Fred Thompson: Renew the Bush Tax Cuts
Check out Thompson's pitch at left. "Folks, America's economy is struggling, and Congress is about to make it a whole lot worse," he says, warning of the "massive, automatic tax increase" to come if the cuts aren't extended.
Thompson suggests that income taxes could then increase "10 percent or more," while taxes on capital gains will increase 30 percent and taxes on dividends will more than double.
The effects of not renewing the cuts, he says, will be "devastating."
Republicans and some Democrats (including three senators) are pushing for an extension of all the cuts, and have argued that government revenue would be higher if that happens because lower taxes spur economic growth.
According to Fox News' Chris Wallace, extending the cuts for high earners would cost the government $678 billion over 10 years. Many Republican-leaning voters, particularly those associated with the Tea Party movement, have expressed frustration about the size of the deficit and national debt.
Under the Obama administration plan, the 0.7 percent of married, jointly-filing Americans who make more than $373,650 would see their marginal tax rate increase from 35 percent to 39.6 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. For the 1.2 percent making between $209,251 and $373,650, it would increase from 33 percent to 36 percent.
The Thompson ad is currently running on Fox News Channel and elsewhere.
"A massive tax increase in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression would be cataclysmic to our nation's broken economy," Bob Adams, executive director of the League of American Voters, said in a release touting the spot.
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Actual effects of letting Bush tax cuts for rich expire
A non-partisan Congressional analysis gets beyond the rhetoric ("Obama is increasing taxes") and into the reality of what allowing the Bush cuts to expire for the most wealthy will do to those at the top -- and to the rest of us. Bottom line: the rich will still pay a lot less than they were paying in 2001 and the rest of us will stay at the lower post-2001 rates.
Taxpayers with income of more than $1 million for 2011 would still receive on average a tax cut of about $6,300 compared with what they would have paid under rates in effect until 2001, according to the analysis, which was prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation at the request of the Democratic majority on the House Ways and Means Committee.
That compares, however, with the roughly $100,000 average tax cut that households with more than $1 million in income would receive under current rates. Filers with taxable income of $500,000 to $1 million would still get on average a tax cut of $6,700 compared with pre-2001 rates, according to the data from the tax analysts. But that compares with roughly $17,500 if the top Bush tax rates were maintained.
If the president gets his way, in 2011 the top two income tax rates ? now 33 percent and 35 percent ? would revert to the levels before the Bush administration, 36 percent and 39.6 percent, respectively. But the four lower rates would remain 10 percent, 15 percent, 25 percent and 28 percent. For some taxpayers earning up to $250,000, the top marginal rate would remain 33 percent. ...NYT
If, on the other hand, the Republicans were to get their way and the scheduled expiration of the Bush tax cuts were extended across the board, the already burdensome national debt of the Bush years would increase by $3.8 trillion.
In other words, the party that screams the loudest about debt is also fighting to expand that debt. The same hypocrites also yell about what "expiring" the tax cuts for the richest will do to small business. Huh?
...They say Mr. Obama is about to spring a big tax increase on many small-business owners who file their taxes as individuals. Analyses from the Joint Committee on Taxation and the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan research organization, show that less than 3 percent of filers with small-business income pay at the top two income tax rates, and many of those are doctors and lawyers in partnerships.
The analysis comes from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
That tax cheat Geithner is only doing his master's bidding, and President Obama wants to expand the federal government at the expense of businesses and individual taxpayers. A n expiration of the tax cuts would redirect money from the economy and into Washington. We need jobs. We need to grow economic growth, so that jobs can be created in private businesses.
What's a person hauling in $373,650 per year going to spend his money on? Why, more investments to make more money and on more extravagant toys! So what if he has to stay at the Plaza instead of the Four Seasons!
$373,650 would see their marginal tax rate would increase from 35 percent to 39.6
Why is it moral to "soak the rich"? Why is it moral to take a higher PERCENTAGE of their income than anyone else? After all, their money...whether it is $50,000 or $5million, is still theirs.
What do you think a person does with their money?
And if he can stay afloat, you make sure that he doesnt expand or hire new people.
My wife and I are in this very same boat. With taxes set to increase next year, plus the Obamacare boondoggle, we are not expanding as we would have...and we are shipping two jobs overseas to India in order to make up for some of these tax increases.
Now, who lost out? Me? Nope...I am still bringing into my house as much or more than I was. The two employees I would have hired to expand never got hired. Thus, two more people off of unemployment...AND providing taxes. And the two jobs we are shipping overseas (thus two of our employees will lose their jobs at the end of the year) will now have to draw unemployment AND wont pay taxes.
See where this is going?
And how does Fred Thompson propose to balance the budget? He wants to eliminate Social Security and Medicare, forcing millions of senior citizens out of their homes where they will die penniless on street corners. Of course, Thompson conveniently forgets that we pay into social security and Medicare, so he is really stealing the money that millions of people put away for their retirement, so he can ride around in a fancy jet. The same applies also to 401K's. If Fred Thompson had his way, everyone would put their money into 401K's. Then Fred Thompson and his buddies would steal that money so they could buy new mansions.
The rich are unpatriotic, anit-American parasites. They off-shore American jobs to other countries. They want abolish minimum wage laws, so that Americans will work for $ 2 a day. They want to eliminate unions and all worker safety provisions, so that thousands of workers will be killed and maimed each year. They want to import "guest workers" whom they treat as slaves. Now they are demonizing "illegal immigrants", but when they have a gala fund-raising banquet, whom do they hire to do all the kitchen work - the same illegal aliens they love to hate. The rich have had tax holidays for years. All they do is start wars, buy elections, hire lobbyists, poison the air and the water supply and murder their employees. They don't deserve a tax break. They must be made to pay for the death, destruction and damage they have wrought upon the American people.