Government
”The Congressional Budget Office has forecasted a fresh recession to hit next year if Taxmageddon, a nearly $500 billion tax increase, hits the nation and Congress and the President drive us off the ‘fiscal cliff.’ … In a new report, Heritage’s J.D. Foster explains that the very fact that we can see a recession coming is shocking. ‘Economic forecasters almost never forecast recessions,’ he says. … The problem is extremely clear. Congress has left town and isn’t scheduled to return until after the November election. With every day that passes, the economy drags, as the uncertainty of January 1 looms. … Business owners are looking at next year’s taxes already and thinking they can’t afford to hire. Investors are holding back from expansions and new ventures. This massive uncertainty is holding back all growth and keeping unemployment stubbornly above 8 percent, while millions have dropped out of the labor force because they are so discouraged. … Think about this: If you’re a middle-class American family, Taxmageddon means that your taxes are going up about $4,100 next year. … It starts to hit home that you have to come up with that $4,100 somehow. You’re going to have to make cuts in your lifestyle to be able to pay this tax increase. … As Foster said, ‘President Obama should demand that Congress return to defuse Taxmageddon, and Congress should immediately heed his call. The job need only take a few days away from their campaigning.’” –Heritage Foundation’s Amy Payne
For the Record
“Americans must be wondering how much more of this ‘recovery’ they can afford. New figures from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey, compiled by Sentier Research, show that the typical American household’s real (inflation-adjusted) income has actually dropped 5.7 percent during the Obama ‘recovery.’ Using constant 2012 dollars (to adjust for inflation), the median annual income of American households was $53,718 as of June 2009, the last month of the recession. Now, after 38 months of this ‘recovery,’ it has fallen to $50,678 — a drop of $3,040 per household. Yet it gets worse. Amazingly, incomes have dropped even more during the ‘recovery’ than they did during the recession. In fact, they’ve dropped more than twice as much as they did during the recession. From the start to the end of the recession, the real median income of American households fell $1,413, or 2.6 percent. From the end of the recession to the present day, it has dropped $3,040, or 5.7 percent. This begs the question: What kind of ‘recovery’ compares unfavorably with the recession from which it’s ostensibly recovering?” –The Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey H. Anderson
Political Futures
“For six months, [Mitt Romney’s] been matching Obama small ball for small ball. A hit-and-run critique here, a slogan-of-the-week there. His only momentum came when he chose Paul Ryan and seemed ready to engage on the big stuff: Medicare, entitlements, tax reform, national solvency, a restructured welfare state. Yet he has since retreated to the small and safe. When you’re behind, however, safe is fatal. Even his counterpunching has gone miniature. Obama has successfully painted Romney as an out of touch, unfeeling plutocrat whose only interest is to cut taxes for the rich. Romney has complained in interviews that it’s not true. He has proposed cutting tax rates, while pledging that the share of the tax burden paid by the rich remains unchanged (by ‘broadening the base’ as in the wildly successful, revenue-neutral Reagan-O’Neill tax reform of 1986). But how many people know this? Where is the speech that hammers home precisely that point, advocates a reformed tax code that accelerates growth without letting the rich off the hook, and gives lie to the Obama demagoguery about dismantling the social safety net in order to enrich the rich? … Make the case. Go large. About a foreign policy in ruins. About an archaic, 20th-century welfare state model that guarantees 21st-century insolvency. And about an alternate vision of an unapologetically assertive America abroad unafraid of fundamental structural change at home. It might just work. And it’s not too late.” –columnist Charles Krauthammer
Opinion in Brief
“At home, unemployment is stuck above 8 percent. Twenty-three million are out of work. Millions of others have given up looking for jobs. One American in six is on food stamps. Small businesses are terrified of ObamaCare. The economy ran out of gas four years ago and the president still thinks the only way to get it going again is to fill up the tank with trillions of dollars of debt and make successful people pay for the tow truck. Overseas, we have a dead ambassador and three other dead Americans in Libya. Dozens of our embassies are being threatened by mobs. Iran is building a nuke. Syria is mired in a bloody civil war. Egypt’s new democracy is turning against us. … Meanwhile, what does President ‘Eye Candy’ do [last] week? He goes before the United Nations and can’t bring himself to even mention the words ‘Islamic extremists.’ … But in their perverse way of thinking, the Obama Gang wants the American people to believe Romney is a bad guy for creating wealth and being a successful businessman. Americans are supposed to be angry with Romney for paying ‘only’ 14 percent in taxes or reducing his federal tax bite by giving $4 million to charity in 2011. … Mitt needs to show us how angry he is at what Obama has done to America. He needs to show us he’s as ‘mad as hell’ and can’t take it for another four years. Come on, Mitt — get as mad as the rest of us.” –columnist Michael Reagan