Tag Archives: Barack Obama

News

Republicans rebuff Obama’s call to raise taxes on small business

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First, an article explaining how the Obama administration wants to raise taxes on small businesses.

Excerpt:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told the House Small Business Committee on Wednesday that the Obama administration believes taxes on small business must increase so the administration does not have to “shrink the overall size of government programs.”

The administration’s plan to raise the tax rate on small businesses is part of its plan to raise taxes on all Americans who make more than $250,000 per year—including businesses that file taxes the same way individuals and families do.

Geithner’s explanation of the administration’s small-business tax plan came in an exchange with first-term Rep. Renee Ellmers (R.-N.C.). Ellmers, a nurse, decided to run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2010 after she became active in the grass-roots opposition to President Barack Obama’s proposed health-care reform plan in 2009.

“Overwhelmingly, the businesses back home and across the country continue to tell us that regulation, lack of access to capital, taxation, fear of taxation, and just the overwhelming uncertainties that our businesses face is keeping them from hiring,” Ellmers told Geithner. “They just simply cannot.”

[…]When Ellmers finally told Geithner that “the point is we need jobs,” he responded that the administration felt it had “no alternative” but to raise taxes on small businesses because otherwise “you have to shrink the overall size of government programs”—including federal education spending.

So what about the Republicans in the House? Are they going to cave in to the Democrat demands for more taxes on job creators?

CNS News reports that House Republicans categorically refuse to raise taxes during a recession.

Excerpt:

Two days after House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) dodged the question of whether Republicans would insist that any increase in the debt limit in this fiscal year would be exceeded by spending cuts in this fiscal year, the congressman walked out of debt/budget talks with Vice President Joe Biden, stating he could not continue as long as the Democrats insisted that taxes be raised as part of a budget deal.

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), meanwhile, maintained that tax increases were off the table and that spending cuts should exceed any increase in the federal debt limit.

“Each side came into these talks with certain orders, and as it stands the Democrats continue to insist that any deal must include tax increases,” said Cantor in a statement released on Thursday.  “[T]he tax issue must be resolved before discussions can continue. Given this impasse, I will not be participating in today’s meeting.”

Both Cantor and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) have consistently said that any budget deal for the remainder of fiscal year 2011 and a vote on raising the debt limit–from $14.29 trillion to potentially $16.79 trillion (a $2.5 trillion increase)–would not include raising taxes.

After Cantor left the talks with Biden, along with Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), Boehner held a press conference and said, “Listen, we’ve got to stop spending money that we don’t have and, since the beginning, the Majority Leader [Canotor] and myself, along with Sen. McConnell and Sen. Kyl have been clear: tax hikes are off the table.”

“First of all: raising taxes is going to destroy jobs,” said Boehner.  “If you raise taxes on the people that we need to grow our economy and to hire new workers, guess what? They’re not going to do it if they have to pay higher taxes to the federal government.”

“Second, a tax hike cannot pass the U.S. House of Representatives,” said the Speaker. “It’s not just a bad idea, it doesn’t have the votes and it can’t happen. And third, the American people don’t want us to raise taxes. They know that we’ve got a spending problem. That’s why Republicans passed a budget [drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin] that pays down debt over time without raising taxes.”

But what about the Republicans in the Senate? Aren’t they usually more liberal than the Republicans in the House?

CNS News reports that Republicans in the Senate are absolutely opposed to increasing taxes in a recession.

Excerpt:

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) told CNSNews.com that he would “absolutely not” support any tax increases as part of a deal to increase the debt limit.

Lee was asked if he agreed with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner that revenue increases should be part of a negotiation on the debt limit because spending cuts alone are “irresponsible.”

“I’m fine with revenue increases as long as they don’t involve tax increases. There are other ways of increasing revenue. They could expand their use of federal public land through extension of oil and gas leases and so forth. If they want that kind of revenue increase, I’m all for that,” said Lee after endorsing the “Cut, Cap and Balance Pledge” during a press conference at the Capitol on Wednesday.

Politicians who support the pledge vow to vote against raising the debt limit unless Congress adopts a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution and implements budget cuts and caps on federal spending.

Lee was then asked if he would support any tax increases, specifically.

“No. Absolutely not. We can’t afford a double dip recession right now, and that’s exactly where that would take us,” said Lee.

“You take the same people whose investment dollars are needed to create jobs and you penalize them and you tell them you’re going to get to keep less of your, the rewards from your investment than you would otherwise take – that’s going to chill rather than promote investment. And if you do that, we’re going to have fewer jobs rather than more at a time when we can least afford to hemorrhage jobs.”

House and Senate Republicans understand that we need jobs, and that raising taxes will hurt job creation. Obama’s answer to everything is always more taxing and more spending and more borrowing. The Republicans have got to hold firm and take away his credit card. We need an intervention.

Commentary

Is Obama right to say that technology destroys jobs?

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From the Wall Street Journal, a rebuttal to the community organizer’s latest episode of economic illiteracy.

Excerpt:

Today, a couple of workers can manage an egg-laying operation of almost a million chickens laying 240,000,000 eggs a year. How can two people pick up those eggs or feed those chickens or keep them healthy with medication? They can’t. The hen house does the work—it’s really smart. The two workers keep an eye on a highly mechanized, computerized process that would have been unimaginable 50 years ago.

But should we call this progress? In a sense it sounds like a deal with the devil. Replace workers with machines in the name of lower costs. Profits rise. Repeat. It’s a wonder unemployment is only 9.1%. Shouldn’t the economy put people ahead of profits?

Well, it does. The savings from higher productivity don’t just go to the owners of the textile factory or the mega hen house who now have lower costs of doing business. Lower costs don’t always mean higher profits. Or not for long. Those lower costs lead to lower prices as businesses compete with each other to appeal to consumers.

