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Obama: We Can Afford Failed $814 Billion “Stimulus,” But Not $700 Billion Tax Relief?
CFIF blog ^ | September 16 2010 | Timothy H Lee
Posted on Friday, September 17, 2010 1:42:19 PM by RicocheT
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“Nobody spends somebody else’s money as wisely as he spends his own.”
~Milton Friedman
What the Obama Administration lacks in logic, it surfeits in raw chutzpah.
According to Obama, America just can’t afford $700 billion in additional tax relief. After all, flipping Friedman’s wisdom on its head, the federal government allegedly spends that money more wisely than the people and small businesses that actually earned it.
Meanwhile, the White House considers perfectly affordable a failed $800 billion “stimulus,” another new round of “mini-stimulus” on top of that, as well as trillions more for ObamaCare, auto bailouts, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailouts and unprecedented levels of discretionary spending.
Speaking in Cleveland, Ohio, Obama lectured suffering Americans that “we can’t afford the $700 billion price tag” of fully extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. No, that would simply allow small businesses and individuals in upper income brackets to keep more of their own earnings to hire, spend and invest as they see fit.
Adding to Obama’s chorus of farce, his Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner rationalized that America must raise income taxes because we don’t possess “unlimited resources”:
“We don’t have unlimited resources. We just don’t think it would be responsible for this country, given the size of our future deficits, and given the substantial burden the middle class has been bearing over the past decade in particular, to go out and borrow $700 billion from our children so we can sustain those Bush tax cuts that only go to the wealthiest 2% of Americans.”
But during the same interview, Geithner advocated a new round of “stimulus” spending on top of the failed $814 billion package the Obama Administration signed in February 2009:
“If the government does nothing going forward, then the impact of policy in Washington will shift from supporting economic growth to hurting economic growth.”
Earth to Geithner: We don’t “go out and borrow” by allowing people to keep their own income, we “go out and borrow” to pay for your administration’s unprecedented spending binge.
Regardless, the Obama Administration’s modus operandi amounts to irresponsibly generating record levels of spending and debt, then turning around, pleading poverty and using those same new spending and debt levels to justify the higher taxes that it demands. It’s like a spoiled teenager going on a shopping binge at the mall, then using the ensuing credit card bill to demand a higher allowance.
Economists, however, aren’t buying what the Obama Administration is trying to sell. In a survey conducted by The Wall Street Journal, a 3-to-1 majority answered “no” when asked, “Should Congress and the President adopt another significant fiscal stimulus soon?” Moreover, economists by a 32-14 margin favor extending the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for all income brackets, not just those earning under $250,000 per year as Obama proposes.
Despite that overwhelming consensus, Obama continues his bizarre habit of alleging that “most economists” support his economic agenda. Americans can decide for themselves whether that reflects dishonesty or mere cluelessness.
Either way, the Obama Administration’s cognitive dissonance doesn’t stop there. While Obama claims that America “cannot afford the $700 price tag” of tax relief for individuals and small businesses in upper income brackets, he simultaneously advocates $3 trillion of tax relief for middle-income Americans by extending the 2001 and 2003 tax rates for them. How is $3 trillion affordable to Obama if $700 billion isn’t?
Furthermore, haven’t Obama and liberals told us for almost a decade now that Bush only cut taxes for “the rich?” The White House claims that “continuing the middle-class tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 is so important,” but how is that possible if Bush only cut taxes for wealthier Americans?
Such are the intellectual contortions that characterize the Age of Obama.
National Review commentator Mark Steyn observed that “the election of Barack Obama was a fundamentally unserious act by the American electorate.” With each passing day and each passing policy debate, Obama seems to reciprocate that unseriousness. It’s now up to voters to deliver their rejoinder in November.
