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“Obama’s ‘rosy’ budget scenario doubles down on class warfare”

From “Hope and Change” to “Hope, but Keep Trying the Same Shit That Won’t Work No Matter How Many Times We Insist It Will If We Just Give It Another Chance.”

Which, that doesn’t have quite the same easy bumpersticker grace to it, seems to me. James Pethokoukis:

[…] Obama’s new budget isn’t about economic growth or cutting debt or creating a “built to last” economy. The Obama campaign is built around the idea of reducing inequality. So in his budget, Obama takes the populist whip to the wealthy and to business:

1. The top income rate would be raised to 39.6 percent vs. 35 percent today.

2. Under the “Buffett rule,” no household making over $1 million annually would pay less than 30 percent of their income in taxes.

3. Between now the end of a second Obama term, Obama proposes $707 billion in “net deficit reduction proposals.” Of that amount, only 16 percent is spending cuts.

4. The majority of small business profits would be taxed at 39.6 percent vs. 35 percent today.

5. The capital gains rate would rise to 25.0 percent (including the Obamacare surtax and deduction phase out) from 15 percent today.

6. The double-tax on corporate profits (including dividends) would increase to 64 percent based on the statutory corporate tax rate (58 percent using the effective tax rate), easily the highest among advanced economies.

7. The double tax on corporate profits (including capital gains) would increase to 51 percent (44 percent using the effective tax rate), also among the highest among advanced economies.

All in all, Obama has proposed some $1.6 trillion in new taxes over ten years, taking tax revenue as a share of GDP to 20.1 percent in 2022 vs. a historical average of 18 percent. And despite all those new taxes, Obama’s plan would still add $6.7 trillion in new debt and make no progress in lowering the nation’s total debt levels as a share of output. The debt-to-GDP ratio is predicted to be 74.2 percent this year and 76.5 percent in 2022.

At the same time, federal spending would never fall below 22 percent of GDP. Indeed, Obama — if he serves two terms — would be the first U.S. president in history to spend 22.0 percent or more of GDP for eight straight years (and then beyond). And keep in mind that these debt and spending numbers claim about $850 billion in savings from unwinding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, spending about a quarter of those phony “savings” on highway funding.

And also don’t forget about the rosy growth assumptions of 3.4 percent growth in 2015, 4.1 percent in 2016, 4.1 percent in 2017, and 3.9 percent in 2018? The U.S. economy has only seen a run like that three times in the past four decades. And the Obama Boom is supposed to happen amid rising tax rates, interest rates and debt? Good luck, Mr. President.

Luck? Who needs “luck” when you can use the Constitution when it supports your position, ignore it when it doesn’t, and demonize it should you need to rile up your progressive base of grievance-politics identity groups looking for ways to game the system to their selfish advantage?

It’s good to be the king.

72 Replies to ““Obama’s ‘rosy’ budget scenario doubles down on class warfare””

  1. Squid says:

    It’s good to be the king.

    I suppose that would make Jaleel “Urkel” White the garçon de pisse.

  2. dicentra says:

    The Obama campaign is built around the idea of reducing inequality.

    That’s the charitable view.

  3. Crawford says:

    I think it’s accurate, dicentra. He intends to impoverish all of us.

  4. dicentra says:

    Also, don’t miss this piece by Paul Rahe (Hillsdale College) that Rush read today: “American Catholicism’s Pact with the Devil“:

    the leaders of the American Catholic Church fell prey to a conceit that had long before ensnared a great many mainstream Protestants in the United States – the notion that public provision is somehow akin to charity – and so they fostered state paternalism and undermined what they professed to teach: that charity is an individual responsibility and that it is appropriate that the laity join together under the leadership of the Church to alleviate the suffering of the poor. In its place, they helped establish the Machiavellian principle that underpins modern liberalism – the notion that it is our Christian duty to confiscate other people’s money and redistribute it.

    Lots of juicy Latin quotes and references to the Magna Carta for them what digs that kinda thing.

  5. Jeff G. says:

    Dicentra —

    I linked that piece days ago, and there was a long discussion on it in the comments a few days back.

  6. dicentra says:

    I think it is and always has been a power grab. The promise of economic equality is a lie that Obama and his type don’t actually believe.

