By Andrew P. Napolitano
The president's men trash the Constitution to pursue antagonists
The Congressional Budget Office said Thursday it will use a type of "dynamic scoring" to evaluate the new Senate immigration bill, dealing a major victory to the legislation's backers.
Congress is poised to clear the final $50 billion chunk of emergency aid for Superstorm Sandy relief Monday — and in one vote, it will have used up all the new tax money President Obama won by raising rates on the wealthy in the "fiscal cliff" deal.
The new year kicked off with Washington's failure to deal with its spending addiction. Far from restraining outlays, the "fiscal cliff" package is yet another budget-buster cooked up by Congress and the White House.
Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney declared Thursday he has paid at least 13 percent of his income in federal taxes every year for the past decade, offering that new detail while still decrying a "small-minded" fascination over returns he will not release. President Barack Obama's campaign shot back in doubt: "Prove it."
President Obama the class warrior is dashing the hopes of the unemployed on his quest for re-election. In the wake of Friday's disappointing Labor Department announcement that a measly 80,000 jobs were created last month, Mr. Obama said he wants to punish a million job creators with higher taxes.
Republicans have finally figured out how to corner President Obama on the tax issue. Within six months, Americans will be hit with a $4.3 trillion tax hike supported by Mr. Obama. By moving to pass legislation next month to stop "Taxmaggedon," the GOP is putting itself on the side of ordinary Americans.
Republicans are calling it "Taxmageddon," the big tax increase awaiting nearly every American family at the end of the year, when a long list of tax cuts is scheduled to expire unless Congress acts.
With the federal government poised to run its fourth consecutive $1 trillion-plus budget deficit this year, the question arises: Is the deficit the result of too much spending or too little taxing? To answer that question, consider the following:
Looking to draw more blood from President Obama's health care law, House Republicans voted Wednesday to require Americans who are set to collect too much subsidy money in the insurance exchanges to pay back every dime - a move that could kick thousands of American out of the exchanges.
It's bad enough that U.S. citizens have to deal with the Internal Revenue Service and its incomprehensible rules, but Congress is about to export much of this bureaucracy overseas. In the name of taxing away a bit of profit made by Americans living overseas, much more costly harm will be done to the U.S. economy.
The supercommittee went belly-up because Democrats demanded huge tax increases before they would give ground on even the smallest of spending cuts. Hope for corporate tax reform was thought to have died with the failed congressional deficit-reduction body until some of its Republican members revived the plan.
Defying President Obama, Congress seems increasingly reluctant to let taxes go up, even on wealthier Americans.
With the economy sputtering, Democrats have signaled they will turn a September Senate showdown on a small-business lending bill into a key test of who is working to boost jobs. But Republicans instead are focusing attention on the impending expiration of Bush tax cuts, which they say would hurt those small businesses.
Do you think more government spending helps economic growth or harms it? On Friday, the White House again increased its federal budget deficit forecast and reduced its economic growth forecast for 2011. It is abundantly clear that the economic program the administration and Democratic Congress instituted 18 months ago - primarily massive increases in government spending - is not working as advertised. Surprise, surprise.
