On Thursday, for reasons that are almost inexplicable, multiple leaders in the House and Senate sounded the "impossibility" of being able to prevent the largest tax-hike in history for being implemented on ALL tax-payers (including the middle class.)

The Democratic Leadership in the Congress made a pretty big strategic mistake on Thursday. They, for all intent and purposes, announced that they will raise your taxes on January 1, 2011. They did so plainly, and I tend to believe them. They did so without remorse. They did so acting as though no one would really care. And they did so after--for weeks--publicly discussing the possibility of retaining the current tax rates.

They did so, though they have been warned that in doing so they would deliver a crushing blow to small businesses in America. It is important to admit and to be as transparent as possible: when you hurt small business in America, you hurt the working men and women of America. You hurt families. You hurt those you care about most.

Dems: We Will Hammer The Poor

The job hopes of many are too important to be nailed to the cross of this economic ideology.

Things to remember (and a shocking discovery inside Obamacare):

Those who earn more than $200,000 annually are among the ones who create most of the new jobs and fund new investment—the engines of economic growth. Without these jobs and new investment, the economy will be smaller and throw off less tax revenue...

People will go to great lengths to avoid paying high tax rates, including reducing work effort and taxable savings and investments, or even finding illegal means to avoid the tax collector. But it takes time for them to do so...

The Obama administration also ignores the fact that many upper-income people obtain significant portions of their income from capital gains and dividends. The capital gains tax is going to increase to 20% from 15% in 2011 and, thanks to ObamaCare, to 23.8% in 2013. The tax on dividends is going to increase to a maximum rate of 39.6% in 2011 and once again, thanks to ObamaCare, to 43.4% by 2013.

These rates are self-defeating. The nonpartisan Institute for Research on the Economics of Taxation, headed by a former senior U.S. Treasury economist, Steve Entin, has recently published studies on the effects of the Obama administration's tax increases on capital gains. Their analyses show that increasing the capital-gains tax rate would result in lower tax revenue and higher deficits. The studies are also congruent with the historical experience of the last 40 years...

Tax Cuts and Revenue: What We Learned in the 1980s

VAT: the end of economic freedom as we know it

The reason why elites in Washington would look to a VAT before increasing income taxes (and, believe me, higher income taxes are coming) is because not enough of the population even pays income taxes to make it worthwhile for the government to use the income tax structure to balance the budget... the government can extract the most amount of your wealth from a national sales tax.

Obama’s National Sales Tax

The boiling of the frog

The Democratic political calculation with ObamaCare is the proverbial boiling frog: Gradually introduce a health-care entitlement by hiding the true costs, hook the middle class on new subsidies until they become unrepealable, but try to delay the adverse consequences and major new tax hikes so voters don't make the connection between their policy and the economic wreckage. But their bill was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.

The ObamaCare Writedowns

ObamaCare's Worst Tax Hike

For the first time, payroll levies will hit investment income...

How to Destroy American Jobs

Deep in the president's budget released Monday—in Table S-8 on page 161—appear a set of proposals headed "Reform U.S. International Tax System." If these proposals are enacted, U.S.-based multinational firms will face $122.2 billion in tax increases over the next decade. This is a natural follow-up to President Obama's sweeping plan announced last May entitled "Leveling the Playing Field: Curbing Tax Havens and Removing Tax Incentives for Shifting Jobs Overseas."

The fundamental assumption behind these proposals is that U.S. multinationals expand abroad only to "export" jobs out of the country. Thus, taxing their foreign operations more would boost tax revenues here and create desperately needed U.S. jobs.

This is simply wrong. These tax increases would not create American jobs, they would destroy them.

Obama's proposals for increasing the tax burden on U.S.-based multinationals would harm our most dynamic companies

The budget that President Obama released yesterday for fiscal 2011 is one of the greatest spend-while-you-can documents in American history...

If this budget is Mr. Obama's first clear demonstration of his long-term governing priorities, then it's hard not conclude that this spending boom is deliberate...

...substantial American economic collapse coming to us in 2011

Government spending has already hugely increased, and so has the size and scope of government, but next year there will also be substantial tax increases for a great many Americans. The first reason will be the expiration of the Bush tax cuts . The top personal income tax rate will rise next Jan. 1 to 39.6% from 35%, a hike of nearly one-eighth. The dividend tax rate will rise to 39.6%, more than 2½ times the current 15%. And the capital gains tax rate will rise by a third, to 20% from 15%. If the House health care bill had passed, all three of these rates would have risen to 45%.

