Tag Archives: Obama

Videos

Michele Bachmann explains the impact of health care mandates on small businesses

Leave a comment

Michele Bachmann explains what would happen if small businesses were forced to provide health care for their employees.

There are really too many companies – some of the small ones should just go out of business. People don’t really need a choice of employers, do they? Wouldn’t it be much better if everyone were taken care of by the government? Then we would all be equal, just like the socialists want! Free labor markets and right-to-work laws are so nasty, because people are paid different salaries. It’s not fair!

Gateway Pundit linked to a video of John Kyl, who explains the problems with Obamacare.

The Republican plan:

“Republicans have put forward common-sense ideas, including rooting out Medicare and Medicaid fraud, reforming medical liability laws to discourage frivolous lawsuits, strengthening wellness and prevention programs that encourage healthy living, and allowing small businesses to band together and purchase health insurance like large corporations do.

“These changes do not require government takeover of the healthcare system, or massive new spending, job-killing taxes, or rationing of care.

The Democrat plan:

“Democrats in Congress have a different approach. Their plan would increase spending by more than two trillion dollars when fully implemented, and would, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, “’add additional costs onto an already unsustainable system.’

“It would empower Washington, not doctors and patients, to make health care decisions and would impose a new tax on working families during a recession. A study by the respected Lewin Group shows it would also move millions of people who are happy with their current insurance to a new government plan.

“They propose to pay for this new Washington-run health care system by dramatically raising taxes on small business owners. Small businesses create jobs — approximately two-thirds of new jobs in the last decade.

“With a shaky economy and the need for new jobs, the last thing the President and the Congress should do is impose new taxes on America’s small businesses. New taxes on small business would cripple job creation, especially jobs for low-wage earners.

Don’t forget about my post from last week with all the wonderful podcasts. I listened to them all again, taking notes, and re-organized them with headings for you. They are awesome! Plus I read some more of the Regina Hertzlinger book. A lot of people came by to ask me about it while I was reading it, including the waitress! She could barely speak English, but I tried to explain it to her anyway.

Commentary

What did Reagan do when he inherited a recession?

Leave a comment
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan

Here is a piece from Bloomberg from Amity Shlaes. (H/T The Western Experience)

Excerpt:

Double-digit unemployment looms. The country is in a funk. The federal budget deficit is widening to an extent not seen in decades.

This scenario isn’t new. It also describes the U.S. in 1982. Somehow, the 1980s and the 1990s turned out to be pretty good years. So it’s worthwhile to compare current policy to the one followed then.

…Today, taxes are on their way up. Whether it will be abolishing some of the tax deductibility of health care or increasing taxes on soda, President Barack Obama and Congress are clearly signaling the direction in which they want to move. Most tax increases under discussion would make the rich, or companies, the first to pay. The justification offered for this is that the federal government needs the money and may know how to spend it better than the private sector, anyhow.

…In the early 1980s, the view on taxes was the opposite: get them down. The Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, enacted by Ronald Reagan, pushed tax rates down for wealthy and non-wealthy alike. The capital gains tax rate dropped to 20 percent. When Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986, the top marginal rate on income taxes fell to 28 percent.

Is Obama right? Or was Reagan right?

The coming tax increases

The Wall Street Journal reports on some of the new taxes Obama wants to impose.

The [health care] bill’s main financing comes from another tax increase on top of the increase already scheduled for 2011 under Mr. Obama’s budget. The surtax starts at one percentage point for adjusted gross income above $350,000 in 2011, rising to two points in 2013; a 1.5 point surtax at incomes above $500,000, rising to three in 2013; and a whopping 5.4 percentage points in 2011 and beyond on incomes above $1 million.

And what happens when you tax the rich?

House Democrats… claim that this surtax would raise $544 billion in new revenue over 10 years. America’s millionaires aren’t that stupid; far fewer of them will pay these rates for very long, if at all. They will find ways to shelter income, either by investing differently or simply working less. Small businesses that pay at the individual rate will shift to pay the 35% corporate rate. When the revenue doesn’t materialize, Democrats will move to soak the middle class with a European-style value-added tax.

It should be noted that a value-added sales tax disproportionately hurts the poor.

News

MUST-SEE: New ad compares Obama’s job-creation rhetoric then and now

1 Comment

The video is up at Hot Air. (H/T 4Simpsons)

So what is the unemployment rate now? How well is Obammunism working?

WHTR News reports:

President Obama’s $787 billion stimulus bill to revive the economy is a staggering figure. So why then is there talk in Washington about a possible second stimulus package to jolt the American economy out of recession?

Economists say that only 10 percent of stimulus dollars have been spent and the president’s plan has been criticized for not creating enough jobs.

“You can’t justify it logically. You have to justify it politically and that’s what this comes down to. It’s political distribution of dollars,” said Matt Will, University of Indianapolis.

When the president signed the Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law in February, he said it would create new jobs. Yet unemployment now stands at almost 9.7 percent, the highest in over two decades.

When will voters learn that there is no way to stimulate an economy by spending? The right way to stimulate an economy is by creating jobs, by passing laws to encourage businesses to expand and hire more employees. For example, we could have spent 400 billion dollars and cut the employer portion of payroll taxes, so American workers would go on sale. The Democrat porkulus bills (1 and 2) did noting to create private sector jobs.

Remember, Democrats caused this recession and Republicans tried to stop them. Why should we trust Democrats to get us out of the mess they put us into?