By Steve Moore
From The Washington Times:
Barack Obama’s latest and last budget is nothing if not is a grandiose visionary document. No one — least of all Congress — paid much attention to it, because no one cares where this lamest of duck presidents wants the country to go fiscally. After $8 trillion of new debt added, he’s done enough trouble to our nation’s finances already.
But the $4.1 trillion Obama manifesto deserves some inspection if only because it is crammed with so many god-awful ideas. Americans should be very clear about what the progressive left wants to do next if they retain power in the November elections and Mr. Obama has proudly shown his hand.
I should say at the outset that Republicans have been no fiscal bargain themselves. In two years the GOP has worked with Mr. Obama to ram through budget caps by some $150 billion above levels promised in earlier budget agreements. The maddening spending spree, alas, has been bipartisan.
But Mr. Obama and the liberal left see this spree as just the beginning. This 2017 budget would spend $4 trillion for the first time ever, and then outlays hit $5 trillion four years after that. And then we head to $6 trillion in the next four years. Mercifully, they don’t publish the numbers after that, but one half expects Buzz Lightyear to appear and joyously shout out: to infinity and beyond.
The trillions of bigger government would be pipelined to such “critical investments” as green energy solar and wind programs, education, job training, climate change research, mass transit, high-speed rail, self-driving cars, Medicaid funding for Puerto Rico, Obamacare funding and other goodies that would be gobbled up by the greens, the unions, the welfare industry, and the Washington spending lobby. Almost laughably, Mr. Obama touts this smorgasbord feast as “fiscally responsible.”
It all sounds like an instant replay of the failed 2009 stimulus program with its hollow promise of shovel ready jobs.
What is more amazing is the catalog of new taxes Mr. Obama wants to beat down the economy with to pay for the fiscal jail break. The budget calls for $2.8 trillion of new taxes and fees over the next decade. These taxes are almost all aimed at rich people, businesses, banks, investors, oil companies, and other such sinister groups that actually produce things in America.
Start with the $10 per barrel of oil tax. This equates to about 20 to 25 cents more per gallon consumers will pay at the pump. Amazing, Mr. Obama was just bragging about $2 a gallon gasoline in his State of the Union message. This also comes at a time when the oil and gas industry is pretty much flat on its back. Twelve major oil companies are expecting losses in 2016 with Chesapeake near bankruptcy. Now Mr. Obama wants to put a new tax on them? Insane.
Then there is the capital gains tax. When Mr. Obama came into office the tax was 15 percent then he raised it to 20 percent then he raised it again to 23.8 percent (as part of Obamacare) and now he wants 28 percent. That’s a more than 90 percent increase in the tax from the Bush years.
Read more at The Washington Times
Learn more about Stephen Moore at SupplySideEconomist.com.
Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore