There has been plenty of confusion and misinformation about the national debt, the fiscal cliff, and new taxes on Americans thanks in part to the use of clever White House talking points and a complicit national media. Let’s clear up some of the current issues with facts and truth by looking at the numbers.
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the latest fiscal cliff deal will add an additional $4 trillion to the national deficit. This is not a good way to begin 2013. What we do know is that the 150-page Obama-Biden-Reid ‘Tax And Spend’ increase passed the Senate and House with few details getting out to American taxpayers. Only ignorant and under-informed citizens still believe that there is any accountability in the Obama administration or that they’re attempting to govern with transparency.
With new Obamacare taxes already kicking in as of January 1, this is not a good sign. We constantly heard the president and his minions say that “taxes will not increase for the majority of Americans,” especially for those making less than $250,000 a year.
What we now know is the farcical fiscal deal doesn’t just hit the wealthy hard; taxes now increase for 77% of Americans because the temporary payroll tax cut was not extended, causing the Social Security tax to jump 2%, from 4.2 to 6.2 percent. We are now taking home anywhere from $50 to $189 less every month.
Already, many poor and middle-class folks have reacted in anger or shock, including some Democrats who believed it would not affect them. The average American family making $50,000 a year will be hit with around $1,000 due to tax increases.
How quickly we forget that in just one term, President Obama increased the national debt as much as all prior Presidents from George Washington to George W. Bush combined.
Before continuing, let’s recall a 2008 quote from then-Senator Obama who blasted President Bush for adding $4 trillion to the national debt – even though most Democrats and Republicans agreed to the spending in the hopes of avoiding a crash of the U.S. banking system and economy:
The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion dollars for the first 42 presidents — number 43 added $4 trillion dollars by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion dollars of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child.
Hopefully, more open-minded Americans now see the hypocrisy of Obama claiming that the Bush administration’s spending was both “irresponsible” and “unpatriotic.”
To raise taxes on people in all tax brackets (not just “the rich”) was a mind-boggling move in what many call a recession, but this is exactly what they enacted. Cuts were not considered, now was the national debt of $16.4 trillion; so the hard-working people in America lose.
Before we detail some of the pork, it needs to be pointed out that the bill seems to take direct aim at married couples, penalizing them with hundreds of dollars in what might as well be called fines. Heterosexual marriage is practically being discouraged against. Families are the backbone of the free market system and key to getting the economy growing again. We’re now seeing evidence that this administration has much more invested in growing government than the private sector.
Senators received the fiscal cliff bill at the last minute and voted on it without reading through the legislation. Who can forget the Obamacare bill being shoved through Congress (while Nancy Pelosi infamously said “You have to pass it to find out what’s in it.”)? What did Pelosi think of the fiscal cliff resolution? She said it was “a happy start to a new year.” The bill contains $25.1 billion in cuts, however; big government liberals are thrilled because the same bill also increases spending by $330 billion over ten years.
Basically, the deal contains $10 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts. Imagine trying to operate a family budget or small business using this method.
President Obama approved of the temporary band-aid as he continued his Hawaiian vacation on the taxpayer dime. He successfully piled America’s fiscal problems onto taxpayers, further showing he never cared about cutting spending. This is who half of American voters chose to reelect.
Also seeing major tax increases are those earning $400,000 and couples that make $450,000 – sounds like a marriage penalty to me – including capital gains and dividend taxes. Moreover, deductions are now limited for individuals making more than $250,000 ($300,000 for couples). It seems like the Left no longer only considers millionaires “rich.”
Our government is adding about $4 billion a day to the national debt while the new ‘spending money we don’t have’ deal provides generous tax breaks, perks, and pork to selected corporate friends. The list includes:
$12.1 billion for the wind-energy (green) sector, $430 million for Hollywood film producers, $222 million for rum distillers in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, $331 million for railroad operators, $650 million tax break for manufacturers of energy-efficient appliances, and $59 million to algae growers for biofuel efforts.
Meanwhile, unemployment has barely budged, food stamps have massively increased, and U-6 Total unemployment remains at 14.4 percent.
If any good news can come from Republicans caving again, John Boehner told the Wall Street Journal he will never again negotiate with Obama behind closed doors because the president has shown his true red colors, and his actions don’t match his public statements.
At one point several weeks ago, the President said to me, ‘We don’t have a spending problem.’” Once he got over his shock, the House Speaker fired back, “‘But Mr. President, we have a very serious spending problem.’
In keeping with the motto of not letting a good crisis go to waste, even the Senate wouldn’t even help hurricane Sandy victims without dealing themselves millions in new pork. Nearly a quarter of the $60-billion package goes somewhere else than directly to the victims or the infrastructure actually damaged by the hurricane. No surprises here. Both parties are at fault.
It seems our leaders in Washington keep doing the same things over and over again and expect different results. It’s fiscal insanity. Democrats now say the fiscal cliff is just the tip of the taxing iceberg while Republicans say they’ve compromised enough. According to The Hill, the President’s party is pushing for another trillion in “new revenue” before the year is out. Revenue (government income) to them means taxing the people. Americans are taxed enough already. Have we now gone past the point of no return? How much more will the people take?
