Obama's Trillion Dollar Deficits and Taxes

Reader Comments
Back to blog

...tax rates that rise and fall as the political pendulum swings right and left. This contributes to the extreme swings we suffer in the business cycle. How is anyone supposed to run a business with this nonsense. Here's a law I'd like to see:
No Administration / congress can raise any tax more than 1% in any year. If you want higher taxes you gotta vote on them every single year. No tax cuts with susnset provisions either. Get the focus off the tax rates and back to the ridiculous levels of spending. Sure, Bush blew his opportunity to claim fiscal restraint for Republicans but Democrats are not any better in that regard. Obama is not the anti-Bush, slashing spending left and right. The majority of our problems are entitlements and were set in stone decades ago and made worse over time. Both parties and 99% of all political hacks are to blame. Tom Coburn is the only Senator I know of who has the guts to face these problems head on.
Our gutless politicians better be building bomb shelters with all their ill-gotten gains because when the stuff hits the fan the public is going to want to lynch all of them.

Patrick J. Duggan of IL 3:52PM January 07, 2009

Mr. Obama is inheriting a trillion dollar deficit from Mr. Bush and the Republicans in charge of congress for 12 of the last 14 years.
Mr. Obama promises to incur his own less than another trillion dollar deficit, but by creating yet another bureau in the form of a "Chief Performance Officer", he hopes to trim enough fat out of the country's largest employer--the U.S. government--to partially offset his own deficit spending over the course of as yet unknown a period of time.
We all hope it works somehow and recognize that he has already started creating his 3 million new jobs with the establishment of that new office with no announcement of how large of staff that officer will be allowed.

HillbillyBill of TN 2:34PM January 07, 2009

Mr. Obama is inheriting a trillion dollar deficit from Mr. Bush and the Republicans in charge of congress for 12 of the last 14 years.
Mr. Obama promises to incur his own less than another trillion dollar deficit, but by creating yet another bureau in the form of a "Chief Performance Officer", he hopes to trim enough fat out of the country's largest employer--the U.S. government--to partially offset his own deficit spending over the course of as yet unknown a period of time.
We all hope it works somehow and recognize that he has already started creating his 3 million new jobs with the establishment of that new office with no announcement of how large of staff that officer will be allowed.

HillbillyBill of TN 2:34PM January 07, 2009

Tax cuts now for middle class? Yes.
Future tax cuts on capital gains? No way. This tax is too low now and has been for too long. This has been one of the reasons for a string of booms and busts in stocks, commodities and real estate.
Cap gains should be taxed as high as earned income. ALWAYS.

of 1:01PM January 07, 2009