The estate tax, which fell to zero this year under the Bush tax cuts, will return in 2011--or sooner, if Congress acts to restore it. Another likely tax increase will be on the income of private equity and hedge-fund managers, from the capital gains rate of 15% to the new higher income tax rates. It has already been passed by the House and is supported by the Obama administration, as is an additional 10-year, $90 billion tax on banks aimed at "rolling back bonuses for top earners." It would affect some 50 banks, insurance companies, and large broker-dealers.

Meanwhile a number of last year's tax deductions have disappeared due to the failure of Congress to extend them into this year. The tax deduction for state and local sales taxes is one; the deduction for college tuition and fees is another; and the 50% write-off for small businesses for capital purchases--equipment, machinery or building a new plant--has disappeared as well, which will have a negative effect upon the construction of new business operation facilities.

Add on to all of these increases the biggest government deficits and spending increases (to 26.5% of gross domestic product from 21%) in half a century, the protectionism of free trade downsizing through the "buy American" requirements, China import restrictions, and the administration limitations of Columbia, South Korea, and Panama free trade agreements, and we have a very different, and not very prosperous, America ahead of us.

Or as economist Arthur Laffer wrote in his January Economic Outlook, we "cannot have a prosperous economy when government is overspending, raising tax rates, printing too much money, over-regulating and restricting the free flow of goods and services across national boundaries." We are, in his words, simply "moving in the wrong direction."

***

But what Mr. Laffer sees as most important is a substantial American economic collapse coming to us in 2011...

Read the whole thing

Merriam Webster's Dictionary: Tax -- "a charge, usually of money, imposed by authority on persons or property for public purposes."

In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.

But he could look it up — in the bill.

Health bill says 'tax' when President Obama said 'not'

Has anyone noticed there are tea parties every day?

Another Day, Another Protest Against Obama's Policies

Hey, middle class! Guess what? Now Obama's going to have to raise your taxes after all (don't tell me you didn't see that one coming)

To get the economy back on track, will President Barack Obama have to break his pledge not to raise taxes on 95 percent of Americans? In a “This Week” exclusive, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner told me, "We’re going to have to do what’s necessary.”

Geithner was clear that he believes a key component of economic recovery is deficit reduction. When I gave him several opportunities to rule out a middle class tax hike, he wouldn’t do it.

Read more

House Dems Hide Cost Of Health Plan

House Democrats are scrambling to come up with tax increases or other means of paying for their $1.2 trillion medical insurance plan. Yet the legislation they're trying to cram through Congress is even costlier than they'd have you believe.

Obamacare: It's Even Worse Than You Think

The reasons for the public revolt are easy to see. The Democrats want to spend $1.5 trillion over a decade, impose an $800 billion tax increase in the midst of the worst recession in a generation, increase federal borrowing by $239 billion (on top of the $11 trillion the Obama budget already requires us to borrow through 2019), impose costly mandates on employers that will discourage hiring as unemployment nears 10 percent, force individuals to buy one-size-fits-all government defined insurance, and insert the government in countless new ways between doctors and patients. All of that would occur whether or not the plan includes a "public option," which at this point it does include and which will exacerbate all of these problems.

As these facts have become clear, Obama's standing has fallen and public opinion has grown decidedly less enthusiastic for the administration's approach. The trend is likely to continue, because the details of the plan reveal that its two most serious drawbacks--its cost and the prospect of government rationing--are worse than even most of their critics have grasped.

Read the whole thing!

Get ready for one of the most vicious of all vicious cycles

Obamanomics is a disaster, and it couldn’t come at a worse time. Four years ago, the country may have been resilient enough to shake off the worst effects of Obama’s policies, but with our economy already reeling, his taxes will kill any chance at recovery. We will spend years running up massive deficits — which will prompt Obama to impose higher and broader taxes. Get ready for one of the most vicious of all vicious cycles.

HotAir: Martin Feldstein's prediction

WSJ: Tax Increases Could Kill The Recovery

Why Are Reporters Pretending They Don't Know Obama Will Raise Taxes on the Middle Class?

