The basic point of the piece is that at least a few Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives are squeamish about increasing taxes on upper income individuals.
The Journal, for example, reported:
Friday, two freshmen representatives -- Dina Titus, from suburban Las Vegas, and Colorado's Jared Polis, representing Boulder, Vail and some of the tonier suburbs of Denver -- joined Republicans to vote against Mr. Obama's top-priority health-care overhaul when it faced a vote in their House Education and Labor Committee. One reason was a one-percentage point-surtax on couples earning between $350,000 and $500,000 -- gradually increasing to 5.4 percentage points on earnings more than $1 million -- to pay for it…
Also on Friday a busload of freshmen Democrats went to the White House to plead their case against sharp tax increases with the president and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel. The organizer was Rep. Gerald Connolly, the president of the freshman class whose Northern Virginia district is the richest in the U.S. as measured by median household income.
The article summed up the tax agenda of President Obama:
The president wants to allow George W. Bush's income-tax cuts to expire in 2011 for families earning at least $250,000 and to stop the estate tax from being repealed next year. Mr. Obama also campaigned on putting an additional payroll tax of two to four percentage points on incomes above $250,000 to help put Social Security back on solid footing. As the president confronts a surging budget deficit and presses his ambitious agenda, all those tax increases may be necessary to make ends meet.
If you tally up what’s in the policy mix on personal income tax rates and the Social Security tax, along with Medicare and state income taxes, the top total tax rate could easily top 55 percent.
What is the attitude of the Obama administration? The Journal quoted White House spokesman Robert Gibbs saying: “The bottom line is that I think the president believes that the richest 1% of this country has had a pretty good run of it for many, many, many years.”
It’s class warfare, plain and simple. And class warfare is always bad economics, not just for upper-income earners, but for the entire economy, considering that upper income earners have the resources needed for investment, entrepreneurs and job creation to flourish.
The bottom line for congressional Democrats is the following: Are you for or against economic growth and job creation?
Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council
No comments:
Post a Comment