President Obama has consistently ducked the question on whether he is considering a massive tax hike in the form of a value added tax (VAT) – until now. Yesterday in an interview with CNBC, the president made clear that he is open to a VAT – once he has seen the recommendations his Debt Commission makes. The president’s comments spell out what has been obvious for months: the debt commission is a stalking horse for the VAT as the solution to close massive deficits today and in the future. A …
Suddenly, the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders seem to want health-care news stories to fall off of the front page. This week, House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman abruptly cancelled a high-profile hearing he had called just days earlier to berate corporate CEOs who dared to tell their investors that the health-care bill would raise their costs. It seems to have dawned on Congressman Waxman and his staff that his transparent effort to intimidate anyone who tells the truth about the legislation could actually backfire on him and …
The capstone of President Obama’s the “Glut the Beast” strategy is to maneuver the country into accepting a massive new Value-Added Tax (VAT). This as yet unannounced policy has been lurking in dark policy corners for months, with no word from the President. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has decided not to wait on Obama’s pleasure, and so has offered an amendment in the form of a Sense of the Senate Resolution to the bill pending on the floor of the Senate to extend Unemployment Insurance benefits. The McCain resolution reads …
The United States is on an unsustainable financial course, and everyone seems to know it. As Heritage highlighted in our recently published 2010 Budget Chart Book, if nothing is done, federal obligations will reach heights that even enormous tax increases will be unable to reverse. In 2010, the federal budget deficit will be 11 percent of GDP, and the federal debt is on course to continue to skyrocket. Interest payments on the debt in one month alone in 2009 exceeded yearly expenditures on several federal departments, including the Department of …
President Obama’s push to enact a massive tax increase in the form of a new value-added tax (VAT) is now clearly underway. Earlier this week, Obama economic adviser and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker said a “VAT should be on the table.” White House claims that Volcker was speaking as a private citizen simply do not pass the laugh test. A senior statesman among economists, Volcker is one of the president’s closest economic advisers. No doubt Volcker let the cat out of the bag prematurely from the …
According to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), over half of President Barack Obama’s new $940 billion health care entitlement is paid for by price-fixing Medicare cuts. Never mind that the President’s own Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services says that these cuts would cause “roughly 20 percent” of Medicare providers to go bankrupt in Obamacare’s first ten years. The CBO has to believe these cuts will happen because they are required, by law, to believe everything Congress tells them. The American people are not. So the American people ought to …
According to exit polls, Americans who voted last November 4th described themselves as 34% conservative, 44% moderate and only 22% liberal. One third of new voters were independents — and about two-thirds of them voted for President Barack Obama. How did President Obama win over so many moderates and independents? By explicitly renouncing his party’s tax and spend past. Specifically, Obama promised to “cut taxes for 95% of workers and their families” and enact “a net spending cut” for the federal government. Not only has President Obama failed to keep …