Because he's cute? Because they (Chris Matthews) get a tingle up their collectivist legs? Because they are guilty white men? Because...

But while liberal reporters and pundits debate the coming tax hikes -- usually in private and in secret -- their public announcements tend to simply repeat Obama's claim that he's not raising taxes on anyone -- "not a dime" from any sort of tax -- except the top 5% of earners.

Which they know is completely false.

What they say to the public -- scoffing at the Tea Party rebels for protesting tax-hikes that, supposedly, do not exist and never will -- is in complete contradiction to what they actually know -- know -- is underfoot and on Obama's agenda.

It's an open secret that Obama is going to raise taxes on the middle class. Every liberal in the press corps knows this.

Read the whole thing!

HAT TIP: The Jawa Report

Now, THIS really is mind blowing

It'll either blow YOUR mind, or make you wanna go and...well, never mind.

W-2 WTF?!?!: Tax Facts to Make Your Head Explode!

10 URGENT REASONS TO ATTEND NATIONAL TEA PARTIES APRIL 15th

At least 10 states are considering some kind of major increase in sales or income taxes: Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, Washington and Wisconsin. California and New York lawmakers already have agreed on multibillion-dollar tax increases that went into effect earlier this year.

Fiscal experts say more states are likely to try to raise tax revenue in coming months, especially once they tally the latest shortfalls from April 15 income-tax filings, often the biggest single source of funds for the 43 states that levy them.

The squeeze is especially severe in states hit hardest by the recession...

More States Look to Raise Taxes

See TEA PARTIES USA on right sidebar ==>

Obama May Use Legislative Ploy to Jam Through Health, Tax Bills

Jam through...but Obama said he was going to work across the aisle...be a new kind of President...end partisanship. Here's how he's ending partisanship: He's neutralizing the other party with a "parliamentary procedure."

By Brian Faler

March 18 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama may try to push through Congress a health-care overhaul, energy proposals and tax increases by using a partisan tactic that would thwart Republican efforts to block the measures.

The administration and congressional Democrats are debating whether to use a parliamentary procedure called reconciliation to advance some of the biggest items on the president’s agenda. The move would allow Democrats to approve plans to raise taxes by $1 trillion, create a cap-and-trade system to rein in greenhouse-gas emissions, and overhaul health care without a single Republican vote.

“You’re talking about running over the minority, putting them in cement and throwing them into the Chicago River,” said Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican who stepped down last month as Obama’s pick for Commerce secretary. “It takes the minority completely out of the process.”

Read the whole thing!

Obama's Radicalism Is Killing the Dow

A financial crisis is the worst time to change the foundations of American capitalism.

By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN

It's hard not to see the continued sell-off on Wall Street and the growing fear on Main Street as a product, at least in part, of the realization that our new president's policies are designed to radically re-engineer the market-based U.S. economy, not just mitigate the recession and financial crisis.

The illusion that Barack Obama will lead from the economic center has quickly come to an end. Instead of combining the best policies of past Democratic presidents -- John Kennedy on taxes, Bill Clinton on welfare reform and a balanced budget, for instance -- President Obama is returning to Jimmy Carter's higher taxes and Mr. Clinton's draconian defense drawdown.

Mr. Obama's $3.6 trillion budget blueprint, by his own admission, redefines the role of government in our economy and society. The budget more than doubles the national debt held by the public, adding more to the debt than all previous presidents -- from George Washington to George W. Bush -- combined. It reduces defense spending to a level not sustained since the dangerous days before World War II, while increasing nondefense spending (relative to GDP) to the highest level in U.S. history. And it would raise taxes to historically high levels (again, relative to GDP). And all of this before addressing the impending explosion in Social Security and Medicare costs.

IMPORTANT: READ THE WHOLE THING!

Take everything they [you] earn, and it still won't be enough.

The bottom line is that Mr. Obama is selling the country on a 2% illusion. Unwinding the U.S. commitment in Iraq and allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire can't possibly pay for his agenda. Taxes on the not-so-rich will need to rise as well...Mr. Obama is very good at portraying his agenda as nothing more than center-left pragmatism. But pragmatists don't ignore the data. And the reality is that the only way to pay for Mr. Obama's ambitions is to reach ever deeper into the pockets of the American middle class.

The 2% Illusion