Obama’s Real Tax Target: The Middle Class

Wonder what you would find if you frisked the Democrats’ claim that they can solve the country’s fiscal problems by raising taxes on the so-called “rich”?

Answer: There’s not enough of those “rich people” to raise taxes on. 

Props to the Wall Street Journal and Power Line for reporting this story:

This chart from the Wall Street Journal tells you pretty much all you need to know about the credibility of the Democrats’ claim that they can solve the country’s fiscal problems by raising taxes on “the rich.” The chart, based on 2008 IRS data, shows how much total income was reported by Americans in each income range.

Notice where all the money comes from.

The problem with rich people (or, more properly high income earners) is that there aren’t enough of them. Upper-income taxpayers are already paying around double their fair (pro rata) share of federal income taxes on the average, and there simply aren’t enough dollars at the high end to pay for the Democrats’ spending spree, even if the Dems try to steal them all. The only way to balance the budget through tax increases is by going where most of the money is–the $50,000 to $500,000 adjusted gross income range.

In the end, if President Obama wants to solve our fiscal problems by increasing taxes, he would have to go after the middle-class. Good luck proposing that plan to the American people.

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FUNNY: Rep. Weiner (D-NY) And Obamacare Waivers

Wonder what you would find if you frisked US Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and Obamacare?

Answer: Steven Crowder breaks it down.

Haha.

Although Steven Crowder uses humor to address the serious issues facing our country, the Obamacare waiver problem is bigger than you might think. Explain this to me: Why are the same people (liberals and organized labor unions) that fought for Obamacare now seeking to be exempt from it?

The Heritage Foundation reports:

The answer, of course, is that if everybody could escape from government-designed health insurance, then everybody would. And besides, the HHS Web site explains, “Annual limits waivers are temporary.  In 2014 annual dollar limits will be prohibited and mini-med plans will no longer be necessary.” Viola. Since they’re prohibited, nobody will want them anymore.

The Daily Caller reports:

To date, the Obama administration has issued more than a thousand health care waivers to organizations desiring a year-long exemption from the law’s coverage requirement.

“Democrats continue to tout the benefits of the health care reform, yet some of their biggest political contributors such as labor unions are filing for waivers,” said Ensign. “The more than one thousand waivers that have already been granted should send a strong signal of how economically damaging this law is, and now more than ever we need to work toward full repeal.”

Luckily for you, conservative groups have put together a website where you can fill out a form to ask the Department of Health and Human Services for your own Obamacare wavier. Click here to visit WheresMYWaiver.com.

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VIDEO: Two Years Of Liberal Economics Have Failed America

Wonder what you would find if you frisked the Democratic Party two years ago?

Answer: They passed the failed $787+ billion Stimulus Package.

Props the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) for the advertisement.

The Speaker of the House Blog reports:

Two years ago today, President Obama signed the trillion-dollar “stimulus” amid promises it would keep unemployment below eight percent and create jobs “almost immediately.”  Today, the Obama Administration has little to show for its trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded “investment” except for more red ink and more out of work Americans.  Here’s a by-the-numbers look at the budget-busting, job-destroying failure that is the President’s “stimulus”:

• U.S. Debt on February 17, 2009: $6.48 trillion
• U.S. Debt today: $9.5 trillion
• Number of jobs the “stimulus” was supposed to create: 3.5 million
• Private sector jobs lost since the “stimulus” was signed: 1.8 million
• Obama Administration’s projected unemployment rate at the two-year mark of the “stimulus”: 7 percent
• Actual unemployment rate: 9 percent

Do you remember this chart the Obama administration presented to the American public before the failed Stimulus Package was passed into law?:

I realize the chart above is a little outdated, but the unemployment rate is still above 9 percent. Also, just two years ago, our national debt was $10.79 trillion and now it has topped $14 trillion. That’s equivalent to adding an additional $39,660 per household.

Just like the political advertisement said above, “two years of liberal economics have failed America.”

It’s time ignore the spin and wake up to reality: The Stimulus Package has FAILED.

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Obama Flashback: Individual Mandate Is Unconstitutional

Wonder what you would find if you frisked then-Senator Obama’s appearance on Ellen DeGeneres’ daytime talk show in February 2008?

Answer: He used the exact same argument that Judge Robert Vinson used to overturn Obama’s health care overhaul legislation.

Clearly President Obama doesn’t believe his signature health care legislation is constitutional:

She’s have the government force every individual to buy insurance, and I don’t have such a mandate because I don’t think the problem is that people don’t want health insurance.  It’s that they can’t afford it …

Well, if things were that easy, I could mandate everybody buy a house, and that, you know, and that would solve, you know, the problem of homelessness.  It doesn’t.

