OPINION:
Over the next decade, President Obama plans on increasing taxes by $1.4 trillion, offset by his planned $300 billion in tax cuts. But his spending splurge will increase so much that Mr. Obama will add $5.1 trillion to the national debt over the next five years and $8.5 trillion over 10 years. This will be on top of the $1.4 trillion deficit we ran last year. At the end of these 10 years, the publicly held national debt will nearly double to $18 trillion.
Even Mr. Obama’s own estimates put all the other tax-and-spend liberals to shame. And Mr. Obama hasn’t even gotten his massive, costly takeover of the health care system and his even more costly cap-and-tax proposal. It is not as if Americans couldn’t survive with a smaller amount of government spending - eight years ago, the budget was about half as big as Mr. Obama’s proposal.
Next year, despite Mr. Obama’s frequent campaign promises not to raise taxes on those making less than $250,000, people currently in the 10 percent, 25 percent, 28 percent, 33 percent and 36 percent personal income tax rates will all face higher tax rates. This is not the first time that Mr. Obama has broken or tried to break this promise, but higher marginal income tax rates will completely obliterate yet another Obama promise.
Yet, with all these new taxes, this coming year’s deficit is likely to run to $1.6 trillion, a new record that would surpass the massive record $1.4 trillion set just last year. If you add last year’s deficit to what Mr. Obama would like to see happen over the next decade, that $10.1 trillion debt will bankrupt the country. For a family of four, that debt would equal $134,700. Americans need to ask themselves what they could have done for themselves with that much money. How many new firms could have opened and how many more productive jobs would there be in the private sector if the government weren’t taking up all these resources?
During the 2008 campaign, then-Sen. Obama attacked the George W. Bush administration during the third presidential debate: “But there is no doubt that we’ve been living beyond our means and we’re going to have to make some adjustments.” But Mr. Bush’s deficits, even including the relatively high deficits generated largely by a Congress completely controlled by Democrats, averaged well less than $400 billion per year.
Even by the year 2020, Mr. Obama’s own estimates indicate that the annual budget deficit will be $1 trillion. If we were living beyond our means when Sen. Obama was running for president, we’re now living beyond our means and our children’s means and our grandchildren’s means and …
