Common Sense: No new taxes!

What a shock. The president wants to raise taxes and our U.S.Senator Charles Schumer thinks that might be the way to go. Raisingtaxes is the easy solution for every liberal New York Statepolitician when confronted with deficits and the need forcuts.

It’s a pattern we see over and over again regardless of continuedhigh unemployment, the endless migration of manufacturing jobsoverseas and a debt crisis that has pummeled our equity andfinancial markets.

And for decades, albeit very slowly due to Republican roadblocksboth in the White House and in Congress, we have seen entitlementprograms including pension, health and drug insurance programs takeon an eerie likeness to the social engineering that has takenGreece and so many other European nations to the economicmat.

I often say when talking about taxes that there are only 100 onepercents before you have it all. I think that is worth noting whenyou hear the likes of Schumer, Reid, Obama and Pelosi tell you thatthey want to raise your taxes by what amounts to only a few percenton top of what we already pay. In New York City, a solidly middleclass family of four that owns a home could easily be seeing 35percent of its income going to pay various taxes. And this does notinclude all the fees and tolls our city and state charge itsresidents.

Now you tell me – do you feel you are getting your money’sworth?!

Of course, significantly cutting the deficit without raising taxesis very difficult. Supply side economics proven by President Reaganto work can only get you so far. In the past few months, theRepublican House has successfully cut the deficit by almost 100billion dollars through various resolutions. That’s more than thestate budgets of New Jersey and Connecticut combined. You may nothave known it and I very much doubt you felt it.

Yet this is only a drop in the bucket of what needs to be done.Real deficit cutting will involve real pain. Obama Care needs to beredesigned to be no more than a safety net and the overly generousprescription drug coverage put into effect during the Bushadministration needs to be overhauled.

Pulling back on a number of our international aid programs wouldsave many billions of dollars. Much of what the U.S. spends inforeign economic aid simply goes into the coffers of corruptgovernments.

The Congressional Budget Office has discovered billions of dollarsin duplicative and/or waste in everything from purchases of officesupplies to farm programs. Changes must be made to ensure thatthese cuts are made.

And the United States must demand that foreign governments pay agreater share of the financial burden brought about by ourcontinued presence in three separate wars. Incredibly, in justfiring cruise missiles at Libya, the United States has spent moremoney than the combined costs to all of our allies.

Significantly decreasing the federal deficit is appropriately a toppriority of our government. Reducing it by raising taxes would be amistake that will negatively impact on the quality-of-life forworking people and those on fixed incomes. And worse yet, it willmake it harder for the unemployed to find jobs.