Say Anything Blog

Apparently for the express purpose of giving Republicans an excuse to vote for it, but can you say “lipstick on a pig?”

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama plans to include about $300 billion in tax cuts for workers and businesses in his economic recovery program as he seeks to win over Congressional skeptics worried that he was too focused on government spending, advisers said Sunday.

The legislation Mr. Obama’s team is developing with Congressional Democrats will devote about 40 percent of the cost to tax cuts, including his centerpiece campaign promise to provide credits up to $500 for most workers, costing roughly $150 billion. The package will also include more than $100 billion in tax incentives for businesses to create jobs and invest in equipment or factories.

The overall package, of $675 billion to $775 billion, is taking shape as Mr. Obama arrived in Washington and planned to begin trying to build support in Congress and among the broader public for his approach to stimulating the economy. Mr. Obama, who flew to the capital Sunday to join his family in a hotel suite while awaiting his inauguration, planned to meet with Congressional leaders on Monday and deliver a speech on Thursday laying the ground for his emerging economic program.

Remember when the liberals told us that Bush’s tax cuts were bad, because raising spending while you cut taxes is a bad thing?  Double standards are lovely, aren’t they?

But aside from tax cuts hardly being a good excuse for a spending package that represents 5% of our GDP, there are a lot of other reasons to mistrust Obama’s proposed tax relief as Peter Kirsanow points out:

Apparently, the theory is that if you wave $300 billion in tax cuts in front of Republicans, they’ll give you a green light to spend nearly $500 billion.
— Even if Joe the Plumber would recognize a significant portion of the $300 billion in purported tax cuts as something more akin to “spreading the wealth.”
— Even if there doesn’t appear to be any guarantee that the spending will be coterminous with the tax cuts.
— Even if there’s a good probability the spending will be wholly unrelated to addressing the recession (See, e.g., Thomas Sowell’s column today).
— Even if there’s a good probability that a good chunk of the spending will become a permanent feature of the federal budget (See, e.g., recent U.S. history).
— Even if the $500 billion is probably just a down payment on even more spending liberals plan to do down the road.
— Even though we’ll be adding titanic sums to both the federal deficit and debt — promising more fun and games in the future.

I don’t care how much tax relief Obama tacks on his spending spree, we still can’t afford to spend that money.  And if we do spend it, it won’t do our economy any good.

What we need is tax relief, and by that I mean real tax relief.  Not higher taxes for people who already pay the most in taxes and checks from the IRS for people who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.