February 15, 2009

Obama - Deficit King

Fox News is reporting President Obama is shifting gears already with the stinkulus bill coming to him for signing. After getting what he wants, what he pushed for, he's going to start claiming spending is out of control? Let's not let this get any traction.

With a $787 billion stimulus package in hand, President Barack Obama will pivot quickly to address a budget deficit that could now approach $2 trillion this year.

He has scheduled a "fiscal-responsibility summit" on Feb. 23 and will unveil a budget blueprint three days later, crafted to put pressure on politicians to address the country's surging long-term debt crisis.

Speaking Friday to business leaders at the White House, the president defended the surge of spending in the stimulus plan, but he made sure to add: "It's important for us to think in the midterm and long term. And over that midterm and long term, we're going to have to have fiscal discipline. We are not going to be able to perpetually finance the levels of debt that the federal government is currently
carrying."


There's no point in adding opinion here is there? It's just ludicrous to try and take this message seriously. Unfortunately that is what the MSM is going to do, and it's up to the conservative blogosphere, and conservative Main Streeters to fight back on this. While the Republicans in Congress seem to have found their voice, we can't expect the MSM to have found their ears for that voice. Everything that can be done to fight the possibility of President Obama gaining traction as a deficit fighter has to be done. Yesterday I mentioned the next fight for conservatives. This is it. And it's important, highly important that we do not allow the President, Democrats and the MSM carry the meme on this - President Obama is not a fiscal responsibility champion.

Everything that can be done to point out that he pushed hard for an $800 trillion deficit, that he had Geithner push for more, that he's not keen on the details of the spending being transparent, MUST be done.

A concerted effort has to be in place prior to February 23rd to discredit Obama's credentials as a budget tamer before the image takes hold. But it also needs to be done in a way that does not somehow play into Obama's hands. We don't want to make it look like he's concerned about this image shaping so he's doing this to prove his bona fides on fiscal responsibility. That just plays into his hand. There needs to be concrete proof that he's wasteful and unconsidered in his fiscal approach.

Perhaps pointing out something like this;

In 2007, suffering yet another year of Budget deficits, Illinois' Governor would propose a Gross Receipts Tax that would impose a tax on Gross Revenue of business and services rather than Gross Income. The bill was opposed by nearly every business group, consumer group and legislature in Illinois. The tax would have been the largest tax increase put forth by any state in history and many experts testified that the tax would have destroyed Illinois' economy. To give you an idea of how the tax would have worked, take for instance an individual real estate agent. If this agent had sold $1 million in real estate during the year, they would have expected pre-tax commissions of $35,000 - $70,000.

The GRT would have imposed a 1% tax on the gross sales, or around $10,000. Although the tax was 1% of Gross Receipts, the tax to the agent would have been as high as 30%. For business dealing with high volume, low profit margin items such as real estate, automobiles or furniture, the tax would have destroyed their profits and operating incomes. When it became apparent the bill would fail, the Governor advised his supporters to vote against the bill to save their re-election bids. Senator Obama, although questioned repeatedly, refused to acknowledge whether or not he supported the GRT.


Ultimately, we have to ask the question - why the sudden interest in fiscal sanity? The reason I suspect, is to use it as a prelude to a massive across the board tax increase to finance the deficit caused by the stimulus bill about to be passed. As an added bonus for President Obama , if inflation starts to heat up in 2010, the tax increase can be used as a form of coolant on that inflation or hyper-inflation and thereby smooth things over.

Don't forget President Obama is a liberal, and that tax-and-spend mentality is still there. The only difference from his predecessors is that he is started out with the spending and will worry about the taxing part later. It's the political version of shoot-first-ask-questions later. It's cart before the horse. Except both the cart and horse are facing the wrong way on a one way street.

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