Obama's Big Spending Ways Will Mean More Tax Hikes
Posted 06:29 PM ET
Taxes: President Obama said over the weekend that there is “no doubt” the federal government needs more revenues. But that's true only if you assume Obama's oversized government is here to stay.
In his Super Bowl Sunday interview with Obama, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley asked him if, after having just wrangled a major tax increase on wealthier families, he was done with tax hikes.
Obama's answer: No way. “There is no doubt,” he said, “we need additional revenue.”
No doubt? Really? This after Obama raised taxes $500 billion to help pay for ObamaCare, and after he piled on another $620 billion as part of the “fiscal cliff” deal at the start of this year.
As a result, federal revenues will climb roughly 8% this year, 10.5% next year and 12.3% the year after that. And from 2016-22, federal revenues are projected to increase an average of almost 6% a year, according to Congressional Budget Office data.
As a share of GDP, federal revenues will be 19% (and climbing) by 2017 — which is well in excess of the 17.9% average of the previous 60 years. In dollar terms, that means Washington will take in $220 billion more in 2017 alone than it would have if revenues-per-GDP were kept to the historic average.
Does any of this strike anyone as insufficient?
So given these facts, why is there “no doubt” in Obama's mind that we need more taxes? Simply put: Because federal spending is out of control and Obama refuses to confront that problem, leaving him no choice but to claim that more tax hikes are inevitable.
In his CBS interview, Obama did manage to tip his hat to spending cuts, saying that, gosh, “there's still some waste in government.” But waste isn't the problem — it's the huge growth in federal entitlement spending, a problem Obama will massively accelerate once ObamaCare fully kicks in. By 2022, federal spending will account for 22.3% of GDP, and be headed higher.
A Government Accountability Office report says that growth in entitlements, including ObamaCare, has put the government on “an unsustainable long-term fiscal path.” Unless Obama confronts this head-on, he'll have to do a lot more than close a few loopholes and kill some deductions to fill the gap. The GAO figures that without heavy entitlement reform, taxes will have to go up 46% to keep debt as a share of GDP at today's inflated levels.
Which is why the left is suddenly admitting that taxes will have to go up on everyone to pay for Obama's grand government vision. The only question is whether Obama will admit it, too
via No Doubt: Obama's Big Spending Will Mean More Tax Hikes on Everyone – Investors.com.
