Freedom Line Blog

… can be found in the pages of today’s USA Today. Behold four of the clearest, most incontrovertible, and most horrifying paragraphs you’ll ever read in print:

Paychecks from private business shrank to their smallest share of personal income in U.S. history during the first quarter of this year, a USA TODAY analysis of government data finds.

At the same time, government-provided benefits — from Social Security, unemployment insurance, food stamps and other programs — rose to a record high during the first three months of 2010.

Those records reflect a long-term trend accelerated by the recession and the federal stimulus program to counteract the downturn. The result is a major shift in the source of personal income from private wages to government programs.

The trend is not sustainable, says University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes. Reason: The federal government depends on private wages to generate income taxes to pay for its ever-more-expensive programs. Government-generated income is taxed at lower rates or not at all, he says. “This is really important,” Grimes says.

Let’s review: you cannot have a welfare state without a private sector vibrant enough to fund it. You cannot have a private sector vibrant enough to fund it unless government allows the market to function relatively unimpeded. And the market can’t function relatively unimpeded unless the welfare state stays modest in scope. What exactly don’t the folks in Washington, Sacramento, and Athens understand?

Pardon our John Kerry-accented French, but who the hell does Barack Obama think he is?

This was Obama, once again saturated in his own false sense of economic prowess, speaking yesterday to an ever-dwindling audience of true believers in Illinois:

I do think, at a certain point, you’ve made too much money.”

Really?  Does the $5,505,409 that Obama earned last year happen to conveniently fall just below that “too much money” threshold?  What about his multimillionaire supporters Oprah Winfrey and George Soros?  And more importantly, who does this man think he is to instruct the most dynamic and prosperous society in human history that “you’ve made too much money?”

Somewhere, Joe the Plumber must be shaking his head over a cold beer and sighing, “I tried to warn you.”  It’s too bad that more people didn’t heed his warning after Obama suggested that we “spread the wealth around” during the 2008 campaign, but there’s always the opportunity for a “do over” in November 2010 and 2012.

Even after recent declines, the level of unemployment claims is higher than one would expect it to be if private nonfarm payrolls were really poised to begin sustained gains.”

That is the observation of Joshua Shapiro, an economist at MFR Inc., speaking about the employment and economic climate more than one year after Barack Obama’s trillion-dollar borrow-and-tax-and-spend “stimulus.”

Mr. Shapiro’s assessment echoes a a survey of economists released by the National Association of Business Economics (NABE) this week.  Almost 75% of surveyed economists reported that Obama’s “stimulus” had no effect on the nation’s natural economic healing cycle or employment:

About 73% of those surveyed said employment at their company is neither higher nor lower as a result of the $787 billion Recovery Act, which the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers says is on track to create or save 3.5 million jobs by the end of the year.  That sentiment is shared for the recently passed $17.7 billion jobs bill that calls for tax breaks for businesses that hire and additional infrastructure spending.  More than two-thirds of those polled believe the measure won’t affect payrolls, while 30% expect it to boost hiring ‘moderately.'”

In other words, Obama pointlessly heaped almost $1 trillion more upon our nation’s unsustainable debt to be repaid via some toxic combination of future borrowing and higher taxes.  In pushing that “stimulus,” he promised that it would keep unemployment under 8%, but unemployment continues to fester at 10% and economists say that the “stimulus” had no effect on employment or the natural cyclical recovery.

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.

Remember the iconic 1978 movie Animal House?  In it, Kevin Bacon plays a tormented fraternity pledge stripped to his tightie-whitie underwear and forced to respond to each swat of the paddle by screaming, “Thank you, sir!  May I have another?”

In Obama’s new America, life apparently imitates Animal House.  Speaking at a partisan fundraiser, Obama once again descended into his petty trash-talking persona, saying that instead of protesting oversized government and tax burdens on April 15, Tea Party protesters should have been saying “thank you” to him.  That’s not a misprint – we should be thanking Obama for our current federal tax system. Here is the video:

obama-mocks-tea-partiers-you-would-think-theyd-be-saying-thank-you

No, Mr. President.  American taxpayers have already been stripped to their proverbial underwear, just like Kevin Bacon’s pledge.  We’re not going to respond with “thank you, sir, may I have another?”  No, we’re going to swat back come November.

Remember when both Candidate Obama and President Obama promised (on more than one occasion) that no family making less than $250,000 per year would see any of their taxes increase – not “one single dime?”

