The Office and Management and Budget (OMB) is expecting record Fiscal Year 2014 tax revenues of $3 trillion, the highest in our history. So, why is it that Democrats continue to talk about raising taxes for more revenue?
Government spending is increasing and our debt has breached $17 trillion, with close to $7 trillion in new debt over the past five years. The only reason our deficits are declining is because of the sequester cuts — which President Obama claimed would bring forth Armageddon. Of course he takes credit for the smaller deficits.
Just consider what would happen for economic growth if we reduced the tax burden on Americans. The choice for our elected officials is whether they covet more of our resources for their wasteful government spending or would prefer to create a free market economic boom.
Right now, our economy is dependent upon government largesse, and we still have a record government spending to gross domestic product (GDP) ratio of over 24 percent. Our debt to GDP ratio is inverted to the tune of America owing more than it produces.
There has to be a point when Mr. Obama, someone, anyone, finally says the debt clock must stop and reverse. However, that is not going to happen when our mandatory spending programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — continue to grow. Insolvency is a real issue.
We must grow our economy and get more Americans off Medicaid, not surrender and expand this program. We need to get more people back to work in order to sustain Social Security and truly put it back into an untouchable lock box, as the ravenous appetite for spending in our federal government has raided it.
Lastly, we need to focus Medicare on those who truly need it. We must understand our actual debt when unfunded liabilities are included is closer to $90 trillion.
Finally, if we continue to believe that the Federal Reserve, through its quantitative easing, can keep interest rates at this rock bottom rate, we are setting ourselves up for a REALLY big wake up call. Eventually Moose and Rocco will call in their chips.
The bottom line is that we do not have a revenue problem in America. We have an incessant spending disease. This is the 100th year of the personal income tax, established in 1913. At that time, the top marginal tax rate was seven percent. Today it is 39.6 percent. This is why I am a proponent of ending the progressive tax system, which punishes productivity. And just in case you missed it, a progressive tax was one of the ten planks outlined by Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto.
President Obama is the Chief Executive Officer of the United States, but when have you heard him address economic growth by way of tax relief? Instead, we hear more talk about more subsidies for a bloated new entitlement program called Obamacare, which originally cost the taxpayers $940 billion, but is now estimated to cost $1.7 trillion. Now I know where the new tax revenues are going. Doggone, my head hurts. Time for some college football.
