New Budget Raises Taxes $3,135 Per Household
March 11th, 2008 by Chris KinnanThe Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl has a new analysis of the House Budget Committee’s budget blueprint. Among his findings, the budget plan:
* Raises taxes by $1.265 trillion over five years and $3.911 trillion over 10 years, or more than $3,135 per household annually;
* Includes 17 reserve funds that could be used to raise taxes by hundreds of billions more;
* Increases discretionary spending by 8 percent and does not terminate a single wasteful program; and
* Completely ignores the impending explosion of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid costs.
March 11th, 2008 at 11:55 am
* sigh * more scaremongering…
Almost ALL Americans are going to keep the tax relief they have. Only the super-rich are gonna pay more. Everybody knows this. Trying to claim that every household in America is gonna pay three grand more in taxes (which you and Heritage are clearly trying to imply, even though you know it’s just an average) is just silly. And, once again, it’s intellectually dishonest.
When Clinton raised taxes in 1992, Dick Armey famously predicted the collapse of America’s economy. This is the same crap, just from another highly-partisan think-tank. Which you reproduced here without comment or analysis. Just parroting the talking point.
Why do you keep doing this?
March 11th, 2008 at 12:04 pm
Riedl notes that the automatic tax increases include expiration of many lower-income tax cuts. (The Bush cuts actually made the income tax code slightly more progressive).
“The baseline tax increase of $3.911 trillion assumes the expiration of all 2001 and 2003 tax relief, including the expanded child tax credit, marriage penalty relief, and lower 10 percent tax bracket. It also assumes the expiration of all other temporary tax relief and allowing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to hit an additional 20 million taxpayers. True, lawmakers may choose to keep some of the current tax cuts by raising other taxes instead. For example, the House is planning to avoid the AMT hike by raising other taxes through the reconciliation process, and the budget includes language pledging to retain some of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. However, increasing some tax rates as the price of maintaining other tax policies at current levels is still a tax increase. Taxpayers will still pay trillions of dollars more, regardless of which pocket lawmakers take it from.”
March 11th, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Yes, I know, I read that, too. Once again, though, there is not now nor has there been any serious discussion of ending the lower- and middle-income tax cuts. Both Obama and Clinton said they’d leave those alone, as well as Congress. And, if you’d read previous threads (particularly Leonardo’s informed analysis), you’d see that the tax code did not, in fact, get “more progressive” under Bush–unless, once again, you’re going to play with the numbers.
Once again, though, you knew that, but decided to pass along the Heritage data without comment. Nice try, though.
May 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am
Speaking of budgets, it’s noteworthy lately that Bush has responded to the worsening economy by handing over billions to the poor to spend and here in the UK by contrast we’re hit by new and unnanounced vehicle taxes. There’s also a big crackdown on a certain kind of welfare fraud, superficially laudable but one that actually will remove significant sums from the local economy of already deprived areas. The poor and the middle-class are getting poorer.
BB