Lowering Tax Rates Will Create Economic Turmoil?

President Obama's mouthpiece, errrr, top economic adviser Jason Furman recently came out against extending Bush tax cuts for Americans with the highest incomes.

The economic rationale he offered for not extending these tax cuts was, to say the very least, not remotely compelling.

"Jason Furman, deputy assistant to the president for economic policy, said a proposed short-term extension for the rich that some economists have advocated would put the country on a slippery slope it would be tough to pull back from.

"There is a concern that (if) you extend those tax cuts for even a year, and that is a way to get a foot in the door ... and make them permanent," he told an event in Washington on the impact of tax policy on families."

Again, for those of you too dense to understand Beltway logic, if the tax cuts are extended for a year, they could be then made permanent, which might then be a "slippery slope".

Got it?! Okay, good.

In all seriousness, the Democrat's opposition to extending the Bush tax cuts is entirely a political decision and has nothing to do with economics.

Trotting out the economic adviser to defend President Obama's stance on this matter is like asking the Secretary of Transportation to comment on the egg recall.

In what perverse universe do you have to live to think that enabling Americans to keep more of their hard-earned money somehow equates to a "slippery slope"?

Only in a world where politicians think that private property exists solely to allow them to regularly plunder it to pursue their own political goals.

In fact, allowing Americans to retain more of their private property is the only way to get us out of the current financial mess that the government has directly and indirectly put us into.

Geithner Favors Letting Tax Cuts Expire

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner today said that the Administration is in favor of allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the wealthiest of Americans:.

"Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said that allowing tax cuts for the wealthy to expire would be "the responsible thing to do."

This is the last year for the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush. Republicans have generally favored extending all of them. While Democrats are divided on the issue, President Barack Obama has favored allowing the expiration of cuts he says have applied to the wealthiest people.

"It's responsible to let the tax cuts expire that just go to 2 percent to 3 percent of Americans, the highest earning Americans," Geithner told ABC's "This Week" in an interview broadcast Sunday.

Doing so would show the world that the U.S. is "willing as a country now to start to make some progress" reducing long-term budget deficits, he said.

Geithner said he does not believe that higher taxes for those high earners will hurt economic growth."

It's difficult to know where to start with such idiocy.

1) Allowing tax cuts to expire "would be the responsible thing to do": What would actually be "responsible" is if the US government actually were to acknowledge that it was broke and will not remotely have sufficient funds to meet its future Social Security or Medicare obligations, nor pay-off its existing liabilities. Then we could have an honest debate as a country about what to do next. Continuing to pretend that we're not broke is the "irresponsible" thing to do.

2) Allowing tax cuts to expire demonstrates that the federal government is willing to "start to make some progress reducing long-term budget deficits": The Democrats have never, ever had any realistic plan to balance the budget, or even come close to doing that. The closest they came was when President Clinton was in office, but he was backed by a Republican-controlled Congress, so that doesn't count. Their meal-ticket voters are those that demand more and more "freebies" from the government, so don't count on them actually fighting this trend.

3) Allowing tax cuts to expire will not "hurt economic growth": is raising taxes on the most-productive Americans in the midst of a recession supposed to be the Democrat's idea of stimulus? Of course this will hurt the economy. Taking money from the most productive members of society and having a band of elected thugs divvy it up is not exactly the most efficient way for society to allocate scarce resources.

Timothy Geithner is a tax-evading mouthpiece who needs to be removed from his position and replaced by someone with actual real-world experience.

Better yet, Americans should throw the whole lot out of office before they permanently ruin this country.

Should Congress Let the Bush Tax Cuts Expire?

There is a growing debate about whether Congress should allow the so-called Bush tax cuts, which were originally enacted in 2001 with a 10 year sunset provision, to expire at the end of 2010 or extend them.

"Though the tax cuts passed by Congress with the encouragement of former President George W. Bush are often described as a boon for the wealthy, the changes passed in 2001 and 2003 lowered taxes for every income bracket.

Democrats have pledged to shield middle-class taxpayers from the Dec. 31 expiration though no action has been taken yet. Democratic leaders reportedly have suggested holding off taking up extending the cuts until after the November election and a report released by President Obama's debt commission."

Alan Greenspan, the alleged "Maestro" whose loose monetary policies while head of the Federal Reserve created one asset bubble after another, weighed in to say that the tax cuts should be allowed to expire in order to fix the deficit. Considering his track record on economic decisions, his "wisdom" can be safely ignored.

There is no question that the tax cuts at all levels should be extended. An extension for all Americans can be defended on at least two grounds.

1. With the country in the midst of economic recession, why would taking more money out of the pockets of Americans (by in effect raising taxes) be helpful to our economy? The federal government is certainly not suffering from a lack of money to spend.

2. The federal government already takes out a healthy-sized piece of the economic pie in the form of taxes. There's no reason this should increase, and any attention now being given to the budget deficit should be directed at creating a fix borne out of spending cuts, not tax hikes.