Freedom Line Blog

Below is one of the latest cartoons from Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Ramirez.

View more of Michael Ramirez’s cartoons on CFIF’s website here.

If you ever nursed the idea that taxation isn’t a form of punishment, President Barack Obama is here to disabuse you.  A day after Congress passed massive new regulations on the financial industry, the president today called for passage of a 10 year, $90 billion tax on banks and hedge funds to pay for the 2008 financial bailout.  To quote the president:

“We need to impose a fee on the banks that were the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer assistance at the height of our financial crisis — so we can recover every dime of taxpayer money,” Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address.

And yet the tax/fee/legalized theft won’t be levied on just “the biggest beneficiaries.”  It will hit every bank with assets over $50 billion and hedge funds with more than $10 billion.  That means even the financial institutions that have already repaid their bailout debts will be hit with the 0.15% increase in the cost of doing business.

But remember: businesses don’t pay taxes (or fees) – people do.  Keep that in mind when your monthly service fees jump through the roof.

Remember when House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sought to put the American people at ease by stating “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it?”  

She was talking about ObamaCare, just prior to its final passage.  At the time, few people – including Pelosi and her Congressional colleagues – actually understood the consequences of passing the unpopular 2,000-plus-page bill.  But to Pelosi and her liberal majority, it was “very, very exciting.”  Never mind that it will actually raise health care costs, force people who like their insurance to get a new plan approved by government bureaucrats and limit access to care. Despite all the warnings and opposition from the American people, hindsight is 20/20, you know.

Well, now it appears that another member of the Congressional leadership has decided to follow Pelosi’s lead while announcing his own excitement about the prospect of passing yet another 2,000-page “reform” bill.

At 5:39 EST this morning – when most Americans were still asleep – key House and Senate lawmakers struck a deal on Financial Regulatory Reform, legislation that gives the federal government broad powers over the nation’s financial sector.   As Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) aptly noted, “it deals with every single aspect of our lives.” 

What does that mean for the average American family out there?  Well, according to Mr. Dodd, “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” 

Huh?  When the Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a chief architect of this legislation admits that he doesn’t know – indeed, that “no one will know” – the  consequences of a bill that he largely wrote and that “deals with every single aspect of our lives,” shouldn’t that be reason enough to oppose it?