You are here: Home » Archives »

Why I oppose the tax deal – Jim DeMint

December 10, 2010 16:06

The bill now includes dozens of earmarks for special interests, including ethanol subsidies, tax breaks for film and television producers, give aways for Puerto Rican rum manufacturers, favors for auto racing track owners, and a hand out for businesses in American Samoa.

By Jim DeMint

Dear Fellow Conservatives:

Many of you have contacted me about the bipartisan tax deal reached between President Obama and Republican leaders. I’ve carefully reviewed the legislation and I wanted to explain to you why I cannot support it.

First, I do not want to see anyone’s taxes go up and I have been fighting for years to permanently extend all the tax rates. I disagree with the President that we cannot afford to extend these rates for everyone. It’s the people’s money and we should not raise taxes on hardworking American families.

But this bill does much more than simply extend tax rates.

For starters, it includes approximately $200 billion in new deficit spending and stimulus gimmicks. That’s a lot of money that will have to be borrowed from China and repaid by our children and grandchildren. If we’re going to increase spending on new programs, we must reduce other spending to pay for it.

The bill also only extends rates for two years. We don’t have a temporary economy so we shouldn’t have temporary tax rates. Individuals and businesses make decisions looking at the long-term and we’re not going to create jobs without giving people certainty as to what their taxes will be in future.

The bill also fails to extend all of the tax rates. It actually increases the death tax from its current rate of zero percent all the way up to 35 percent. One economic study shows that this tax increase alone will kill over 800,000 jobs over the next ten years.

Finally, the bill now includes dozens of earmarks for special interests, including ethanol subsidies, tax breaks for film and television producers, give aways for Puerto Rican rum manufacturers, favors for auto racing track owners, and a hand out for businesses in American Samoa.

The President called Republicans “hostage takers” this week but he should be pointing his figure squarely at himself. We’ve known for years that these tax rates were going to expire but he did nothing about it until the last minute. Now Americans are being told they have to accept hundreds of billions in new spending and stimulus gimmicks, an increase the death tax, and a bunch of unnecessary earmarks or their taxes will go up.

I’m not going to be bullied into voting for things that will hurt our country because politicians in Washington ignored the problem until it was a crisis.

Many of you fought hard to elect new leaders to the Senate this year with the expectation that they would fight deficit spending, tax hikes, and backroom deals. I take that commitment very seriously and I’m prepared to vote against this bill even if I’m the only one in the Senate to do so.

I appreciate the efforts made by my party’s leaders to negotiate this deal but I believe Americans deserve much better. This deal should be rejected and then fixed. We can easily extend these tax rates without increasing spending once the new crop of Republican senators, including Pat Toomey, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson, are sworn in. The President has already conceded that taxes cannot go up and we’ll have more Republicans in Congress in a few weeks to fight for a better deal.

Thank you for supporting the principles of freedom and for your continued encouragement. I will continue to do my very best to be your voice in the United States Senate.

Respectfully,

Jim DeMint
United States Senator
Chairman, Senate Conservatives Fund

Here’s our take:

GOP loses the first round

Fearing to be labeled as Scrooges for not extending unemployment benefits at Christmas the GOP caved on more spending to get the Bush tax cuts extended.

By Michael Whipple, Editor usACTIONnews.com

Fearing to be labeled as Scrooges for not extending unemployment benefits at Christmas the GOP caved on more spending to get the Bush tax cuts extended. Even though Democrats never use the word Christmas its all we heard when unemployment was mentioned.

Obama and the Dems will be seen as compassionate defenders of the poor and down trodden while the GOP gets stuck with the friends of the rich label.

Although the tax cuts were important to prevent a further decline in the economy it will be hard to prove a negative. As even Fed chairman Bernanke has said, jobs and the economy are likely to continue at this precariously slow pace for the next few years. What will the GOP have to point to? Will they begin to use the Obama mantra of jobs saved? The economy won’t be boosted by extending the tax cuts. It might be saved from falling off the cliff into another deeper recession.

So the GOP is left with having stuck to its guns on extending tax cuts ‘for the rich’ while yielding its supposedly new principled cut spending philosophy. This shows us that we do not have the political will to make sufficient cuts in spending to save the US from economic collapse.

The US is already bankrupt. The only thing propping up our economy is that the rest of the world is bankrupt too. No one wants to admit that the fiscal house of cards is teetering.

We are still playing the same old games. The Democrats are using the same old tired rants to justify ever more government spending. All of which is now adding to the debt that is already insurmountable.

The average family of four owes $1,525,000 of which they are unaware due to the spending that is already passed and on the books. Every feel good bill that the Democrats get passed adds to that debt. The national and state debts are growing so fast most people cannot stand to look at the debt clock.

History shows us why this debt reduction effort is doomed to fail. Business Insider notes that “Deficit hawks including Thomas Edison, Calvin Coolidge, Strom Thurmond and Bob Dole have all failed to stop the national debt from growing. George Washington thought $83 million was bad. Today we’re close to $14 trillion.”

In an article in the WSJ former Federal Reserve Chairamn Alan Greenspan pointed out the problem [emphasis added]:

“The current federal debt explosion is being driven by an inability to stem new spending initiatives. Having appropriated hundreds of billions of dollars on new programs in the last year and a half, it is very difficult for Congress to deny an additional one or two billion dollars for programs that significant constituencies perceive as urgent. The federal government is currently saddled with commitments for the next three decades that it will be unable to meet in real terms.” [Alan Greenspan in WSJ]

This is exactly what happened with unemployment benefits. What’s a few billion dollars more if it helps someone or buys a few votes. Even the multi-billion dollar USDA discrimination settlement was primarily used to buy votes and effect elections. The Democrats blocked the continued funding of National Public Radio. If we can’t even do without NPR funding what can be cut?

Monstrous ethanol subsidies have been shown to be bad for the environment and raise the price of food yet a supposedly conservative Senator Thune and fourteen other senators sent a letter to the senate leadership pushing to keep it. Why? Contributions for the 2012 race come from its beneficiaries. The same thing happens with subsidies for big sugar corporations, bailouts for GE and so many others.

Our political leaders consistently fail to put the future of our country first. The self interest of remaining in power by most members of both parties will doom us to economic chaos. Actually it already has.