Democrats’ Double Standard on Taxes

The 111th Congress hasn’t done its job. The Democrat leadership team has been so busy advancing new pork projects, endorsing faux economic stimuli and opposing the extension of the 2003 Bush Administration tax cuts, that they have failed even to pass a budget for the new fiscal year beginning October 1.

Meanwhile, the Obama Administration is working overtime to convince Americans that recovery is in progress and an economic boom is just around the corner. Chief spokesman claiming the country’s economic recovery is in progress and advocating for eliminating the Bush tax cuts is Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, perhaps the least credible person in the entire Obama Administration on the issue of taxes.

Consider this: President Obama and congress are being advised to increase taxes as a way to increase government revenue by a person whose explanations of why he did not pay his taxes for several years, and only did so after his nomination for a Cabinet position, ranks up there with the dog-ate-my-homework excuse.

In addition to Geithner and a few other tax-challenged Obama appointees, the Obama Administration has had countless nominees withdraw from the Senate confirmation process over non-payment of taxes. And recently, Americans learned that Senator John Kerry, the senior senator from Massachusetts and the former Democrat candidate for President had decided to dock his yacht in Rhode Island instead of Mass in order to avoid the high taxes. (Of course, after the scheme was publicly exposed, Kerry flip-flopped and decided to pay the Massachusetts taxes.)

Americans need to wake up and ask: is there a double standard under which powerful Democrats can vote additional taxes for most Americans but ensure enough loopholes that exempt themselves?

Americans have seen the Democrat double standard at work on transparency, on campaign finance, on energy consumption, on lobbying, on race just to name a few, and now we may soon see the Democrat double standard on taxation.

Congress’ rationale for eliminating the 2003 Bush tax cuts is deficit reduction. This position would be more credible were congress not teeing-up additional discretionary spending programs in the form of various stimuli packages for union members and favored political allies whom Democrats need to please in order to ensure their re-election in November. The deficit can never be reduced if congress doesn’t stop non-essential spending.

Currently, it is not clear if the confiscatory tax policies proposed by Democrats are designed to reduce the deficit by increasing the government’s revenue or if they are designed to punish political opponents and those whose don’t share the flawed, Democrat, wealth-redistribution ideology. Increasingly, it’s looking as if the goal is to punish.

Low tax rates incentivize economic growth and investment. This has been proven time after time. But, Democrats prefer to focus, instead, on taxes on the “rich”, using inflammatory rhetoric that plays on our deepest fears and ego, fear that someone might be better than we are, have more than we do, rhetoric that encourages schadenfreude, a smug pleasure that those who have more than we, might be brought low by confiscatory tax policies.

The Democrat leaders in congress advocating against the Bush tax cuts are looking for a bogeyman—the rich—to be blamed for the failed Democrat fiscal and job creation policies. Punishing the “rich” is a campaign strategy that they hope will play well with voters this fall.

Democrats have shown a stunning lack of imagination and a colossal ignorance of the workings of free market economies. They have been unable to create the jobs they promised almost two years ago. And, as last week’s unemployment statistics show, they have been unable to “save” jobs either. Democrats have abandoned the strategies that made our country an economic power such as the world had never seen before. In advocating tax increases, Democrat leaders in congress have embraced a bitter, mean-spirited, anti-American approach to deficit reduction.

Americans will suffer if Democrats try to reduce the deficit by using crushing, confiscatory taxes rather than exercising discipline and cutting congress’ out of control spending. Even if Democrats in congress allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, there is no guarantee that this maneuver will result in increased revenue for the government. Nor do Americans have any guarantees that congress will use taxpayer dollars for deficit reduction. If the past is any kind of a prologue, with the promise of increased taxes, congress will just go on another spending spree.