Tag Archives: National Debt

News

Indiana Republicans to introduce right-to-work bill

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From Fox News. (H/T Dad)

Excerpt:

Throngs of union members and supporters gathered in Indianapolis Monday for a protest against a proposed bill in the Indiana House that would restrict collective bargaining rights and make it a misdemeanor to require any employee to join or pay dues to a union.

Republican state Rep. Jerry Torr, the bill’s author, described his proposal as a tool to attract business to Indiana. He told Fox59 in Indianapolis that prospective employers are avoiding the state because they’re worried about its work rules.

“What I’m trying to do is bring jobs to Indiana,” Torr said. “We have lost manufacturing jobs in Indiana because we are not a right-to-work state.”

[…]Currently 22 states have right-to-work laws, according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. Research by the National Conference of State Legislatures shows that several states in New England and in the northern Midwest are now considering right-to-work proposals.

Minnesota state Rep. Keith Downey wants right-to-work language enshrined in his state’s constitution — that’s part of a proposal he’s putting forward that would also slash the state work force and freeze pay.

Michigan’s Legislature is also weighing the idea of letting local jurisdictions create right-to-work zones. New Mexico, Connecticut and Alaska, among other states, have right-to-work bills currently in committee.

In Wisconsin, Walker is casting every component of his plan as critical.

He told “Fox News Sunday” that he’s not willing to hammer out a compromise that leaves collective bargaining rights in place — even if the state Senate Democrats who skipped town in order to prevent a vote agree on raising benefits contributions.

Walker said he wants to give local governments “the tools they need to balance the budget now and in the future” by changing the collective bargaining laws. His office released a fact sheet Monday giving examples of benefits won through collective bargaining, including health insurance that covers Viagara.

Plus, Walker said workers must have the “flexibility” to stay out of a union — and in turn avoid dues payments — if they choose.

“For us, if you want to have democracy, if you want to have the American way, which is allowing people to have a choice, that’s exactly what we’re allowing there,” Walker said. “People see the value, they see the work, they can continue to vote to certify that union and they can continue to voluntarily have those union dues, and write the check out and give it to the union to make their case, but they shouldn’t be forced to be a part of this if that’s not what they want to do.”

Teachers, for example, are really expensive… I am not sure we can afford to pay them as much as we do during a recession. (H/T Tina)

We really need to stop overpaying people with guaranteed jobs all these inflated salaries and benefits during a recession. There just aren’t enough of us out here working on goods and services to support the unions.

Videos

Michele Bachmann and Paul Ryan on the Wisconsin teacher union pensions

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First, Megyn Kelly explains the Wisconsin union crisis.

Michele Bachmann interviewed by Megyn Kelly:

Paul Ryan interviewed by Greta Van Susteren.

Paul Ryan also talks about Obama’s latest budget.

Ladies and gentlemen, the grown-up party.

UPDATE: Here’s a story for those who are Youtube-impaired.

Excerpt:

Two-thirds of the eighth graders in Wisconsin public schools cannot read proficiently according to the U.S. Department of Education, despite the fact that Wisconsin spends more per pupil in its public schools than any other state in the Midwest.

In the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests administered by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009—the latest year available—only 32 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned a “proficient” rating while another 2 percent earned an “advanced” rating. The other 66 percent of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders earned ratings below “proficient,” including 44 percent who earned a rating of “basic” and 22 percent who earned a rating of “below basic.”

The test also showed that the reading abilities of Wisconsin public-school eighth graders had not improved at all between 1998 and 2009 despite a significant inflation-adjusted increase in the amount of money Wisconsin public schools spent per pupil each year.

This is an issue we can win on.

News

Obama budget is a ten-year, $1.5 trillion tax hike over present law

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Here’s the analysis of Obama’s budget. (H/T The Blog Prof)

Excerpt:

President Obama released his budget this morning.  Rather than focusing on Washington’s over-spending problem, the budget calls for higher taxes on families and small businesses to pay for even more government spending.  Under the Obama budget, tax revenues will grow from 14.4% of GDP in 2011 to 20% of GDP in 2021.  By comparison, the historical average is only 18% of GDP.

Tax hike lowlights include:

  • Raising the top marginal income tax rate (at which a majority of small business profits face taxation) from 35% to 39.6%.  This is a $709 billion/10 year tax hike
  • Raising the capital gains and dividends rate from 15% to 20%
  • Raising the death tax rate from 35% to 45% and lowering the death tax exemption amount from $5 million ($10 million for couples) to $3.5 million.  This is a $98 billion/ten year tax hike
  • Capping the value of itemized deductions at the 28% bracket rate.  This will effectively cut tax deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions, property taxes, state and local income or sales taxes, out-of-pocket medical expenses, and unreimbursed employee business expenses.  A new means-tested phaseout of itemized deductions limits them even more.  This is a $321 billion/ten year tax hike
  • New bank taxes totaling $33 billion over ten years
  • New international corporate tax hikes totaling $129 billion over ten years
  • New life insurance company taxes totaling $14 billion over ten years
  • Massive new taxes on energy, including LIFO repeal, Superfund, domestic energy manufacturing, and many others totaling $120 billion over ten years
  • Increasing unemployment payroll taxes by $15 billion over ten years
  • Taxing management capital gains in an investment partnership (“carried interest”) as ordinary income.  This is a tax hike of $15 billion over ten years
  • A giveaway to the trial lawyers—not letting companies deduct the cost of punitive damages from a lawsuit settlement.  This is a tax hike of $300 million over ten years
  • Increasing tax penalties, information reporting, and IRS information sharing.  This is a ten-year tax hike of $20 billion.

Add it all together, and this budget is a ten-year, $1.5 trillion tax hike over present law. That’s $1.5 trillion taken out of the economy and spent on government instead of being used to create jobs.

The “tax relief” in the budget is mostly just an extension of present law, and also some refundable credit outlay spending in the tax code.  There is virtually no new tax relief relative to present law in the President’s budget.

So then how can the Obama administration claim that they are being fiscally responsible? Let’s see how. (H/T Hyscience)

Excerpt:

The Obama administration’s statement that the government will not be adding to the debt by the middle of the decade clashes hard against the facts, Republicans say, leaving officials straining to justify the budget claim they’ve pushed repeatedly over the past few days.

As it turns out, the administration is not counting interest payments. That means the budget team plans to have enough money to pay for ordinary spending programs by the middle of the decade. But it won’t have the money to pay off those pesky — rather, gargantuan — interest payments. So it will have to borrow some more, in turn increasing the debt and increasing the size of future interest payments year after year.

So how then, visibly agitated Republicans asked, can the administration claim that its 2012 spending plan sets the country on a course to “pay for what we spend” in just a few years?

Hyscience also linked to this McClatchy news article.

Excerpt:

He overlooks the fact that the government still would have to borrow to pay interest on the debt, much of it run up on his watch. Despite achieving “primary balance” in fiscal 2017, the government would have to borrow $627 billion to pay $627 billion in interest. Interest payments would rise annually through 2021.

Debt would rise as well, according to Obama’s proposed budget. Despite the budget reaching “primary balance,” the total gross government debt would rise from $21.9 trillion in fiscal 2017 to $22.9 trillion in 2018, $24 trillion in 2019, $25.2 trillion in 2020 and $26.3 trillion in 2021.

In all, the debt would jump by nearly $4.5 trillion in the four years after the government supposedly would stop adding to the debt because it had achieved “primary balance” – and that’s according to his own budget.

And a non-partisan fact-checking organization has found that Obama is lying about the budget. You can bet that the mainstream media will be backing him up, though.