The Democratic Leadership in the Congress made a pretty big strategic mistake on Thursday. They, for all intent and purposes, announced that they will raise your taxes on January 1, 2011. They did so plainly, and I tend to believe them. They did so without remorse. They did so acting as though no one would really care. And they did so after--for weeks--publicly discussing the possibility of retaining the current tax rates.
They did so, though they have been warned that in doing so they would deliver a crushing blow to small businesses in America. It is important to admit and to be as transparent as possible: when you hurt small business in America, you hurt the working men and women of America. You hurt families. You hurt those you care about most.
For a few weeks the Democratic leadership and the President personally had been making some rumblings about possibly extending the current tax rates into 2011 and beyond. They had mostly--at the very least--made repeated mention of how important it would be to do so for the "middle class."
Instead they opted to raise taxes on every tax-payer in America, the poor, the middle class, and the wealthy.
In doing so they punish the poor thrice. For people who pay the taxes in the bottom tax brackets, the Obama administration will be the most punitive punishing them in three ways. The administration will increase their tax burden--after pledging to not raise taxes on people earning less than $250,000. The administration will raise the increase on this group MORE than any other tax category--50%--taking their tax obligation from 10%-15%. And lastly the administration will make it harder for the poor to find work because of his punitive tax strategy against those at the top of the tax brackets: small businesses--the group that creates 2 out of every 3 new jobs will force even more massive layoffs.
For weeks on my radio show, at tea party gatherings including the 9/12 project in DC, and in multiple editorial contributions on Fox News I have implied the way to for Democrats to help themselves in these elections would be to demonstrate accountability to the tax-payer prior to the November elections. In other words, don't just talk about keeping middle class tax rates at their current place, but to pass legislation to do so.
Let's face it, because politicians should always be trusted to do the worst option possible after securing their re-election, it would seem imperative that if they wanted to genuinely let the American people know they were committed to not raising taxes to the worst degree in our history, they would work like crazy to get it done before the election. Now they "promise" to take it up after the election.
No honest person now believes they will.
On Thursday, for reasons that are almost inexplicable, multiple leaders in the House and Senate sounded the "impossibility" of being able to prevent the largest tax-hike in history for being implemented on ALL tax-payers (including the middle class.) In other words, every single person that pays income tax, be they poor, middle class, or wealthy, will receive a tax increase.
Preferring to hit the campaign trail instead of passing simple legislation, the party that is in control of the White House, the House of Representatives, and the U.S. Senate are now going to the voters to ask to be re-hired for 2011.
And I'm wondering, "On what basis?"
As a small business owner, I'm all too familiar with job-performance reviews. If I hire someone, and give them a fairly short list of things to do over an extended period of time, I expect them to accomplish them all. If they can't achieve the most simple of tasks over that time, what basis would this person have in expecting me to continue their employment after a review where it was revealed as all-too-obvious that they had not done what they were hired to do?
The Democrats in Congress have had 8-10 years to prevent these tax increases from going into effect. A simple resolution stating that all federal tax rates would remain at current levels permanently (or even extended another ten years or so) is all it would've required.
Instead now they are sitting in the CEO's office, having been summoned for their job-performance review, asking the voters to "trust them" to get that simple task done, after we've re-hired them for another go round.
It's either arrogance or stupidity.
I'll let you decide.
But as their employer--either way - it's worthy of a pink slip!
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