Most people don’t realize that President Obama has cut more taxes than any other President in modern history. The rates are lower under every single income bracket. And even though I abhore the notion that America’s wealthiest continue to get a free ride on the backs of the middle class without paying their fair share – I believe it’s going to be a good thing at the end of the day.
After Republicans won 60+ seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate – major landslide…they were buoyed by their huge electoral wins. Republicans continued to obstruct and vowed not to let anything pass in the Senate unless Obama would agree to an extension of tax cuts for the wealthy. President Obama negotiated a very shrewd deal; in return for passage of the removal of DADT, a new START treaty with Russia, another year of unemployment benefits for the unemployed and tax cuts for the middle class … Obama also took an issue off the table in the 2012 election year – “tax cuts for the wealthy”.
Had Obama not found a compromise – everyone’s taxes would have gone up which would have halted the already fragile economy. The unemployment rate would be probably higher and the economy would certainly be struggling because those tax cuts for the middle class are the only stimulative measures we have working for us right now. But – now … with an already fragile economy – there can be no excuse that the economy’s struggle has anything to do with the tax cuts for the wealthy. Had they expired – Republicans would have blamed the economic contraction on the “tax and spend” policies and increasing taxes on “those more productive in society” is what has set us back. And many stupid Americans would believe it because they just want to pay the bills. Now – there can be no argument to that effect. Now – the question is – if tax cuts for the wealthy are so good … why is the economy still sluggish?
The obvious truth staring at all of us at the end of our noses is that tax cuts are not a silver bullet. Tax cuts for the low to middle income can be very helpful since those income levels spend 100% or more of their income; tax cuts for the rich is just adding more zeros to a bank account and not increasing economic activity at all.
Fareed Zakaria speaks the truth HERE:
“As for the idea that job creators are not creating jobs because their taxes are too high, think about it: Would Mitt Romney invest more of his money in American factories if only he had paid less than the 13.9 percent rate he paid last year? Please!
The Wall Street Journal invoked Milton Friedman to say that the problem with all of these tax cuts is that they are temporary. If only we had across-the-board cuts in rates. Except that these were tried as well. The 2001 Bush tax cuts were designed precisely along those lines. They were, in dollar terms, the largest tax cuts in U.S. history.
And the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service concluded in 2010 that “by almost any economic indicator, the economy performed better in the period before the [Bush] tax cuts than after the tax cuts were enacted. . . . GDP growth, median real household income growth, weekly hours worked, the employment-population ratio, personal savings, and business investment growth were all lower in the period after the tax cuts were enacted.” The years 2000 to 2007 were the period of the weakest job growth in the United States since the Great Depression.”