The result is a higher standard of living for consumers. The average worker has to work fewer and fewer hours to earn enough money to buy a dozen eggs or a pair of shoes or a flat-screen TV or a new car that’s safer and gets better mileage than the cars of yesteryear. That higher standard of living comes from technology. It isn’t just the rich who get cheaper TVs and cars, plus the convenience of using an ATM at midnight.

Somehow, new jobs get created to replace the old ones. Despite losing millions of jobs to technology and to trade, even in a recession we have more total jobs than we did when the steel and auto and telephone and food industries had a lot more workers and a lot fewer machines.

Why do new jobs get created? When it gets cheaper to make food and clothing, there are more resources and people available to create new products that didn’t exist before. Fifty years ago, the computer industry was tiny. It was able to expand because we no longer had to have so many workers connecting telephone calls. So many job descriptions exist today that didn’t even exist 15 or 20 years ago. That’s only possible when technology makes workers more productive.

This is discussed more in Jay Richards’ book “Money, Greed and God“, which is an excellent little introduction to economics meant for Christians. The chapter you want is on “The Materialist Myth”, which is the idea that wealth is only ever shuffled around, and never created.

News

Obama’s retreat defies military commanders and emboldens terrorists

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The Heritage Foundation analyzes Obama’s decision to cut and run in Afghanistan.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s plan for a hasty withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan risks squandering the hard-won gains made on the battlefield in southern Afghanistan over the last ten months.

U.S. military commanders on the ground in Afghanistan had reportedly requested a slower pace of withdrawal to afford them the opportunity to consolidate recent gains against Taliban insurgents.  President Obama has denied his military commanders flexibility to determine the pace and scope of withdrawal based on conditions on the ground, and instead appears to have based his decision largely around the U.S. domestic political calendar.

The plans for rapidly withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan also risks upending the major achievement of eliminating Osama bin Laden across the border in Pakistan.

Bin Laden’s death and an aggressive drone campaign in Pakistan’s tribal border areas have put al-Qaeda on its back foot.  The Administration deserves credit for accomplishing this crucial objective.

However, it is short-sighted to use bin Laden’s death as justification for hastening the U.S. troop draw down in Afghanistan.  Announcing rapid withdrawal of U.S. forces will likely bolster the morale of the Taliban and encourage them to stick with the fight.  Since al-Qaeda has not yet dissolved as an organization and its relationship with the Taliban remains strong, reducing military pressure on the Taliban in Afghanistan could benefit al-Qaeda and provide it a lifeline at a critical juncture in the fight against terrorism.

The withdrawal plan will signal to both our Afghan allies and enemy forces that the U.S. is more committed to withdrawing its forces than the long-term goal of stabilizing the country. The U.S. made a grave error in turning its back on Afghanistan after the Soviets departed in 1989. President Obama’s speech will stoke fears that the U.S. is getting ready to repeat a similar mistake.

Obama’s announcement on rapid troop withdrawals from Afghanistan will further discourage Pakistan from cracking down on the Taliban leadership that finds sanctuary on its soil. The speech will reinforce Islamabad’s calculation that the U.S. is losing resolve in the fight in Afghanistan and thus encourage Pakistani military leaders to continue to hedge on support to the Taliban to protect their own national security interests.

And more from the Wall Street Journal.

Excerpt:

President Obama delivered a remarkable speech last night, essentially unplugging the Afghanistan troop surge he proposed only 18 months ago and doing so before its goals have been achieved. We half expected to see a “mission accomplished” banner somewhere in the background.

Not long ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke about only a token drawdown this year, but he’s now on his way out of the Pentagon. This time Mr. Obama overruled his military advisers and sided instead with Vice President Joe Biden and his political generals who have their eye on the mission of re-election. His real generals, the ones in the field, will now have to scramble to fulfill their counterinsurgency mission, if that is still possible.

[…]In justifying the withdrawal, Mr. Obama repeatedly stressed the damage we’ve done to al Qaeda. Yet most of those successes have been mounted from Afghanistan, including the killing of Osama bin Laden. Mr. Obama stressed that he’ll continue to press Pakistan to cooperate in attacking terrorist havens, but his accelerated withdrawal schedule will make that persuasion harder. The Pakistan military will now almost surely not act against the Afghan Taliban. The Pakistanis will press instead for a “reconciliation” between the Afghan government and Taliban leaders, who will be the most relieved by last night’s speech.

Republican reactions to Obama’s decision to cut and run, taken from the left-leaning Washington Post.

Excerpt:

Likewise from House Republican Policy Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-Ga.) came a blast:

“The brave men and women of our military continue to risk their lives to ensure that Afghanistan does not once again become a safe haven for terrorists who seek to kill Americans and our allies. . . . President Obama must lead. Leadership in this instance means making decisions based on conditions on the ground, listening to our military commanders and not changing strategy for political purposes. If the president is unwilling or unable to lead with resolve and commitment, if he continues to telegraph our strategy and tactical decisions to the enemy, then he should admit to the country that his administration will not support the fight that is necessary, and bring our brave men and women home now.”

[…]Sen. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) had this statement:

“I am concerned that the President has not followed the recommendations of General Petraeus on the timing of our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The General was successful in Iraq by maintaining American momentum while the Iraqi army grew to the size needed to maintain long-term security. To repeat his victory formula in Afghanistan, we would need to maintain military momentum against Al Qaeda and the Taliban until the Afghan army reaches critical mass of 400,000 troops— estimated to be achievable by 2014. We withdrew our support and ignored Afghanistan in the 1990s and paid a high price in 2001. We should learn from that mistake and back the Petraeus strategy.”

I’m anxious to hear the reactions from General Petraeus and the other battlefield commanders.