Well, that promise held true for a little while… yeah… for about the political equivalent of five minutes.

Indeed, according to House Way & Means Committee Ranking Member Dave Camp (R-MI):

Since January of 2009, President Obama and Congressional Democrats have enacted into law gross tax increases totaling more than $670 billion, or more than $2,100 for every man, woman and child in the United States.  The list of tax increases includes at least 14 violations of the President’s pledge not to raise taxes on Americans earning less than $200,000 for singles and $250,000 for married couples.” [emphasis added]

Rep. Camp has compiled all the tax increases in a nice and easy to read chart.  Check it out here.  It will come in handy the next time your liberal neighbor suggests that President Obama is actually working to reduce taxes on middle class families.

A Tax Day message from Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez.

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

It’s April 15th – the date that millions of Americans who waited till the last possible day to file their tax forms with the IRS can wait no longer to feed the insatiable appetite of federal (and state) tax coffers.  If you are like most of us, you try to struggle through the filing yourself — coffee and documentation at the ready — ultimately giving up and hiring an accountant, a tax-filing firm or downloading an online program.  In any event, it is an annual chore.  A monumental pain.  And an expensive one, at that — especially if you get it wrong and end up owing penalties.  Well, guess what, fellow tax-payers?  You are not alone!

The Hill newspaper reports that “few members of Congress prepare their annual tax returns, instead relying on professional preparers…”  The article details how even Ways and Means Committee members — the very ones responsible for writing the tax code — need professional help to file their annual taxes. Of the 28 respondents, only one — Got that? One — Member of Congress said he did his returns by himself (and he was an accountant for 12 years).

During an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” program back in January, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman announced that he doesn’t prepare his own tax returns either.  Why?  Because, at least in part, he finds the tax code to be “too complex” to prepare them himself.

If that is not a case for tax reform, we defy you to find a better one.

The numbers don’t lie: Californians are voting with their feet when it comes to protecting their pocketbooks…all the way to Texas.

Though it’s hard to believe that more taxes don’t create more jobs, it’s down right shocking to realize that taxpayer financed commercials like this one are failing to draw people to the Golden State.

To answer the Governator’s question: as soon as Sacramento adopts a tax and regulatory regime WAY more friendly to businesses.

H/T: Reason.tv

How will we halt the growth of big government when a majority of citizens contribute less than they receive in benefits from the state?

As Congressman Paul Ryan (R – Wisconsin) and others note, when that “tipping point” is reached, it will incentivize voters to perpetually increase government spending and taxes, since “the rich” are the only ones paying for the largess.  Unfortunately, we continue to approach that dangerous point in America.  According to the Tax Policy Center, an astonishing 47% of Americans owed the federal government no income taxes in 2009.  In other words, almost half of Americans are immune from actually paying income tax for the benefits everyone enjoys, such as national defense, education, police, fire and highways.  Moreover, despite absurd claims that “the rich don’t pay their fair share,” the top 10% of income earners pay almost 75% of the nation’s income taxes.  In contrast, the bottom 40% of income earners actually profit from the federal income tax, because they receive more dollars in tax credits than they otherwise owe.

Those on the left welcome this phenomenon, because it encourages voters to further enlarge the nanny state (as in, Nanny Pelosi state?).  And why not?  The suckers who actually work hard and increase their incomes will have to pay for it all, anyway.

The Washington Times today published an op-ed authored by Timothy Lee, CFIF’s VP of Legal and Public Affairs, on the coming Internet tax and other efforts by President Obama’s FCC to over-regulate the world wide web.

Lee writes:

The Obama Era has become a protracted, nightmarish Whack-A-Mole game of tax increases and bureaucratic self-enlargement. In sector after sector of American life, another scheme to expand government and wrench more earnings from Americans’ pockets pops up.

“Its next targeted sector?  The Internet.”

Read the entire piece on the Times’ website here.

In their widely read book Nudge, authors Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler discuss the benefits of setting up policies in order to prod people towards making a certain decision.  For example, instead of installing an employee retirement program that requires workers to opt-in for contributions, make it so that they must opt-out.  Most people won’t know the difference until they get ready to retire and see each paycheck’s contribution matured into a nice nest egg thanks to the rule of 72.

Perhaps the lesson is emanating from New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s new budget proposal.  The Manhattan Institute’s Josh Barro describes one of its pillars as capping local property taxes, but allowing local citizens to override the cap through targeted referendums.  Basically, if local officials can make a case for why they need more money, the people can give it to them.  The default option, though, is a hard cap.  Measures like Christie’s get the flow of political power right because it ensures We the People get the first and final say on tax rates.   If this is nudging, let’s push for more of it!

