NRD Editor’s Note: This column first appeared at TheHill.com.
Photo Credit: GOP.gov/Flickr
By Rick Manning — The Kinks song “Lola” tells the story of “a mixed up muddled up shook up world,” and that is how any Capitol Hill observer must feel with Washington, D.C., Republicans openly talking about agreeing to as much as $1.2 trillion in new taxes over the course of the next 10 years.
Not to be outdone, Obama’s Treasury secretary opened his bid at $1.6 trillion in new taxes, plus another $50 billion in new stimulus spending for 2013, and the de facto elimination of the debt ceiling, allowing the federal government to borrow as much as it wants without having to be accountable for it through the passage of congressional approval.
Long gone are the days when the budget fight was over how much government spending should be cut: the failure of Congress to spend less in 2012 than it did in 2010 was the death rattle of the quaint idea of striving toward balance through reigning in runaway spending.
Now, our esteemed elected officials haggle over how much taxes should go up.
Of course, the stipulation all around is to make certain that it goes up on the other guy. The evil person who is likely to bear the direct brunt of these taxes? The $250,000 or more annual earner, whose main sin is that through hard work, perseverance, risk taking and sacrifice, targeted because it just isn’t fair that he or she makes so much money and it is time to pay their fair share.
However, the real victim of this envy-driven tax larceny is not the “wealthy” person who pays it, and that is the link that is being missed.
The real victim is the guy who cuts his or her grass, and due to the thousands of dollars in new taxes being paid doesn’t get hired this spring. It is the local maid service and the people they don’t hire because of personal household cutbacks forced by the federal government’s new high tax policy, or the car salesman who doesn’t get a commission as the decision is made to keep the old Lexus one more year.
Most of the rhetoric opposing tax increases typically focuses upon small-business owners and the people they will or won’t hire as a result of government tax policy. But lost in this discussion are the people who benefit from the personal decisions of these high earners.
Taking away 3 to 5 percent of their incomes won’t really hurt most of the so-called “wealthy” all that much, but it sure will hurt those who depend upon the expenditure of their discretionary income.
Ironically, these are the same people higher-tax and big government advocates claim to be trying to help.
Of course, the politics of envy doesn’t have to make sense. After all, if the government takes the money, it will have more to hand out to its favored classes to perpetuate its own power.
Welcome to rule by the occupiers.
Rick Manning is the Communications Director of Americans for Limited Government.