  7. dicentra says:

    So you did. Right here. I guess I can say I was no slower on the uptake than Rush, who, despite his name, did not.

  8. rjacobse says:

    The promise of economic equality is a lie that Obama and his type don’t actually believe.

    Don’t forget Orwell’s prescient fable. If the Obama campaign is indeed “built around the idea of reducing inequality,” then we must remember the corollary: “some animals are more equal than others.

  9. dicentra says:

    Not to say neener-neener or anything (OK, it is), but the LDS Church was never taken in by the conceit I quoted in #4. Some individual members might have been, but there’s nothing in the sermons or other materials to suggest that the Church was down with that program.

    Instead, the LDS Church runs a huge welfare system of its own using freely given donations of time and money (plus land it owns to raise cattle or grow crops) and that is administered in an extremely local way, such that when it becomes evident that someone’s just being a mooch, they’re cut off. The welfare building often houses the employment office, which helps people find jobs or training.

    (I do realize that the Catholic Church has even more extensive charitable works throughout the world; the LDS Church frequently cooperates with Catholic Charities to send supplies to disaster-stricken areas.)

    I was wholly unaware of the American Catholic Church’s embrace of Social Justice and was also unaware that nobody seems to have been teaching the people about contraception and chastity and abortion from the pulpit.

    I knew that the Latin American Church did not serve its parishioners by teaching the actual Gospel, reducing most Catholics to praying to a candle to win the lottery instead of living a better life. Those Catholics who were serious about religion have all become either Protestants or Mormons. I figured that the Latin American Church was weakened by so many years of being the official state church, just as it was in Spain, whereas church in the U.S. and Canada had to “compete” with other churches to meet the spiritual needs of the people.

    I’m astounded because I’ve met through the Internet many devout American Catholics (such as the Anchoress) who are crystal clear about how to live a Christ-centered life and furthermore are actually good Catholics instead of cafeteria-style. I admire them very much and look up to their spiritual prowess. It therefore makes me sad to know that the Catholics haven’t been very good at insisting that their members live up to Catholic standards in their personal lives: I guess I assumed that because the LDS and protestants (mostly) do it, the Catholics would too.

    Maybe this will jar them back into some sense. Maybe they will realize that it’s not enough to administer the sacraments and perform the rites: people must also be transformed on a day-to-day basis if their religion is to mean anything more than family tradition.

  10. geoffb says:

    Rahe’s piece was also discussed in this thread.

  11. geoffb says:

    I was wholly unaware of the American Catholic Church’s embrace of Social Justice

    This which I linked on that thread gets into the beginnings which of course go to the progressive movement’s beginnings.

  12. dicentra says:

    Now I can cop to being totally clueless about things I actually have read, including the threads referred to.

    Never mind. </Litella>

  13. sdferr says:

    I just saw Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Miami on Cavuto (roughly the 4:25 eastern slot), making the case that the “accommodation” Obama pumped last Fri. does nothing to alleviate the infringement on religious liberty imposed by the HHS ruling of Jan. 20, and further, that the infringement is an infringement not on the Catholic Church alone, or as such, but on all people, regardless of their religious organizational affiliation (taking up the argument advanced by Paul Rahe, and remarked by Peter Robinson here.) This is good news to me, anyhow, insofar as it demonstrates the Archbishop has broadened the scope of his political thought beyond the immediate effects on himself and his flock.

  14. newrouter says:

    the “politics of generosity” baracky 2012 ed.

  15. leigh says:

    To be fair, dicentra, we have over a billion members worldwide. It’s hard to herd that many sheep.

  16. sdferr says:

    Americans for Prosperity’s Obama budget analysis and response.

  17. dicentra says:

    To be fair, dicentra, we have over a billion members worldwide. It’s hard to herd that many sheep.

    They don’t need herding; they need teaching. Catholic teachings on chastity and abortion and contraception aren’t very complicated. A parish is small enough that a priest can teach these principles during the homily or through other venues such as confession, personal counseling, or separate classes.

    It doesn’t appear to be a problem of size; it appears to be a problem of message. If no one is teaching the doctrine even during Mass, people aren’t going to get the message or alter their behavior, be there 100 or 1 billion members.

