The deficit trap snaps shut.
by John Hayward
05/17/2012
Former President Bill Clinton, who may or may not be amusing himself by trying to torpedo the Obama re-election campaign, dropped this little nugget of wisdom at a fiscal summit in Washington on Tuesday, according to a Politico report:
“This is just me now, I’m not speaking for the White House — I think you could tax me at a 100 percent and you wouldn’t balance the budget,” said Clinton, who has earned tens of millions of dollars since leaving office.“We are all going to have to contribute to this, and if middle class people’s wages were going up again, and we had some growth to the economy, I don’t think they would object to going back to tax rates [from] when I was president” - before the Bush tax cuts.
The former president’s remarks about his own tax rate seemed to be a reference to Obama’s “Buffett Rule,” named after billionaire Warren Buffett, which proposes higher taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Clinton asserted that when he was at the White House, “very few people” thought they were being overtaxed.
Still, the 42nd president also acknowledged the challenge of finding a tax plan that would satisfy the majority of the American public given a political climate that is not conducive to compromise.
“We can’t be in a position where one of the negotiating partners says that’s non-negotiable. Not only will we not raise taxes, we want the Bush tax cuts and we want more tax cuts and we want the right to disregard what the Congressional Budget Office says that our budget will do. You can’t do that,” Clinton said. “It’s hard to have a deal if there’s no arbiter.”
Solution: give a liberal absolute power to be the “arbiter.”
Clinton concluded, “I think you could get there. I believe you can put together enough Democrats if you can make the simple argument that you simply cannot spend all your money on the present and the past.” But that’s not the problem. The problem is that we’re spending all the future’s money on the present, and forging iron chains of obligation that will be used to control our children when they come of age.
Keep in mind that this man lied through his teeth to win his weird 42 percent election in 1992, by promising the middle class a tax cut. Once he was safely ensconced in office, he made a big show of claiming he stayed up all night trying to figure out a way to deliver that promised cut, but he just couldn’t do it. He was practically in tears when he made the announcement. Clinton doubtless assumes everyone has forgotten all that by now. The mainstream press certainly won’t bother reminding them.
Behold the rusty jaws of the deficit bear trap, spring-loaded with years of irresponsible spending. Dependent constituencies are built, as politicians bind future sessions of Congress the only way they can: by handing them gigantic bills that must be paid. Instead of becoming a tide that sweeps socialists out of office, this debt instead becomes a weapon for increasing their power. We really didn’t want to raise your taxes, honest! But the debt is so huge now, we just don’t have a choice!
Set aside the tired Democrat frauds of yesteryear and their successors, and understand this: every tax increase is a middle-class tax increase. You pay all of them, in one form or another, because the “middle class” – an artificial leftist construct that describes no common group of people or interests – is where all the money is. Every corporate tax comes out of your wallet. Every tax on the Evil Rich bubbles down through the economy, hindering growth and destroying jobs.
Wealth drained from the private sector causes government receipts to collapse… which only makes their demand for even higher taxes more insistent, until they declare they have “no choice” but to thrust their hands into the pockets of the “working Americans” they promised to spare from shouldering any of the burden. The next generation of statists will weep even harder, as they take even more.
Every time you allow liberals to spend money they don’t have, you are handing them bricks to imprison the future.
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To read another article by John Hayward, click here.
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