If you are overjoyed to see the line item deductions from your paycheck flowing to the federal government, this blog post is not for you.  If you have the opposite reaction, get ready to pay an additional $150 – $240 per month so the feds can pay for long term care.  (Not yours directly, of course.  Contra Al Gore, there is no lockbox or personal account for your tax dollars.  Just an IOU written to your grandchildren.)

The reason?  Taking the money helps ease the burden on Medicaid for all those future bed-ridden citizens unable to care for themselves.  Perhaps the worst thing about this program isn’t the increase in taxes; it’s the replacing of family with government as the comfort care provider of last resort.  Not only will people be told to look to government for their pensions, but also for their end-of-life needs.  Under Obamacare, taxpayer dollars are going to fund abortions and end-of-life care.  Credit Democrats for this: in one bill they managed to extend government intrusion from the womb to the tomb.

Are you curious to know when your taxes will spike?  When one of approximately 17,000 new IRS agents will come knocking for failure to have government-approved insurance?  When senior citizens can expect to see those massive cuts to their Medicare Advantage plans?

Congressman Dave Camp, Ranking Member of the House Ways and Means Committee, has put together a handy timeline outlining when all the major provisions of ObamaCare are set to kick in.

Check it out here (.pdf).

Americans who love the IRS are giddy with excitement over the pending Sunday House vote on ObamaCare, because enforcement of its mandates will be delegated to the agency. 

Don’t have government-approved health insurance?  The IRS will help you get some.  Now. 

Not paying your fine for not having government-approved health insurance?  The IRS will take it.  Don’t have it?  Hey, the IRS knows how to seize assets and sell them.  What do you mean you “need your car to get to work?”

Not paying the additional taxes on capital gains imposed by the bill?  Who do you think you are,  Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner?

Can’t understand why you must pay the additional taxes now and only get those awesome promised benefits some years down the road?  Take it up with the President.  Maybe he’ll read your letter on TV.  The IRS is just the new national health care police force.  It just does what it’s told to do, not make policy.  You better do the same.

Think the IRS is not going to have the manpower and money to find you and fine you?  Think again, meathead.  Ten billion dollars in new funding and almost 17,000 in new enforcers will take care of that.

Think you can plead illness and hide out in the hospital?  Well, maybe yours will be one of the very few that can afford to take new patients.

Think it’ll help to take your meds before your visit with the IRS?  Might ought to get your prescription soon, because your doctor is leaving to practice in Indonesia.

In a public relations effort to build even greater support for its new duties, the IRS is considering a national public school contest to help design the imposing new uniforms it will need to make sure its authority is understood.  To simplify the contest, the uniform color has already been chosen:  brown.

Although no final decision has yet been made for the new IRS slogan, we are hearing that “resistance is futile” is the most popular choice at the moment.

In the President’s shiny new once-over-lightly-with-a-higher-price-tag health care proposal (too vaguely written, it seems, for the CBO to score the economic impact), parts of it are implemented all the way to 2018, when the excise tax on expensive health care plans kicks in (and kicks anyone who has one in the groin). 

Many people who believe they don’t have one of those “Cadillac” plans now are likely to find that they do have one by 2018.

Also in the proposal, the fines for those incorrigible scoff-laws who stubbornly refuse to yield to the so-called “individual mandate” start small and progressively increase by year.

Call that slo-mo government, which has the distinct and not-to-be-overlooked advantage that all who impose it will likely have gone on to greater or lesser rewards by the time the populace actually catches on.

As David Brooks points out in his column this morning, “The odds are high that the excise tax will never actually happen.”  But that excise tax (along with other tricks in the bill) is what allows the whole house of cards to be nominally (and nominally only if you are deceiver or deceived) “deficit neutral.”  We thus face punitive taxation or fiscal disaster.

In a different slo-mo government development, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson has informed some unruly coal-state Senators (all Democrats) that they shouldn’t get all worried about that EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gases.  It will now be “phased in” beginning in 2011, so as not to upset the fragile economy. 

Hit the buzz saw with your overreaching, did you, lady?  By 2011, the science on which the EPA determinations are being made will be so discredited that the EPA will have to cop an insanity defense.