    I guess I’m just used to belonging to a Church with stricter standards. If I were to violate my Church’s standards on chastity or abortion, I could face Church discipline, up to and including excommunication. (I’d be eligible for rebaptism after a year.) Because we have a lay ministry, everyone gets multiple chances to deliver sermons, teach lessons, and otherwise get very, very familiar with the material. It’s hard to find Mormons who don’t know what their church teaches, even if they themselves don’t live it. In Colombia I met exactly 5 Catholics who knew what their church taught: everyone else just prayed to the Virgin to win the lottery, if that.

    I remember a 14-year-old girl whose father was pimping her out to his friend. She was thrilled because it was “just like being married,” but was unaware that there might be something wrong from a religious or ethical standpoint. (Yes, her age and her hormones and her obviously bad upbringing were the primary contributors.) It’s just that she was also “very devoted to the Niño Jesús de Praga” and figured that she was very Catholic indeed.

    Again, it made me very sad that the local priests (many of whom had one or more illegitimate kids running around) were so unconcerned about the spiritual well-being of their parishioners. I guess they figured that as long as they administered the sacraments, they’d done their duty and that was that.

    I know it’s not my place to tell the Catholics how to run their church; I’m just making a first-person observation about one result.

  18. bh says:

    Something Jim P mentions in regards to taxing dividends as ordinary income from Bloomberg:

    The proposal, in the president’s fiscal 2013 budget released today, would reverse his previous policy that called for taxing dividends more lightly than wage income. The plan would treat dividends as ordinary income for married couples making more than $250,000 a year and individuals making more than $200,000. The dividend tax proposal would raise $206.4 billion over 10 years.

    “We simply can’t afford to devote $206 billion for lower tax rates for the highest-income Americans,” Gene Sperling, White House director of the National Economic Council, told reporters today. “Our system for taxing investment income for the most well-off Americans is clearly broken.”

    The earlier stance:

    The proposal reverses the administration’s policy and would return dividend taxation to its pre-2003 status. The administration’s fiscal 2012 budget had justified setting the top capital gains and dividend tax rates at 20 percent because it “reduces the tax bias against equity investment and promotes a more efficient allocation of capital.”

    $200B over 10 years. That’s essentially nothing in our current budgets. So why the switch?

    I think there can be no explanation other than it being an opportunity to “soak the rich” which satisfies some idealogical itch so their retarded sycophants can feel good about the administration. If passed, the market will react to this. The tax won’t be collected. Another distortion will be added. All so they can add one more bullet point for MSNBC to prattle on about.

    Transparent and disgraceful.

  19. leigh says:

    I hear you. There are a great many Catholics that are CINOs. I was pleased that when my youngest boy attended the National Catholic Youth Conference in Indianapolis last November, there were over 23,000 teens there from around the country. I’ve been fortunate that I have belonged to a number of very active parishes over the years. People tend to wonder away and then return when they marry and have children.

    Latin America presents a unique set of problems and is not representative of American Catholics, as you know. Anymore than characters like Warren Jeffs are endemic to the LDS.

  20. bh says:

    Nothing encourages corporate malfeasance like telling them they shouldn’t pass along profits as dividends.

    I really hate these people.

  21. Ernst Schreiber says:

    I think there can be no explanation other than it being an opportunity to “soak the rich” which satisfies some idealogical itch so their retarded sycophants can feel good about the administration.

    It’s part ideological, but I would guess mostly political. They just want to be able to say all Republicans care about is their rich, fat-cat golf buddies; they hate poor people.

    This budget proposal is the new standard for governing so as to win elections.

    Rather than winning elections so as to govern, which is the way it should be.

    Somebody should clue in the Moran character.

  22. sdferr says:

    Transparent, disgraceful, and . . . what’s that other word I’m looking for? . . . oh, yeah, . . . no, not laughable . . . FECKLESS, yeah, that’s the word, feckless . . . in this context, it means: hateful, nihilistic, divisive, moronic, destructive, worthless and, y’know, a bunch of other choice descriptives.

  23. RI Red says:

    You missed “dishonest” and “unserious”, sdferr.

  24. RI Red says:

    So long as that “global minimum tax” covers the 47% who don’t pay, right?

    They have to double down now. If they lose in the fall, this will have been the last time they can push this shit for years.

  25. motionview says:

    Let’s vote on it, the last Obama budget went down 97-0. Vote.

    And if you want so really see Rosy and her five sisters work it, take a look at this.

