As a general rule, when an elected official introduces legislation, they almost never call it something bad. If they could get away with it, I’m sure every bill would be called the “Happiness, Puppies and Children Act.” Of course, the devil is always in the thousands of pages of actionable legislation behind the frou-frou title.
Now, Democrats have gotten really good at using bill nomenclature to set up Heisman Votes. Sometimes, they even trick themselves. And here are three examples from recent history.
As I wrote about earlier, the House passed a $51.8 billion tax increase, ostensibly to pay for domestic spending priorities in the Iraq War Supplemental.
To get an idea of how much money this is, I went on over to the IMF website and used their handy dandy report maker on Global financial statistics. The $51.8 billion Rep. Mike Ross (D-AR) says won’t be missed much, is more than the Gross Domestic Products of 2/3 of the world. The Democrat tax increase amounts to roughly the entire economy of Croatia.
Why stop there? The Democrats want to pass a budget raising taxes by $683 billion. Or to put it a different way, slightly larger than the economy of Turkey and more than the economies of 165 out of 181 countries.
The Wall Street Journal nails what Pelosi and her merry band did last week, in short bowed to the far left and cut off funding to support our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Senate will in all likelihood restore this funding and get rid of the retreat timelines, but the whole thing is one more example of Democrats turning our government into a circus.
I certainly don’t envy Jay in his self-imposed task to re-brand the Democrats as the party of Fiscal Responsibility. His effort to de-brand the Republican party isn’t as difficult a task as it should be. Some in the GOP lost their way, and for too long the philosophy of small government got lost. But it was the Party - not the philosophy - that failed.
I’m willing to concede that both parties actually want fiscal responsibility. The difference is how they prefer to get it. When a Democrat preaches fiscal responsibility, they are using code for “higher taxes” to pay for all their great ideas about how government can take best care of us.
Take, as an example of the Democrat’s habitual need to raise taxes, Jay’s criticism of Republicans for rejecting a tax increase tied to the continued extension of the Alternate Minimum Tax (AMT) - i.e. the preservation of the status quo.
Forty Republicans signed the letter, indicating that, once again, no responsible offsets will be included in an AMT patch. The Republicans have Congress and the country between a rock and a hard place: the only recourse Democrats have in this battle is to not implement a patch, which is neither politically palatable nor particularly progressive.
Here’s the problem for the claim that Democrats are acting responsibly. They spent money that they never intended on collecting.
That’s why they are insisting on an off-set. Think about it, the Democrats always intended to fix AMT so then they never expected the revenue that would have come from not fixing AMT. Since they always knew that revenue wasn’t going to be there, it was fiscally irresponsible for them to spend the money. By spending non-existant income, they justified for themselves a need to raise taxes - even though the policy they are off-setting is the status quo.
The last paragraph was a mouthful, so I’ll put it in terms of 13-year-old econ like Jay did. While I don’t know many 13-year-olds with credit cards (you have to be 18, don’t you?), you don’t need a credit card to understand that you shouldn’t spend money that you aren’t going to earn.
Speaking of taxes, turns out Montana’s businesses are paying more than the national average in taxes. Montana Main Street Blog has the scoop:
1. State taxes paid by businesses in Montana (45% share) are higher than the national average (39.9% share).
2. Local taxes paid by businesses in Montana (66.5% share) are higher than the national average (50.5%).
3. The amount of state and local taxes paid by businesses in Montana as a percentage of the Gross State Product (6.5%) is higher than the national average (5%).
4. The total change in business share of the tax growth in Montana (55.6%) is higher than the national average (45.8%).
Of course those taxes are ultimately paid by the consumer - you. There’s more so go read it. And then think about supporting Roy Brown.
Every bit of production up until now has been for our glorious socialist dream, comrades. From here on out, we toil in misguided selfish materialism. With any luck, the Glorious Democrat Party will push Tax Freedom Day out past mid-year!
I certainly don’t envy Jay in his self-imposed task to re-brand the Democrats as the party of Fiscal Responsibility. His effort to de-brand the Republican party isn’t as difficult a task as it should be. Some in the GOP lost their way, and for too long the philosophy of small government got lost. But it was the Party - not the philosophy - that failed.