Photo credit: Jessie Owen (Creative Commons)
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Keeping Americans Uninformed (Part 3): ‘Occupy Vs. The Tea Party’
Do you believe recent polls or reports saying the Tea Party is dwindling? The media has swayed public opinion on this, but conservatives must be reminded to stay the course.
Occupy Wall Street was promoted effusively by the mainstream media; yet on the one year anniversary of OWS last September, New York City could only muster 1,000 demonstrators. Where are they now? A common catalyst leading to the breakout of the Tea Party in 2009 and Occupy in 2011 was the policies of Barack Obama.
It’s been proven that OWS was about as spontaneous as the attack at Benghazi. The movement was a planned uprising organized by socialists, unions, and left-wing activists. We now know many protestors had jobs, good incomes, or college degrees while hypocritically demanding economic justice in the hopes of overthrowing America’s systems.
In contrast, I recently spoke at a Tea Party meeting. Though the movement has branched off into many organized groups, there are hundreds of weekly and monthly meetings continuing to take place across America. The TP has not gone away and continues to be a thorn in the side of the Obama White House and the moderate Republican establishment.
These were two of the biggest public movements affecting America in years, but there was a stark difference in how the media reported on them. For example, Occupy Wall Street drew 24 broadcast network stories in the first nine days of coverage while the Tea Party drew only 19 in the first nine months! This isn’t journalism, folks. The media practically became OWS’s public relations department.
The Tea Party is a conservative grassroots entity. Occupy Wall Street is [was] a well-organized creation supported in part by the leftist Tides Foundation (a major recipient of George Soros’s funding), MoveOn.org, and international interests. Massive government spending and the passage of Obamacare were two major factors that galvanized the TP while Vancouver, Canada-based AdBusters, an anti-consumerist publication, sounded the initial call for OWS.
The TP endorses cutting both spending and taxes, reducing the national debt, and adherence to the US Constitution. They also aim to call awareness to issues challenging the security or sovereignty of the United States. OWS protested the disparity of wealth in America, capitalism, corporations, and big business. The primary OWS goals are equal distribution of wealth by government through taxation, financial aid for students/more jobs for college graduates, corporate regulation, and bank reform.
ABC, CBS, and NBC flooded their morning and evening newscasts in October 2011 with 33 full stories on OWS. In contrast, the Tea Party was initially ignored.
The story ratio was nineteen favorable to only one critical of OWS (190 to 10.) When confrontations erupted between the police and protestors, networks, being sympathetic to the OWS cause, were much more likely to pin the blame on police. Overall, American media continued to overlook arrests, property damage, public health concerns, assaults, and anti-Semitism.
What did OWS produce? Over 7,719 arrests in 122 different cities as of December 2012 (over two thousand in New York City alone.) Charges included civil disobedience, disturbing the peace, trespassing, drug use, and vandalism. Police rap sheets showed dozens of incidents of sexual assault, violence, and extortion.
There were at least nine deaths. The media also failed to report on the OWS money trail leading to big unions such as SEIU. The Nancy Pelosi-endorsed, White House-approved (President Obama said “We are on their side”) protests included American flags hung upside down, desecrated, or burned. Some protesters openly admitted to being Socialists, Communists, and Marxists; but the media was virtually silent on these associations.
Groups openly supporting OWS include the Communist Party USA, Louis Farrakhan and his Nation of Islam, CAIR, the American Nazi Party, the Marxist Student Union, and the Socialist Party of America.
Conversely, the Tea Party produced the mobilization of tens of millions of American patriots, many of whom have never before been involved in politics. They fly their flags at peaceful rallies, and they’re proud of America’s founders and Constitution. They love this country and are willing to stand up to big government.
The DNC called the Tea Party “rabid right-wing extremists.” ABC said they were a “mob.” CNN accused them of “rabble rousing.” Harry Reid called them “evil mongers.” Nancy Pelosi said they were “un-American.” Anderson Cooper and other liberals simply insult them.
President Obama has unleashed a tidal wave of bills, executive orders, and policies in efforts to make good on his promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” The result has been monstrous debt, relentless regulation, increasing taxes, and social policies that go against our Christian values.
Remember when this administration caused such a massive voter backlash in the 2010 Midterm elections that the media had no idea how to spin the landslide? The GOP gained a record 65 seats in the House; Republicans also gained 680 seats in state legislatures and picked up ten state governorships. It was the largest margin of victory since the 1930’s. People of America woke up, spoke up, and voted. However, this is now about changing culture.
Our freedoms are under attack. We missed an opportunity in 2012 by failing to keep the momentum going. A friend recently reminded me, “Elections are not the leading edge of change. Elections are the lagging indicators of what’s already changed.”
Some now suggest our strategy needs to be: re-brand, retool, recruit, and re-engage. OWS may be plotting from underground, but the Tea Party is publicly active. We know what side the media is on. Let’s keep exposing hypocrisy and sharing the truth.
Click here for Part 2, exposing Green Energy Failures/media protecting Obama: