It's our money. It is not Washington's. Now, the Rasmussen people have a new poll out, and notwithstanding the media blitz in support of the Obama stimulus plan, most Americans, Rasmussen finds, are skeptical. Rasmussen finds that 59% fear that Congress and the president will increase government spending too much in the next year or two. Only 17% worry that they will cut taxes too much. The American people, in polling, are not certain that the Obama stimulus plan is the way to go, despite what you're hearing from the Drive-By Media.
So it seems to me that there may be an opportunity here and now for genuine compromise and to establish at the same time as this genuine compromise, evidence for how to deal with future recession so that this no longer becomes a matter of partisan debate each time it happens, because recessions are going to happen. My proposal is designed to illustrate once and for all how to deal with them.
Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $1 trillion, $1 trillion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. Congress wants to spend -- think of this now -- $1 trillion that they don't have until you and I go to work and pay taxes. They want to spend this on a stimulus plan. They want to take it out of our pockets and redistribute this money in their way to their constituents and to their make-work projects like schools, roads, bridges, blah, blah, blah.
This does not have to be a divisive issue. It does not have to be in any way, shape, manner, or form a divisive issue. So I have a proposal. As has been noted, elections have consequences. President Obama in the meeting on Friday with House and Senate Republican leaders, Eric Cantor from Virginia in the House proposed a moderate tax cut plan. Obama said, Well, you know, "I won." I'm going to trump you on that. We're not going to do that.
Well, where's the bipartisanship, President Obama? There is no bipartisanship in President Obama's plan. President Obama's definition of bipartisanship is when Republicans cave and agree with his plan so he can then claim it's bipartisan. But he's not compromising on anything here.
Mine is a genuine compromise. So let's look at how the vote came out, shall we? Fifty-three percent of voters in this country -- we'll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans -- voted for Obama. Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Let's give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let's say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats. The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me.
These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts. So Obama gets $540 billion to spend his way. The other people of this country who did not vote for his way get $460 billion spent the way they would like it spent. This is bipartisanship! This is how bipartisanship really works. Okay, Obama wins by a 54-46 majority, so he gets 54% of the trillion bucks. Spend it his way. We get 46% of the trillion bucks to spend our way, and then we compare. Then we see which stimulus actually works and works the fastest, and I will guarantee you that if this plan is adopted, just the announcement that $460 billion will go toward paying for tax cuts, capital gains, and corporate tax rates -- we could throw in some personal income tax rate reduction in order to make sure that the voters don't think it's all about helping the big guys. But we need jobs, do we not?
Who hires people? Businesses! Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It's 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. Make the capital gains rate go away for three months, and then get out of the way to see what happens on Wall Street. And once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, you watch what happens to the rest of the private sector. It will follow right along. This would ensure a bipartisan compromise bill, as Democrats have said that they're always about. It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a test, going forward, as to which approach best stimulates the growth of jobs -- and it can be measured side by side. It could be determined where the new jobs are coming from.
And if President Obama would merely say -- if he would merely say -- that he will take this proposal under serious consideration, we would then see the reaction from the financial markets, which tend to be a barometer of the economy going forward. That is, if President Obama said that he thought this compromise proposal was worth his time to look at, the markets could react to that, just the way they did when President Clinton announced that he had reached agreement in principle with Republicans to balance the budget in the nineties. The market reacted positively to that news. Not to a formal bill signing, but to the news. If we have learned anything in recent months, the financial markets more than ever look to Washington for direction.
So it seems to me that there may be an opportunity here and now for genuine compromise and to establish at the same time as this genuine compromise, evidence for how to deal with future recession so that this no longer becomes a matter of partisan debate each time it happens, because recessions are going to happen. My proposal is designed to illustrate once and for all how to deal with them.
Congress is currently haggling over how to spend $1 trillion, $1 trillion generated by American taxpayers in the private sector. Congress wants to spend -- think of this now -- $1 trillion that they don't have until you and I go to work and pay taxes. They want to spend this on a stimulus plan. They want to take it out of our pockets and redistribute this money in their way to their constituents and to their make-work projects like schools, roads, bridges, blah, blah, blah.
This does not have to be a divisive issue. It does not have to be in any way, shape, manner, or form a divisive issue. So I have a proposal. As has been noted, elections have consequences. President Obama in the meeting on Friday with House and Senate Republican leaders, Eric Cantor from Virginia in the House proposed a moderate tax cut plan. Obama said, Well, you know, "I won." I'm going to trump you on that. We're not going to do that.
Well, where's the bipartisanship, President Obama? There is no bipartisanship in President Obama's plan. President Obama's definition of bipartisanship is when Republicans cave and agree with his plan so he can then claim it's bipartisan. But he's not compromising on anything here.
Mine is a genuine compromise. So let's look at how the vote came out, shall we? Fifty-three percent of voters in this country -- we'll say, for the sake of this proposal, 53% of Americans -- voted for Obama. Forty-six percent voted for Senator McCain, and 1% voted for wackos. Let's give the remaining 1% to President Obama, so let's say that 54% voted for President Obama and 46% voted for Senator McCain. As a way to bring the country together and at the same time determine the most effective way to deal with recessions, under the Obama-Limbaugh Stimulus Plan of 2009, $540 billion of the one trillion will be spent on infrastructure as defined by President Obama and the Democrats. The remaining $460 billion, or 46% that voted for Senator McCain, will be directed towards tax cuts, as determined by me.
These tax cuts will consist primarily of capital gains tax cuts and corporate tax rate cuts. So Obama gets $540 billion to spend his way. The other people of this country who did not vote for his way get $460 billion spent the way they would like it spent. This is bipartisanship! This is how bipartisanship really works. Okay, Obama wins by a 54-46 majority, so he gets 54% of the trillion bucks. Spend it his way. We get 46% of the trillion bucks to spend our way, and then we compare. Then we see which stimulus actually works and works the fastest, and I will guarantee you that if this plan is adopted, just the announcement that $460 billion will go toward paying for tax cuts, capital gains, and corporate tax rates -- we could throw in some personal income tax rate reduction in order to make sure that the voters don't think it's all about helping the big guys. But we need jobs, do we not?
Who hires people? Businesses! Businesses need tax cuts. The US corporate tax rate is obscene. It is the highest of all industrialized nations. It's 35%. Cut it. Cut it in half. Make the capital gains rate go away for three months, and then get out of the way to see what happens on Wall Street. And once Wall Street starts ticking up 500 points a day, you watch what happens to the rest of the private sector. It will follow right along. This would ensure a bipartisan compromise bill, as Democrats have said that they're always about. It would satisfy the American people's wishes, as polls currently note; and it would also serve as a test, going forward, as to which approach best stimulates the growth of jobs -- and it can be measured side by side. It could be determined where the new jobs are coming from.
And if President Obama would merely say -- if he would merely say -- that he will take this proposal under serious consideration, we would then see the reaction from the financial markets, which tend to be a barometer of the economy going forward. That is, if President Obama said that he thought this compromise proposal was worth his time to look at, the markets could react to that, just the way they did when President Clinton announced that he had reached agreement in principle with Republicans to balance the budget in the nineties. The market reacted positively to that news. Not to a formal bill signing, but to the news. If we have learned anything in recent months, the financial markets more than ever look to Washington for direction.
It's an interesting thought. I'm not thrilled about throwing away half a trillion dollars in taxpayer dollars, but it just might be worth it if it would lay bare for all to see the difference in the conservative solution and the liberal solution. Of course, it'll never happen precisely because it would lay bare for all to see the difference in the conservative solution and the liberal solution.
There's my two cents.
No comments:
Post a Comment