A funny thing happened on the way to the debt ceiling.
Little Timothy Geithner, of the planet Vulcan.gov, found “stronger than expected revenue” had materialized, even in this crappy economy. Huh… The never-reported excerpt from his May 2, 2011 letter to the Speaker of the House attesting to this is below:
You’d think Bam-Bam would want to take a victory lap for bringing in more green to the Treasury (since he loves all green of any kind, especially other people’s), but since it came in the wake of extending the Bush tax cuts to the rich, it doesn’t fit the narrative, does it? Of course, neither does the unilateral-executive-ordered-assassination-based-on-intel-from-waterboarding-and-Gitmo, but that was this week’s victory lap, and, I digress…
It’s certainly, undoubtedly, totally & completely unrelated to the extension of the Bush era tax cuts… That’s what the liberals will tell you. I consign this bump to the Kenny G Circular Breathing Category where the failed stimulus lives. It’s a distant cousin to “The patient is dead but the operation was a complete success.” Category... but it goes on & on until the mere witnessing of it puts you into diabetic shock and you drop dead.
Much like Kenny G’s circular breathing, (and the failed stimulus) it’s a head-fake. Private-sector hiring is the only thing that is really curative and that aint’ happening. That’s right, the 2 year extension of the Bush tax cuts producing a positive, like this bump in revenue is a nice reminder that it’s nothing but liberal propaganda that tax cuts decrease revenue, but it’s not a cure. A 10 year renewal? Or better yet, a “permanent” (as permanent as anything can be in government)? Yeah. But only a two year stretch with BamBam telling you (again – really-really this time) he’s gonna axe ’em? No. Just think it through like a regular person for a second and it’s really, really clear:
1. Unless you work for or rely on the federal government for income, D.C. is where money goes to die. You ain’t gettin’ it & you don’t want their crappy standard of living anyway.
2. If you’re a business owner & you know your tax rates might go up in 2 years, are you going to use that “cash” to hire someone? A million people just applied for 64,000 jobs at McDonald’s a week ago. Are you honestly going to sift through all those desperate job-applicants to fill a position being paid out of the difference between one tax rate and another that may disappear in two years? Really? And with ObamaCare on top of that? Really, really? McD’s is a global corporation, but if you’re Joe’s Hamburger Hut, are you going to hire some guy knowing you’re facing better than even odds you’ll have to fire him in two years? Are you going to look him in the eye, and say “Buddy, you’ve got a job to support your family but I might have to fire you in 24 months?” Or are you going to hire him and not warn him? Or are you going to explain to this perfect stranger the intimate, private details of your company’s finances? Because those are you choices. Be a prick and hire the guy knowing you’ll likely fire him, or tell a perfect stranger your profit margin & balance sheet are razor-friggin’ thin and risk letting that information get to your regular customers who might decide upon hearing this previously confidential info about you to find a more reliable person to do business with? Please… You’re going to hold off until you have some certainty, right? Because you don’t want to be a pr*ck to some poor guy who is just trying to support himself & his family and you don’t want to explain your entire fiscal life to a stranger and have it blow up in your face.
3. You’re going to take that money from the extension of the Bush tax rates and save it until you feel some certainty… Probably in the form of a Republican president being elected in November 2012. Because unless you’re a F.O.B. (used to be “Friend of Bill” in the Clinton days. Now it’s “Friend of Barack”) you’re not borrowing money from the Fed at 0% and profiting from your interest bearing investments (Parenthetically: Any A**HOLE can invest free money and make a profit, okay? You big Wall Street types strutting your peacock feathers just calm the frig down about your bad-bad selves, okay? My 12 year old daughter could do what you are doing right now.) Which leads me to point four…
4. Obama is not business friendly, despite the stock market, despite the liberal propaganda, for reasons I just made plain. Unless you’re big enough to fund a union payroll, Bam-Bam ain’t doing you any favors, and 90% of business in America is not union or ever will be union (God willing).
The revenue is good, but it’s like a sugar-high, or an adrenaline shot to the heart of someone who is clinicallyy brain-dead but the doctor is trying keep them alive long enough for his loved ones to reach his bedside. It’s a ruse, meant to just keep us our attention long enough until we remember we hate Kenny G, crash, realize it’s a scam, can’t take it anymore, or get to 2012, whichever comes first.
But, the bump is real. Real enough so that, of course, nobody in the mainstream media could be bothered to link “stronger than expected revenue” after tax cuts, with this gem from the Robin-Hood-in-Chief:
April 16, 2008 ABC “News” Presidential Debate, Charile Gibson & his Pompous-ass-Glasses-on-his-Nose, Moderating. Excerpt below via page 3 of the transcript. I just cut & pasted it below. Added underline emphasis is mine. Errors are theirs.
GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, “I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton,” which was 28 percent. It’s now 15 percent. That’s almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
(Obama Continued) We saw an article today which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year — $29 billion for 50 individuals. And part of what has happened is that those who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That’s not fair.
And what I want is not oppressive taxation. I want businesses to thrive, and I want people to be rewarded for their success. But what I also want to make sure is that our tax system is fair and that we are able to finance health care for Americans who currently don’t have it and that we’re able to invest in our infrastructure and invest in our schools.
And you can’t do that for free.
OBAMA: And you can’t take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children and our grandchildren, and then say that you’re cutting taxes, which is essentially what John McCain has been talking about.
And that is irresponsible. I believe in the principle that you pay as you go. And, you know, you don’t propose tax cuts, unless you are closing other tax breaks for individuals. And you don’t increase spending, unless you’re eliminating some spending or you’re finding some new revenue. That’s how we got an additional $4 trillion worth of debt under George Bush. That is helping to undermine our economy. And it’s going to change when I’m president of the United States.
GIBSON: But history shows that when you drop the capital gains tax, the revenues go up.
OBAMA: Well, that might happen, or it might not. It depends on what’s happening on Wall Street and how business is going. I think the biggest problem that we’ve got on Wall Street right now is the fact that we got have a housing crisis that this president has not been attentive to and that it took John McCain three tries before he got it right.
And if we can stabilize that market, and we can get credit flowing again, then I think we’ll see stocks do well. And once again, I think we can generate the revenue that we need to run this government and hopefully to pay down some of this debt.
THAT’S NOT FAIR! I DON’T CARE IF THE POOR & ELDERLY & “WORKING FAMILIES” HAVE STOCK-FUNDS FROM WHICH THEY DERIVE INTEREST TO RETIRE ON OR SEND THEIR KIDS TO COLLEGE! STOMP-STOMP STOMP-MY MARXIST FEET IN MY BAD-ASS MARXIST SHOES! IT’S NOT FAIR!!!!!
And for those of you who keep pointing to the increases in “deficit” (when at least half the time you mean “debt”) when, in the past, “taxes on the rich” have been cut, it’s not enough to simply cut tax then see an increase in REVENUE. You must cut SPENDING, too. Liberals like to think these things work in a vacuum when citing historical precedent, but they CONSISTENTLY leave out the SPENDING portion of the equation. *sigh*
And while I’m getting things off my chest, can we please, for the love of God, stop saying “tax cut” when we mean “tax credit”? A tax credit can be either “good government” (encouraging home ownership, which promotes wealth & societal stability) or tyranny (buy frickin’ windmills to power your bakery) but they are never, ever, what our founders intended, I would submit humbly. A tax CUT is the most egalitarian of things. You may do with it’s fruit whatever you like… and as Thomas Jefferson so famously opined (and I will butcher it here) “The American people may get it wrong in the short term, but they will always get it right in the long term.”