And Now For Something Completely... The Same?

(with apologies to Monty Python)

I have never re-posted a blog post of mine. I've excerpted pieces and linked to things I've written many times - almost all the time. But there is so much double talk going on about allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, that I almost have to. I'm going to excerpt more than I ever have. 

Tell your congress critter it's not the taxes. Tell them, "It's the Spending, Stupid."

At least a half dozen times in the last week, I've heard the DNC talking point that they need to end the cuts for the top income bracket because "we need to cut the deficit".  You will hear them "giving them" their tax cuts will "cost us 700 Billion Dollars". 

Bullsh*t.

As always, they assume you're not capable of doing math and aren't really paying attention.  They think you'll hear that number and think they mean $700 billion every year.  You see, the 700 billion dollars is a roll-up for 10 years.  If you think that's an accurate number, go look up what the estimates were for today's economy from 10 years ago: a 10 year prediction is little better than a guess.  Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner said,

Geithner said extending the tax cuts for the top 2 percent of taxpayers would cost $700 billion over a decade and $30 billion for a single year.

Since saving $30 billion a year 10 times doesn't multiply up to 700 billion, you know they're counting on healthy economic growth to get that 700 billion number.  Now remember this year's deficit is 1.4 Trillion dollars, and anyone can see that 30 billion is 2.1 % of it.  They are politically grandstanding about needing the evil rich people to pay 2.1%.  When I ask myself who will benefit more from that, the taxpayers or the feds, it's pretty clear it's not the Fed.gov leviathan. 

The fact is, this is a spending problem.  If you confiscated every single penny from every billionaire in America, you couldn't fix the deficit.  According to the Tax Foundation, you would need to confiscate every single penny from the top 1% of taxpayers to avoid this year's deficit.  You can not solve this problem by taxing alone.  Spending must be cut. 

One of the many things that the left never seems to understand is that when you cut tax rates, tax receipts generally go up.  Instead of paying less taxes as their marginal rates have gone down in the last 30 years, the topmost 1% of incomes pay a higher percentage of the tax burden than ever before, now over 40% of all taxes collected:

It is a straightforward mathematically logical conclusion that if they really wanted to raise revenues and get "the rich" to pay more, they should lower their tax rates even further. 

Maybe I should say that I'm nowhere near the income levels of the top 2%.  I'm just a working engineer.  These issues aren't going to touch my taxes, but the class-warfare, soak-the-rich mentality is a cancer on society. 

"You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich. 
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong. 
You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift. 
You cannot lift the wage earner up by pulling the wage payer down. 
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred. 
You cannot build character and courage by taking away people's initiative and independence. 
You cannot help people permanently by doing for them, what they could and should do for themselves."

...... Abraham Lincoln