  26. Squid says:

    If they lose in the fall…

    Not if — when. At this point, not even cheating can help them.

  27. sdferr says:

    Humph, I thought the thing used to be about Merry and her five fingers, and no, we aren’t particularly interested in watch Obama jerk-off.

  28. dicentra says:

    Anymore than characters like Warren Jeffs are endemic to the LDS.

    Warren Jeffs isn’t LDS. He’s the leader of the Fundamentalist LDS, a sect that has as much connection with the LDS church as the Methodists have with Catholics.

    To find a parallel, you’d have to name a local LDS bishop who’s a total jerk, or maybe point at Harry Reid.

  29. motionview says:

    A 24,783 to 1 return on investment within three years is pretty sweet. Go Team Crony.

  30. LBascom says:

    The debt-to-GDP ratio is predicted to be 74.2 percent this year and 76.5 percent in 2022.

    I thought we hit 100% awhile back…

  31. Blake says:

    @bh

    “We simply can’t afford to devote $206 billion for lower tax rates for the highest-income Americans,” Gene Sperling, White House director of the National Economic Council, told reporters today. “Our system for taxing investment income for the most well-off Americans is clearly broken.”

    WTF? Complete and utter bullshit. Taking less of someone’s money is not “devoting money to lower tax rates.” Can someone please explain to these jerkoffs government has no money to pay for anything unless it takes from those who have money? Or, can someone at least call them on this dishonest bullshit?

  32. B. Moe says:

    “We simply can’t afford to devote $206 billion for lower tax rates for the highest-income Americans,” Gene Sperling, White House director of the National Economic Council, told reporters today.

    What is most worrisome to me, bh, is the way they word these missives. It is clearly their money, they are just deciding how much to let you have. Eventually the pinheads listening will all feel that way completely. They already do, to some extent.

  33. B. Moe says:

    Damn, Blake beat me to it while I was logging in, lol.

  34. Pablo says:

    Let’s vote on it, the last Obama budget went down 97-0. Vote.

    Nope, no vote. Budgets are passe. We don’t need them anymore.

  35. newrouter says:

    Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

    The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making.

    Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.

    link

  36. geoffb says:

    The dividend tax proposal would raise $206.4 billion over 10 years.

    First it won’t raise anything like that pittance (compared to the Obama budgets) but a much smaller pittance.

    Second, there are elderly retired people who set up their retirement accounts to receive dividends from companies that traditionally pay them regularly who will now get a higher tax on those dividends and likely not see as many paid out as companies simply will retain the earnings.

    Third, all of this will result in a slowing of economic growth in the private sector which is also a desired effect of the left who want the government section of the economy to be dominate.

    I hate these people too bh.

  37. geoffb says:

    One thing I’d like to see in any story that uses the “saved over 10 years” theme is that they then mention the amount projected to be spent over those same ten years and to state the amount using the same terms.

    Such as “This tax increase on the rich will save $206 billion out of the $50,000 billion budgeted to be spent over the ten years, approximately four tenths of one percent of the budget, or about the income percentage that the average family of four spends on toothpaste yearly.”

  38. newrouter says:

    “saved over 10 years”

    as if they can control future congresses

  39. geoffb says:

    A Democrat Congressman calls the Obama budget a “nervous breakdown on paper” because it spends to little and of course it is only the mighty spending of the Federal government that has kept us from sinking further into “economic turmoil”. I notice the it’s Bush’s fault still shows up.

  40. Blake says:

    B.Moe, I think a round of mutual congratulation is in order.

  41. Blake says:

    geoffb, Obama promises have a limited life span, but excuses last forever.

  42. McGehee says:

    I’m pretty sure Obama was born without a feck; both his parents were too.

  43. sdferr says:

    Can’t arrest the little prick for fraud though, he’s got us there.

  44. bh says:

    The debt-to-GDP ratio is predicted to be 74.2 percent this year and 76.5 percent in 2022.

    I thought we hit 100% awhile back…

    Net vs gross debt, I assume, Lee. Don’t know what intra-gov is now but I figure that explains the difference.

  45. bh says:

    Btw, without listing them, I think I agree with all y’all’s comments above.

  46. bh says:

    (The tax/budget/econ ones, that is.)

  47. sdferr says:

    Paul Ryan on the Obama budget, and the evil it entails.