Also, then-Senator Obama made the same argument on CNN:

OBAMA: Let’s break down what she really means by a mandate. What’s meant by a mandate is that the government is forcing people to buy health insurance and so she’s suggesting a parent is not going to buy health insurance for themselves if they can afford it. Now, my belief is that most parents will choose to get health care for themselves and we make it affordable.

Here’s the concern. If you haven’t made it affordable, how are you going to enforce a mandate. I mean, if a mandate was the solution, we can try that to solve homelessness by mandating everybody to buy a house. The reason they don’t buy a house is they don’t have the money. And so, our focus has been on reducing costs, making it available. I am confident if people have a chance to buy high-quality health care that is affordable, they will do so. That’s what our plan does and nobody disputes that.

Here is Judge Robert Vinson’s reference to Obama’s argument in his opinion overturning Obamacare:

The problem with this legal rationale, however, is it would essentially have unlimited application. There is quite literally no decision that, in the natural course of events, does not have an economic impact of some sort. The decisions of whether and when (or not) to buy a house, a car, a television, a dinner, or even a morning cup of coffee also have a financial impact that — when aggregated with similar economic decisions — affect the price of that particular product or service and have a substantial effect on interstate commerce. To be sure, it is not difficult to identify an economic decision that has a cumulatively substantial effect on interstate commerce; rather, the difficult task is to find a decision that does not.

Oops!

It is clear this president only cares about his own far-left agenda and does not care about our US Constitution. Some Constitutional scholar he is… Pff.

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Sebelius Compares Obamacare To Buying Televisions

Wonder what you would find if you frisked Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius?

Answer: She believes health insurance is similar to buying televisions.

Huh?

CNS News reports:

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius defended the new health care law’s mandate requiring people to purchase insurance, comparing the buying of health insurance to buying televisions.

People access health care regardless of whether they have insurance, said Sebelius on Friday. “What they’re choosing not to do is actually pay for those services,” she said.

“[I]f I don’t have a 27-inch TV for the Super Bowl, I can’t demand on the day of the Super Bowl that somebody deliver that TV because I have a right to it. On the other hand, if I don’t have insurance, I come through the door of an emergency room and get treated and get cared for, and somebody else picks up the tab,” said Sebelius.

Very interesting… I have heard the Obama administration (including Ms. Sebelius) and other liberals compare health insurance to auto insurance, but that argument has been debunked numerous times.

Buying TV’s? Really? Now they are just getting desperate.

Side-Note: A Florida judge could declare Obamacare unconstitutional today. If so, it will definitely cure my case of the Mondays.

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Public-Sector Jobs And The Recession

Wonder what you would find if you frisked private-sector and public-sector jobs?

Answer: Public-sector jobs have been “relatively sheltered” from the recession.

I know this is not a shocker, but I feel that everyone needs to be reminded of this time-to-time. The Michigan Capitol Confidential reports:

While the national recession killed private-sector jobs, the government jobs have been “relatively sheltered,” says one researcher.

Veronique de Rugy, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, says the private sector has lost 6 percent of its January 2008 workforce, or 7.2 million jobs, as of November 2010.

Yet, federal jobs increased 3.5 percent by 98,000 jobs during that same time span. And de Rugy says those increases don’t include all the census workers that were hired temporarily. At its peak, the government had hired about 600,000 census workers.

State government jobs nationwide have seen a 1 percent increase with 42,000 more jobs from January 2008 to November 2010.

The only municipal jobs loser was “local government,” which lost 1.7 percent of its jobs, or 258,000 jobs, from January 2008 to November 2010.

Personally, we should require all public-sector employees, on average, to have wages and benefits that are within 3 percent of those comparable skills in the private-sector. Also, as I have pointed out before, the people over at The Heritage Foundation have a few other solutions that would address this issue:

• Abolish the general schedule and implement performance-based pay.
• Hire more private contractors.
• Reduce federal benefits.
• End dismissal restrictions.

Of course these solutions are not popular with the powerful and greedy organized labor unions. In the end, it will be a fight if we are going to be serious about tackling this problem.

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Pelosi: We Lost The House Because Of… Bush

Wonder what you would find if you frisked Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s thoughts on her party’s historic loss last November?

Answer: It’s all Bush’s fault…

🙄 Honestly, what planet does she live on? Hint: It’s not Earth.

FOX Nation has the transcript:

“We still would have lost the election because we had 9.5% unemployment. Let’s take it where that came from. The policies of George W. Bush and the Republican support for his initiatives, tax cuts are for the wealth, recklessness by some,” Minority Leader Pelosi told CNN.

Keep dreaming Minority Leader Pelosi… Although President Bush is partly responsible, it was Nancy Pelosi who clearly lacked common sense, accountability, fiscal responsibility, and constitutional principles during the last four years she was in power. After all, she was forced to relocate to a smaller office after running up a huge tab at the taxpayers’ expense:

In the 1,461 days that Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) served as speaker of the House, the national debt increased by a total of $5.343 trillion ($5,343,452,800,321.37) or $3.66 billion per day ($3.657,394,113.84), according to official debt numbers published by the U.S. Treasury.

