what? It was summarily defeated, even before it came to the Senate. Oh, and 25 of the most vulnerable Democrats now have | Read More »
The day has arrived. Our total debt has surpassed $15 trillion. At the close of business on Wednesday, the debt stood at $15.033 trillion, and is on the cusp of overtaking our GDP. Overall, the federal debt has risen $4.41 trillion (41.5%) since Obama took office and $6.36 trillion (73%) since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007. Our GDP has grown by only | Read More »
As the tumultuous year of 2011 winds down, Congress will be facing a number of crucial budget deadlines. Aside for the supercommittee deadline to find $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction (over ten years), they must contend with the December 31 expiration of three provisions of the 2010 tax extenders deal; payroll tax cuts, unemployment benefits, and ethanol subsidies. Now the Washington Post is reporting that | Read More »
Senator Tom Coburn released a report, Subsidies of the Rich and Famous, detailing a list of subsidies, transfers, and “tax breaks,” that are paid to individuals with Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) of over $1 million. The report found that millionaires have received at least $9.5 billion in “government payments” since 2003 and $113.7 billion in “tax breaks” since 2006. Accordingly, Coburn concludes that many of | Read More »
When conservatives and liberals advocate tax reform they are referring to radically divergent concepts. Conservatives desire a low, flat, and universal tax code, while liberals desire reform that would result in increased revenues. The obvious way to achieve that goal is to impose radical redistributive tax increases, such as the ones Obama has recently proposed. However, there is a more subtle way that is beginning | Read More »
One of the more positive ancillary benefits of this presidential primary season is the newfound focus on taxation, regulation, and energy production. The prominence of the presidential election has helped jumpstart a vital discourse on long-term reforms for those three policies. The RSC, which is the most respected conservative group within Congress, has proposed a jobs growth plan today, which seeks to achieve those reforms, | Read More »
By far, our largest unfunded liabilities are Social Security and Medicare. According to recent actuarial reports, Medicare faces a $25 trillion liability and Social Security has an unfunded liability of $21 trillion. And those numbers are regarded as low-ball figures, due to their unrealistic accounting for cost-cutting measures. They already represent the largest expenditures of the federal government, with Social Security and Medicare consuming 20.2% | Read More »
One fundamental liberal desideratum is the achievement of equal results at the expense of equal opportunity. Conservatives believe in implementing policies that protect our God-given rights, which provide every human being with an equal opportunity to succeed. Liberals reject policies that foster unfettered equal opportunity because they invariably produce unequal results, being that human beings have different talents, capabilities, work ethic, and luck. On Tuesday, | Read More »
When Herman Cain proposed his 9-9-9 plan, many conservatives became energized, despite their misgivings with the fine print of the plan. It wasn’t so much the details of the proposal that excited the base, as most conservatives intuitively recoiled from a consumption tax; it was the boldness of the plan that resonated with them. Cain’s 9-9-9 brought some excitement to a race that was defined | Read More »
Amidst the hype concerning the so-called era of austerity and budget cuts, the national debt is rapidly marching towards the $15 trillion milestone. As of late last week, the national debt stood at $14.94 trillion. For those of you keeping score, that number has grown by $646 billion since the debt ceiling was raised on August 2, as part of the great bipartisan Budget Control | Read More »
For years, Democrats (and Republicans) have surreptitiously created dependency by manipulating the tax code. Liberals often refer to handouts as tax cuts, and tax cuts as handouts to the rich. To that end, they have perpetuated a travesty in which millions of people are able to obtain welfare payouts without ever applying for them. Most people don’t even realize that they are receiving handouts because | Read More »
Well, 32 months into his presidency, Obama has finally released his jobs and deficit reduction plans. Surprisingly, he is not attempting to obfuscate his true motivation this time. As Obama said yesterday, it is “simple math.” It’s $1.57 trillion in comprehensive tax hikes + $1.08 trillion in non-existent war spending + $430 billion in phantom savings on interest payments + $320 billion in savings from | Read More »
Let’s forget the fact that Obama’s entire Stimulus 10.0 is a counterintuitive proposal that doubles down on the very failures that precipitated this speech. Let’s also disregard the fact that enshrining unemployment insurance as a permanent handout will perpetuate unemployment. And more union-induced, short-term money drops on infrastructure will do nothing but stimulate traffic jams. Let’s focus purely on the very numbers that the administration | Read More »
Throughout the entire debt ceiling imbroglio, Democrats incessantly regurgitated the talking point about the need for “a balanced approach.” They were so uniform and synchronized that they sounded like the sheep in Animal Farm. Ironically, their idea of a balanced approach was singularly focused upon Oil Company and corporate tax deductions, which are negligible compared to the crushing debt. The targeted oil tax deductions would | Read More »
After Labor Day, Obama plans to unveil his highly unanticipated jobs plan. Much like his first jobs plan, this one will include massive stimulus handouts to special interests, prodigal infrastructure spending (as much as $556 billion), unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefits, and more welfare transfer payments. Concurrently, he will inveigh against “rich” job creators and offer a healthy dose of vapid rhetoric regarding regulatory reform. | Read More »
Well, the much anticipated picks for the debt deal Super Committee have been announced. There will be much ink spilled over who was chosen and who was rejected. However, the salient point is not the orientation of the committee, but the entire premise behind the committee itself. Many conservatives will laud the choice of Pat Toomey for the committee; others will decry the pick of | Read More »
The Democrats think the American people are stupid. Throughout the debt ceiling imbroglio, Obama and every single elected Democrat have regurgitated their talking points about a balanced solution to the debt crisis. They have insulted the intelligence of every voter by intimating that the budget can be balanced by eliminating a few tax credits. No, they don’t want to talk about the tens of trillions | Read More »
1) Obama gets his full lifeline, long-term debt limit increase that will take him beyond the election ($2.1-2.4 trillion), without making any transformational concession. There is no realistic roadmap to entitlement reform; not a single agency or program, domestic or mandatory, will be eliminated; Obamacare is off limits; there will be no balanced budgets, ever. We will still add trillions more to the debt over | Read More »
Over the past week, the Tea Party has been impugned and maligned with more ferocity than ever before. Amidst our push to balance the budget, downsize job-killing government agencies and programs, and preserve our AAA credit rating, we have been condemned as extremists, suicidal, and traitors. Sadly, most of these acrimonious ad hominem attacks were propagated by those who purport to share the aforementioned goals, | Read More »
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