  48. bh says:

    Yeah, he must be referring to net.* Doesn’t make sense otherwise.

    *Difference between roughly 70% to next year’s 75% explained by spending greatly outpacing growth, I assume.

  49. motionview says:

    The Team has gotten to the point that they are so confident the media machine is going to just grind up anything that conflicts with the assigned narrative that they are not even trying to hide their lies anymore. Steven Hayes said today that Jack Lew was knowingly lying about the Republican Senate filibustering the budget. Krauthammer tried to say “That can’t be true, he knows we’d catch him”. He does know you’d catch him Charles and honey badger don’t give a fuck. They don’t care Charles. All masks are off, it is just a naked cram-down at this point.
    Here is a new classic, a Baghdad Bob tape indicating brass balls the size of a small moonlet.

    I think the President has put forward today a balanced budget. Balanced in two ways. First of all, the President invests and makes immediate investments in job creation, starting with making sure that the payroll tax cut continues, and that we do not have a tax increase on 160 million Americans. The President also has proposals to put Americans back to work, on infrastructure projects, to modernize our schools, to help rebuild our neighborhoods. At the same time, we have year over year of deficit reduction, leading to a stable debt to GDP ratio by 2018. So it’s balanced, in that we have immediate job creation and then we have deficit reduction. And the deficit reduction itself is done in a balanced way.

    Balanced balanced balanced balanced.

  50. newrouter says:

    armadillo sited

    link

  51. sdferr says:

    motionview, it’s almost like someone has set out intentionally to give contemporary men a taste of what it was to be a Frenchman in revolt in 1789, and a sense of why it was those Frenchmen went utterly nuts to lopping off heads. It has heretofore never been apparent to me what on earth could have possessed them to such barbarity, but I fear I’m beginning to get it.

  52. McGehee says:

    Of course the #Occupant’s budget is balanced. The taxes for current spending will be paid by the rich now, and the taxes to pay down the debt will be paid by the poor later. Rich, poor. Now, later. Both sides covered on both levels!

  53. Carin says:

    Has someone reported the Fock You 2013 Budget to Attack Watch?

  54. Carin says:

    Ga. He’s such a fucking liar.

    I just can’t take it anymore.

  55. […] Itself – Dems Trying to Kill America Posted on February 14, 2012 6:24 am by Bill Quick “Obama’s ‘rosy’ budget scenario doubles down on class warfare” 4. The majority of small business profits would be taxed at 39.6 percent vs. 35 percent […]

  56. Slartibartfast says:

    There are a great many Catholics that are CINOs.

    That’s because the RCC insists on counting members that were baptized Catholic, but are not currently Catholic. Even those who (like me) are members of e.g. Lutheran denominations.

  57. motionview says:

    Very much not the “he” mentioned above, Serr8d seems to be coming back online, at least on Twitter. We are not all socialists now.

  58. leigh says:

    Serr8d seems to be coming back online

    Yea! We miss you, Serr8d!

  59. leigh says:

    Slart, I was referring to people who refer to themselves as Catholics, though they haven’t been to church since childhood. Or, they are C&E Catholics and ignore it the rest of the time. Which pretty well describes a whole lot of people who call themselves churchgoers.

  60. motionview says:

    All masks off.

    “Simply put,” Frisch wrote, “the progressive movement is in need of an enemy. George W. Bush is gone. We really don’t have John McCain to kick around any more. Filling the lack of leadership on the right, Fox News has emerged as the central enemy and antagonist of the Obama administration, our Congressional majorities and the progressive movement as a whole. We must take Fox News head-on in a well funded, presidential-style campaign to discredit and embarrass the network, making it illegitimate in the eyes of news consumers.”

    Because the Progs need an enemy. Rush, Fox, the 1%, the Catholics, the Rich. Is there no media organization with some resources other than Breitbart and now the Daily Caller going to go to work on this story, the Democrat-Media-Tribal-Interest-Group axis of bullshit?

  61. B. Moe says:

    The upshot being, if you have no identifiable values, you can’t be a hypocrite, no matter what position you take.

    Aha! You know what else you can’t be? An ideologue!

    So there you go: ideology is the first step down the road to that most dastardly of sins, hypocrisy.

  62. B. Moe says:

    Fuck. Wrong thread.

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