Posted on 07/12/2011 1:23:00 PM PDT by Kaslin
"Revenue enhancements" must be on the table, the president insists.
In a remarkable performance Monday, President Barack Obama dug in his heels, insisting that new taxes and new revenues had to be part of any grand deal struck to avoid going over the debt ceiling.
Obama used his midday presser to argue for “a balanced approach” that included some kind of revenue enhancements as the price for slicing away at entitlements and other government programs, if not now then in a few years.
“What we have talked about is that starting in 2013, that we have gotten rid of some of these egregious loopholes that are benefiting corporate jet owners or oil companies at a time when they’re making billions of dollars of profits,” the president said. “As part of a broader package, we should have revenues — and the best place to get those revenues are from folks like me who have been extraordinarily fortunate and that billionaires and millionaires can afford to pay a little bit more.”
Mangled syntax aside, what Obama is saying is, in essence, if you have more you should expect to pay more. Unfortunately, class envy is a poor foundation on which to base a program to create growth in the U.S. economy.
“President Obama has proven once again that he stands for nothing besides higher taxes, continued borrowing and bigger government,” said Heritage Action CEO Michael A. Needham in an interview with PJMedia. “Until this president enters ‘tax and spend rehab’ there is nothing to talk about and he should have to live under the debt limit. This is, after all, why the debt limit exists.”
For his part, Obama is looking at this as a clash between cutting entitlements and raising taxes — two forces that are polar opposites of one another. What he neglects is that there are other options out there, among them the “Cut, Cap and Balance” approach that began as a pledge and has, in the last week, become legislation in the Senate and will soon become a bill in the House.
Colin Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring! and a leader of the broad-based coalition backing the approach, told PJMedia, “It’s now clear that something has to break the logjam, and one real game-changer has emerged: the Cut, Cap and Balance Act that would give the president what he says he must have, a debt ceiling increase of around $2 trillion, but if and only if a balanced budget amendment with real teeth passes both the House and the Senate.”
“The balanced budget amendment is an 80 percent issue with the public,” Hanna adds. “The political risk lies in opposing it, not supporting it. Democrats will be hard pressed to object if it’s the one remaining obstacle between them and the debt ceiling increase, and Republicans will swallow hard and approve an increase if it brings with it the promise of a permanent fix through a balanced budget amendment. It’s the only solution on the horizon that can bring the sides together for the good of the nation as a whole.”
Indeed, the legislative pivot in which the Republicans are now engaged — to pass a debt ceiling increase with a budget deal that cuts the deficit and caps spending, and which goes into effect only upon the passage of a balanced budget amendment — is strategically smart. Rather than take the amendment first, the newer approach makes the debt ceiling increase a carrot which can only be reached by swinging the BBA stick.
Obama had much to say in his remarks about the need for fairness and balance in addressing the debt ceiling issue — language that seems to be about making a specific appeal to the independents he needs to win re-election. It’s not likely to work as he intends.
“President Obama proved just how astonishingly out of touch he is with the American public at his press conference when he said, ‘I’d rather be talking about things everyone loves, like new programs,” Americans for Prosperity Vice President for Policy Phil Kerpen told PJMedia. “This is exactly the mindset that got us into this mess.”
“Politicians’ appetite to install new government-spending programs at the expense of taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars has crippled our federal budget. We’ve spent and borrowed so much that grassroots Americans from coast-to-coast are rising up and demanding an end to the runaway spending. Fortunately, Obama did finally recognize today that any increase in the debt ceiling requires fundamental fiscal reforms to cut spending and put us on a path to fiscal responsibility,” Kerpen says, while urging Obama to publicly support the consensus balanced budget amendment that “would finally put an end to reckless borrowing, taxing, and spending.”
House Speaker John Boehner, whom the president praised for his leadership earlier in the day, remained unyielding to the demand for new taxes.
Speaking on the Laura Ingraham Show, Boehner said, “I just think it’s time for us to get serious about our fiscal situation, both the deficit and our long-term debt. And I’ve made it clear all through this fight that we should not increase the debt limit without real spending cuts and reforms to restrain future spending — and no debt limit increase unless the cuts are larger than the hike.”
Alluding to spending cuts that have been previously identified as being on the table, Boehner continued, “We’re going to look at those cuts as the starting point. But we need real reform, we need real cuts in spending, and we need real controls to make sure this doesn’t happen again. And whether it’s spending caps, the balanced budget amendment, we’ve got to have real reforms in place to make sure that once we clean up this mess it can’t happen again.”
In this Boehner touches on the key point: It’s not a matter of finding a way to avoid kicking the can down the road for another 30, 60, 90, or 180 days — as Obama himself said in his presser. It’s also not a matter of finding a solution that will last until the debt ceiling is again reached. The challenge is to provide a permanent solution, the kind that can’t be found in any kind of a negotiated deal, large or small; it can only be found in the “Cut, Cap and Balance” approach.
Balance is allowing the debt ceiling to go up even a smidgen and real cuts now - not 6 years down the road.
New revenue = Tax GE, unions, and all of Soros’ organizations.
Red high heels.
And tax them at 100%
My coffers bulge from ...
wait for it ...
not spending
The only cut that makes sense is if we look at what was actually spent this year, then cut an amount from that, but somehow I don't think that is the cuts they are talking about making.
Fine. Don’t send out the SS checks. Threaten with more government employees not getting paid. Don’t pay the military either. Watch the stock market fall. Go ahead. Keep it up, Kenyan usurper, and see how fast impeachment proceeding will begin.
How about this “revenue enhancing tactic”.... LOWER TAXES!!!
Works EVERY TIME it’s tried!
As the expression goes, the Republicans have Obama “by his short & curlies”(*), as unwholesome as that sounds. By refusing to raise taxes or support a continuing resolution, they win.
Critically, comparing it to the Clinton years is wrong, because the budget fight back then was for the more “ordinary”, regular operations budget. That meant that what the Republicans were trying to do was to shut down *current* government operations. Today, what the Republicans would be doing would be to stop Obama’s exaggerated expansions of government. Stopping what would be, not what is.
That is, last time it meant say, that 100,000 government workers would be laid off. Now it means that Obama can’t hire 100,000 *more* government workers.
(*) ‘By the short hairs’ means the hairs of the neck, not the pubic hairs. First referenced in The Drums of the Fore and Aft, from Rudyard Kipling’s Indian Tales (1890).
This is how liberals think. They think that by changing the name of something, no one will notice that it’s still the same old thing, thus liberal becomes progressive, illegal alien becomes undocumented worker, and raising taxes becomes revenue enhancement. They honestly think no one notices the word play.
Impeachment proceedings may be exactly what he wants, because it would go nowhere. The posted article makes it clear that a government shutdown is inevitable because the Democrats insist on it. The real political pros know that Obama and his advisors are Alinskyites through and through, and the Alinsky method of political operation - revolution, counter-revolution, and reaction - make the shutdown entirely predictable. They are attempting to frame the shutdown as a result of the Republicans refusal to accept these reasonable “revenue enhancements - on the rich, of course,- while the democrats are the ones acting in favor of the middle class.
President Barack Obama dug in his heels, insisting that new taxes and new revenues had to be part of any
President Barack Obama dug in his heels, insisting that new taxes and new taxes had to be part of any
There fixed it....... No, No not right yet. Lets really be honest.
President Barack Obama whining like a little child told everyone that would listen that the Republicans want to starve your children and kill grandma to save fat cat bankers and the evil rich. And only his raising taxes and then spending even more then raised would save the children and grandma..
There. Now really fixed it...........
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