Morning Bell: The Obama Tax and Spend Hikes
Conn Carroll /
According to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released today, only 26% of voters think the economy is going to be better in the next year, and 61% think the country is on the wrong track. Desperate to show Americans he’s fighting “every single day, every single hour, every single minute” to turn the economy around, President Barack Obama unveiled yet another economic stimulus spending plan yesterday. This time the President is promising to spend $50 billion over six-years on a “Race to the Top”-style transportation pork plan that will fund pet leftist projects like high-speed rail. The President promised: “this will not only create jobs immediately, it’s also going to make our economy hum over the long haul.”
But even the President’s own officials aren’t believing the hype. Politico reports: “Under the best-case scenario, however, jobs would be created in 2011, the official said. ‘This is not an … immediate jobs plan. This is a six-year reauthorization that’s front-loaded,’ according to the senior administration official.” This Obama aide is half right: the President’s infrastructure plan will not create any jobs any time soon. As we have thoroughly documented before environmental regulations like the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA) make it impossible for infrastructure spending to be implemented quickly. And even in the long run, as Heritage Foundation economist Ronald Utt has documented, the vast majority of independent academic and federal government studies show that the relationship between infrastructure spending and economic activity is close to zero.
But spending is just one side of President Obama’s economic prescription for the country. Not only is he advocating another $50 billion in spending on top of the $814 billion in economic stimulus spending he has wasted so far, he is also advocating for a $921 billion tax hike set to take effect this January 1, 2011. The administration wants us to believe that this massive tax hike will have no effect on our economic recovery. But that is just not so. Raising taxes on work and investment would mean less work and less investment and can be regarded only as an overtly hostile anti-jobs policy. That is just one of the myths exposed by Heritage analyst JD Fosters’ new paper: Obama Tax Hikes Defended by Myths and Straw Man Arguments. Foster also details: (more…)