Posted on 02/19/2008 6:18:00 PM PST by K-oneTexas
Obama’s Big-Government Vision By Lawrence Kudlow
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
Senator Barack Obama is very gloomy about America, and he’s aligning himself with the liberal wing of the Democratic party in hopes of coming to the nation’s rescue. His proposal? Big-government planning, spending, and taxing -- exactly what the nation and the stock market doesn’t want to hear.
Obama unveiled much of his economic strategy in Wisconsin this week: He wants to spend $150 billion on a green-energy plan. He wants to establish an infrastructure investment bank to the tune of $60 billion. He wants to expand health insurance by roughly $65 billion. He wants to “reopen” trade deals, which is another way of saying he wants to raise the barriers to free trade. He intends to regulate the profits for drug companies, health insurers, and energy firms. He wants to establish a mortgage-interest tax credit. He wants to double the number of workers receiving the earned-income tax credit (EITC) and triple the EITC benefit for minimum-wage workers.
Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., makes remarks during a rally, Monday, Feb. 18, 2008, in Youngstown, Ohio. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)
The Obama spend-o-meter is now up around $800 billion. And tax hikes on the rich won’t pay for it. It’s the middle class that will ultimately shoulder this fiscal burden in terms of higher taxes and lower growth.
This isn’t free enterprise. It’s old-fashioned-liberal tax, and spend, and regulate. It’s plain ol’ big government. The only people who will benefit are the central planners in Washington.
Obama would like voters to believe that he’s the second coming of JFK. But with his unbelievable spending and new-government-agency proposals he’s looking more and more like Jimmy Carter. His is a “Grow the Government Bureaucracy Plan,” and it’s totally at odds with investment and business.
Obama says he wants U.S. corporations to stop “shipping jobs overseas” and bring their cash back home. But if he really wanted U.S. companies to keep more of their profits in the states he’d be calling for a reduction in the corporate tax rate. Why isn’t he demanding an end to the double-taxation of corporate earnings? It’s simple: He wants higher taxes, too.
The Wall Street Journal’s Steve Moore has done the math on Obama’s tax plan. He says it will add up to a 39.6 percent personal income tax, a 52.2 percent combined income and payroll tax, a 28 percent capital-gains tax, a 39.6 percent dividends tax, and a 55 percent estate tax.
Not only is Obama the big-spending candidate, he’s also the very-high-tax candidate. And what he wants to tax is capital.
Doesn’t Obama understand the vital role of capital formation in creating businesses and jobs? Doesn’t he understand that without capital, businesses can’t expand their operations and hire more workers?
Dan Henninger, writing in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, notes that Obama’s is a profoundly pessimistic message. “Strip away the new coat of paint from the Obama message and what you find is not only familiar,” writes Henninger. “It’s a downer.”
Obama wants you to believe that America is in trouble, and that it can only be cured with a big lurch to the left. Take from the rich and give to the non-rich. Redistribute income and wealth. It’s an age-old recipe for economic disaster. It completely ignores incentives for entrepreneurs, small family-owned businesses, and investors. You can’t have capitalism without capital. But Obama would penalize capital, be it capital from corporations or investors. This will only harm, and not advance, opportunities for middle-class workers.
Obama believes he can use government, and not free markets, to drive the economy. But on taxes, trade, and regulation, Obama’s program is anti-growth. A President Obama would steer us in the social-market direction of Western Europe, which has produced only stagnant economies down through the years. It would be quite an irony. While newly emerging nations in Eastern Europe and Asia are lowering the tax penalties on capital -- and reaping the economic rewards -- Obama would raise them. Low-rate flat-tax plans are proliferating around the world. Yet Obama completely ignores this. American competitiveness would suffer enormously under Obama, as would job opportunities, productivity, and real wages.
Imitate the failures of Germany, Norway, and Sweden? That’s no way to run economic policy.
I have so far been soft on Obama this election season. In many respects he is a breath of fresh air. He’s an attractive candidate with an appealing approach to politics. Obama is likeable, and sometimes he gets it -- such as when he opposed Hillary Clinton’s five-year rate-freeze on mortgages.
But his message is pessimism, not hope. And behind the charm and charisma is a big-government bureaucrat who would take us down the wrong economic road.
Lawrence Kudlow is host of CNBC's Kudlow & Company
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And that is what a disturbing number of “conservatives” on this site are completely okay with. As long as it means teaching McCain a lesson. Totally nuts.