There are good and rational reasons for phased-in government projects (such as you don’t build the bridge until you’ve got the road to it, even if it’s going nowhere), but the two aforementioned are not among those.  They are examples of government folly, the former predicted, the latter now being acknowledged.

In the meantime, where are the fast forward projects to get us out of our economic mess?  You know, some stuff the people actually want the government to do.

Today, the White House officially released its Budget for Fiscal Year 2011.  It is $3.8 trillion and consumes four large volumes.  What does it say about fiscal responsibility when your budget is thousands of pages and costs $236?

After a $1.4 trillion deficit in 2009, the White House projects a larger $1.56 trillion gap in this fiscal year.  To “trim” the massive sinkhole of red ink, the Administration proposes raising income taxes (though President Obama bragged about his tax record during his State of the Union Address) and energy taxes to reach a “manageable” $1.27 trillion shortfall next year.

Click here for the Office of Management and Budget website to review the budget, historical tables and analytical perspectives.

During his weekly press briefing yesterday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) had “some good news” to report.

Hoyer noted that federal revenues (taxpayer dollars the federal government takes out of your paycheck) have stopped declining, which is a sign that the American people are “making money.”  Taken at face value, that is good news.

But the part about Americans making more money – in and of itself – is not what the Majority Leader was excited about.  Rather, Hoyer’s exuberance was focused on the prospect of Americans paying more taxes as a result.

Specifically, as reported by CNSNews.com, the Majority Leader stated:

We also had some good news for the first time in approximately two years. The projection of revenues has stabilized, not decreased. That is a very good sign because it is a sign that people are in fact making money and will be in a position, because they’re making money, to pay a portion of that in revenues to the federal government.”

In a way, this small glimpse into Hoyer’s mindset explains a lot.  And the current Administration and Congress wonder why the people are screaming mad.

The following was distributed to all Senate offices today:

Key Vote Alert: H. J. Res. 45, the Coburn Rescission Amendment

Center for Individual Freedom Urges All Senators to Vote “Yes” on the Coburn Rescission Amendment

On behalf of its 250,000 activists and supporters nationwide, the Center for Individual Freedom (CFIF) urges all Senators to vote “Yes” on the Coburn amendment to H. J. Res. 45, the statutory debt limit increase.

CFIF supports numerous aspects of the amendment, including the more than $120 billion in federal spending reductions through the consolidation of duplicative government programs.

For example, the federal government currently has over 20 programs dedicated to reducing obesity. Because President Obama has pledge to “eliminate wasteful redundancy” in our federal budget, all Senators should support the Coburn amendment to reduce the nation’s bloated budget.

As the Senate considers yet another $1.9 trillion increase to our national debt, it only makes sense that our political leaders should take some strides toward reducing wasteful and duplicative spending. The Coburn amendment is one of many steps needed to reduce our staggering national debt.

For these reasons and more, CFIF urges all Senators to vote “Yes” on the Coburn amendment. Moreover, CFIF also opposes the $1.9 trillion debt limit increase and calls on Congress to further cut spending rather than recklessly add to the nation’s out-of-control debt.

Update: The Coburn amendment was defeated by a 37-57 vote.

Oregon, whose 11% unemployment rate exceeds the national rate by a full percentage point, sits just to the north of California, whose suicidal economic policies have provided a close-up lesson that reducing economic freedom reduces prosperity. As a result, Oregonians have seen first-hand the mass exodus of jobs and residents stemming from those policies.

So as Oregonians head to the polls tomorrow to consider two tax-raising ballot measures, we’ll see whether they’ve internalized California’s straightforward lessons.

Proposition 66 would increase Oregon’s personal income tax on “the rich” by fully 2%, and Proposition 67 would foolishly increase the corporate income tax. You know…  those corporations that actually create jobs and add to the economy.

Just as California’s reckless tax-and-spend policies have driven residents and jobs to surrounding states, Oregon may astonishingly slit its own wrists in the same manner by passing these measures.  Residents and community leaders in Washington, Idaho, Utah, Montana, Nevada and Arizona may welcome the resulting influx, but it will mean doom for Oregon. Nike, Inc. founder and chairman Phil Knight, hardly a starched-collar conservative, has labeled Propositions 66 and 67 “Oregon’s Assisted Suicide Law II,” and some economists predict 70,000 lost jobs if the measures pass.

So which way, Oregon?  Freedom and prosperity, or suicidal tax increases?  Massachusetts, Virginia and New Jersey voters have learned the lessons of Obamanomics, and now we’ll see if the news has traveled out to the West Coast…