Chicken Little And Tax Increases

Yes folks Obama is out on the stump claiming "The American people are with me on this..." He's referring to extending the Bush era tax cuts for the middle class and raising it on those he considers "the rich." That would be a couple making $250K a year or a single person earning $200K. He claims poll after poll confirm that he is right and everyone else is wrong. I understand that a poll, like any statistic, can be made to say what the pollster wants it to say. Dewey was supposed to beat Truman in a landslide and the papers were all ready for circulation when the "Whoops we made a mistake" hit the fan.

For the naive among us please understand that Obama is electioneering once again and grandstanding knowing full well that his proposal is already DOA before it gets a proper set of wheels under it. He's been down this road before and the result will be the same. The very tax cuts he opposed and railed against he now supports. Why? It's an election year. He's intent on pitting the rich against the poor, the haves against the have nots and the weak against the strong. That's what Super Obama does best. It has nothing to do with exercising any leadership skills and everything to do with selling the same old snake oil with a different smoke and mirrors routine peddling the brand name.

So yesterday as the House voted on repealing Obamacare there was a different sort of drama going on in the US Senate. Since the elections of 2010 Harry Reid has been in charge of being the Senate Drama Queen once again and he has it down pat. Understand that "the American people are with me on this..." but the US Senate democratic leadership is not Obama. I know, "Whatchu talkin' about Frog?" This is something that the Lame Stream Media left out of the show.

Obama, at the time he made his latest tax increase proposal, urged Congress to take up his idea before the August recess. It seems that the Republicans up there in the Senate think that's a splendid idea. But then whenever the Republicans thinks anything the President proposes is worth a vote, you can rest assured that Harry Reid isn't going to let that happen. . That's the way politics works in Reidville these days.

Here's how it went down. I'm not much of a Mitch McConnell fan but he stepped up to the plate with bat in hand and proposed two amendments to a small business bill the Senate was debating. The two issues are related in that Obama's proposal will smack small business owners, you know those people who create jobs for the middle class and poor, in the wallet in an unsavory economic environment Obama has not been able to fix even though he told us he would.

The first amendment was a vote on Obama's tax increases and the other was a vote on the Republican alternative which was an across the board tax cut or basically leaving the Bush tax cuts in tact as they were passed and extended in the first place. Well Prince Harry was fit to be tied which I don't understand since Harry's boss, Obama, asked for this very vote before the August recess, not after. So why not just get to the voting and get the matter settled as Obama asked in the first place?

I have to give Harry at least three Pinocchio's for his explanation of why he doesn't want to meet his bosses deadline. First rationale was that the Senate would "get back to it" once they finished the small business tax measure. Since Obama's tax increase is directly related to increasing the taxes on small business owner's how does that come out in the wash? They are directly related. Harry's aides spun it as the Democrats seeing the small business tax measure as a winner for them. Winner for them? This crap goes right back to what is the "good for the party" mentality that prevails in our nation's Capitol usually at the expense of "We, the People" who sent them there in the first place. It's called allegiance to the party line after the election - the last election.

There is a theory, and it is a good one, about why Reid really blocked a vote concerning Obama's tax increase proposal and it's a political one no doubt. It's all about re-election prospects and getting people "on record" about such matters. The Democrats, especially those sitting there in the Senate, don't want anything to do with being on record. It reminds me of Obama early in his political career when he voted "Present" all the time. Then you don't don't have to explain anything to your constituents. But most people, if they bothered to give it some thought, would know that the Dems don't want to vote on a losing political position which is what Obama's proposal is. He's proposed it before and it went down in flames before even within his own party.

Lets look at the FACTS. Of the 119 million households in the US, just 2% reported income of $250K or more. That's about 2.5 million households. Those are also the primary providers of jobs in our nation. Unless Congress acts 940,000 tax payers who report business earnings will see their taxes rise significantly in 2013. Keep in mind that about 50% of income earners pay no federal income tax at present. Lets deal in facts and save the spin for the politicians.

The Democrats like to use a low figure statistically of 3.5% in portraying the picture about how many tax payers will feel the pinch of a tax increase. That is smoke and mirrors because the "how few who will be affected" is around 940,000 business owners. In reality the Joint Tax Commission reports that those same people account for 53% of the $1.3 trillion of reported business earnings in 2013. Sheds an entirely different light on things when one includes all the information and omits the political cherry picking that goes on in Washington DC.

As Always,

The Frog Prince