You Will Pay More

Today, the White House unveiled its $3.55 trillion budget for the next year. In it, they propose, in the middle of a housing crisis, to limit the mortgage deductions of any family making $250,000 or more a year. They also want to decrease what those families can deduct for charitable donations. Of course the president says only the “wealthy” will pay more, but don’t believe it. You will pay more!

As we reported Tuesday, the administration’s $300 billion carbon cap-and-trade tax scheme will massively increase your utility bills and raise the prices of just about everything else. That’s not just a tax on the wealthy. It will hit every sector of the economy and all goods and services that utilize electricity. And President Obama’s $634 billion socialized health care scheme will require more of your money – there are no “free lunches.”

Anyone tempted to fall for the class warfare rhetoric of making the rich or the top 2% “pay their fair share,” consider this: According to the IRS’s 2006 data, the top 7% of income earners, those making $200,000 or more, paid $522 billion in income taxes – that is 62% of all the federal individual income tax receipts! The Wall Street Journal goes further with this analysis: “A tax policy that confiscated 100% of the taxable income of everyone in America earning over $500,000 in 2006 would only have given Congress an extra $1.3 trillion in revenue. That’s less than half the 2006 federal budget of $2.7 trillion and looks tiny compared to the more than $4 trillion Congress will spend in fiscal 2010.” And, of course, this year with a recession and falling financial markets, there will be many fewer taxpayers making $500,000.

What do you think will happen when the bureaucrats and the liberals in Congress realize that taxing the top 2% still won’t cover the tab? The Journal continues: “Even taking every taxable ‘dime’ of everyone earning more than $75,000 in 2006 would have barely yielded enough to cover that $4 trillion.” The truth is that there just isn’t enough money out there to satisfy the growing appetite of Big Government. And just like Bill Clinton’s promise to “make the rich pay their fair share” ended up hitting the middle class, YOU will pay more!

Gary Bauer