This has been the worst group of candidates in my lifetime. What is there to choose from? A Senator that hates the GOP or another Senator that hates the GOP? GAG!
McCain does not have a clue when it comes to the economy and this guy Obama would be a freaking nightmare!
Can somebody come up with a good link to the entire article?
Would not surprise me if Obama promises us all 40 acres, a mule and an illegal to work the land for us..the man scares me..he is a fascist.
http://tinyurl.com/npt6tThe consequence of widespread constitutional ignorance is that the people are impotent to send home spending-happy politicians like Obama who are as constitutionally illiterate as the people who put them in office. Indeed, regardless of his oath to defend the Constitution, Obama is in contempt of the Constitution as evidenced by his constitutionally unauthorized federal spending proposals.
http://tinyurl.com/hehr8
This post (<-click), while addressing a tax-related thread, explains in more detail why misguided dreamers like Obama are foolishly following in the footsteps of FDR's dirty federal spending politics.
The bottom line is that the people need to wise up to the MAJOR problem of a federal government that is not operating within the restraints of the federal Constitution, a consequence of FDR's dirty politics. Bluntly put, the people need to quit sitting on their hands and send big-shot, constitution-ignoring federal spenders like Obama and Clinton home instead of trying to put people like them in the Oval Office.
His “Global Get Out Of Poverty On the Back Of America” does pretty much that. I read s similar version already passed the House and now his, w/his 6 other Dems on the Committee as co-sponsor, comes out of committee to the Senate floor for a vote.
“And that is what a disturbing number of “conservatives” on this site are completely okay with. As long as it means teaching McCain a lesson. Totally nuts.”
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Ditto!
"But the question is a very different one, whether, under pretence of an exercise of the power to regulate commerce, congress may in fact impose duties for objects wholly distinct from commerce. The question comes to this, whether a power, exclusively for the regulation of commerce, is a power for the regulation of manufactures? The statement of such a question would seem to involve its own answer. Can a power, granted for one purpose, be transferred to another? If it can, where is the limitation in the constitution? Are not commerce and manufactures as distinct, as commerce and agriculture? If they are, how can a power to regulate one arise from a power to regulate the other? It is true, that commerce and manufactures are, or may be, intimately connected with each other. A regulation of one may injuriously or beneficially affect the other. But that is not the point in controversy. It is, whether congress has a right to regulate that, which is not committed to it, under a power, which is committed to it, simply because there is, or may be an intimate connexion between the powers. If this were admitted, the enumeration of the powers of congress would be wholly unnecessary and nugatory. Agriculture, colonies, capital, machinery, the wages of labour, the profits of stock, the rents of land, the punctual performance of contracts, and the diffusion of knowledge would all be within the scope of the power; for all of them bear an intimate relation to commerce. The result would be, that the powers of congress would embrace the widest extent of legislative functions, to the utter demolition of all constitutional boundaries between the state and national governments."
Joseph Story
Commentaries on the Constitution (1833)
Why don’t Lefties just nominate the Grande Putz himself instead of Castro Light and have done with it? Nobody can claim that Fidel Castro doesn’t have decades of experience running a confiscatory Left Wing Paradise.
Might be cheap compared to what McCain’s Mexican friends cost us.
Guess what. Hussein’s more pro Mexican than McCain is. Prepare yourself for a total Cashectomy if Obama is allowed into the Oval Office.
I doubt it. How can one get more pro-Mexican than McCain, who took it upon himself to be their champion in our Senate? Besides, I’m not so sure that Obama will really get along all that well with Mexicans... blacks and Mexicans are practically at war in urban areas all over the country.
I was one of those conservatives--but the more I hear from Obama and his ant-American 'Obama-Momma' wife--combined with McCain's speech tonight (which was awesome),,,,,,the more I am ready to finally capitulate and 'come onboard' for McCain.
A Marxist with a Muslim-background (yes, even two years of it) is just too much for me to handle.
You're boring us with fabricated wishful thinking about how Hussein and Mexicans are supposed to not 'like each other'. That's untrue and is irrelevant to the situation IAC.
Thua guy us the most radical leftist the Dems have ever had in contention.
WE HAVET TO FIGHT THIS SOCIALIST ON ALL FRONTS.
Obama and Obama-Momma may just be able to do the impossible-—UNITE and ENERGIZE an otherwise apathetic party!!! A Marxist with a muslim-background may be able to do it even more than Hillary! Amazing.
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