Pelosi was the 52nd speaker of the House. During her tenure, she amassed more debt than the first 49 speakers combined.

When Pelosi was sworn in on Jan. 4, 2007, the national debt stood at $8,670,596,242,973.04. At the close of business on Jan. 4, 2011, her last full day in the speakership, it stood at 14,014,049,043,294.41–an increase of $5,343,452,800,321.37.

…And this is the same lady that said a few days ago, “Deficit reduction has been a high priority for us. It is our mantra, pay-as-you-go.” Unfortunately for our country, Rep. Pelosi has been an absolutely failure.

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Net Neutrality 101

Wonder what you would find if you frisked the Federal Communications Commission’s plan to have the government regulate the Internet?

Answer: Introducing… Net Neutrality!

What is this? The federal government (under one of America’s most radical presidents) wants to regulate and put a stranglehold on another area of the free-market? No way! …Unfortunately, I am not surprised at all by this.

Last week, three Democrats on the FCC passed their horrid net neutrality law. The idea of Net Neutrality is not a new concept, but I thought the video – from Reason – would help you better understand the concept:

Net Neutrality is a proposed set of regulatory powers that would grant the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) the ability to control how Internet service providers (ISPs) package their services. Proponents argue that such rules are necessary to ensure that ISPs treat all data on the Internet equally and don’t slow or even restrict access to various websites and other parts of the Internet.

However well-intentioned, the practical effect will be to limit consumer choice and grant the federal government unprecedented power over the Internet, all in the name of fixing a problem that doesn’t exist in any meaningful way. Indeed, examples of the behavior that Net Neutrality will combat are few and far between.

What’s even more horrendous? The FCC went ahead and did this against the will of the American people (of course):

American voters believe free market competition will protect Internet users more than government regulation and fear that regulation will be used to push a political agenda.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that only 21% of Likely U.S. Voters want the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the Internet as it does radio and television.

Here is my message to that 21% who want Net Neutrality: You and the FCC can stay the hell out of my Web browser! David Harsanyi says it best: Why would we want a prehistoric bureaucracy overseeing one of the past century’s great improvements?

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New Record: 111th Congress Added More Debt Than First 100 Congresses Combined

Wonder what you would find if you frisked the 111th United States Congress?

Answer: They added more debt during its tenure than the first 100 Congresses combined!

CNS News reports:

The federal government has accumulated more new debt–$3.22 trillion ($3,220,103,625,307.29)—during the tenure of the 111th Congress than it did during the first 100 Congresses combined, according to official debt figures published by the U.S. Treasury.

That equals $10,429.64 in new debt for each and every one of the 308,745,538 people counted in the United States by the 2010 Census.

The total national debt of $13,858,529,371,601.09 (or $13.859 trillion), as recorded by the U.S. Treasury at the close of business on Dec. 22, now equals $44,886.57 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

In fact, the 111th Congress not only has set the record as the most debt-accumulating Congress in U.S. history, but also has out-stripped its nearest competitor, the 110th, by an astounding $1.262 trillion in new debt.

[…]

Democrats controlled both the House and Senate in the 110th and 111th Congresses.

Bravo Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and the Democrats!

It truly takes a talented bunch of Democrats to get incredibly intoxicated with power, grab the federal government credit card (paid for by the taxpayers), and spend it irresponsibly like Preston Waters in the movie Blank Check.

Exit Question: Hey Democrats, what ever happened to PAYGO? You know… The so-called budgetary tool you guys designed to stop deficit spending?

Bring in the next Congress, please.

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DREAM Act Cloture Fails!

Wonder what you would find if you frisked the DREAM Act this afternoon?

Answer: It failed 55-41 on a procedural cloture vote to end the filibuster!

This is great news for America, because this disastrous piece of legislation will not be brought to the Senate floor to be voted on.

Politico reports:

The decade-old DREAM Act once again failed to break a filibuster in the Senate on Saturday morning, effectively killing the bill this year and shutting the door on what perhaps was the last cdhance for pro-immigration reform legislation until at least the 2012 election.

Senate Democrats came up five votes short of the 60 needed to advance the House-passed bill, which would provide a path to citizenship for up to illegal immigrants brought to the country as children if they attend college or join the military for two years. The 55-41 vote was mostly along party lines, though a handful of Democrats — perhaps fearful of their 2012 election outlook — also voted against the DREAM Act.

As I have said before, do not be fooled by the name of this bill. The real goal of the DREAM Act is to provide amnesty for those who chose to enter our country illegally and make it even harder to enforce our immigration laws.

One of my friends said it best, “Welcome to America, please use front door… Okay, thanks.”

VICTORY:

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