Budget 2011 - Obama asks for record deficit

PrintSmith wrote: Regardless of whether it was "special funding" or part of the DoD budget, it ended up in the final accounting of the federal deficit spending SC, so yes, the Obama deficit is really a record and he, along with a Congress led by Pelosi and Reid, has had a hand in setting every deficit record the nation has rung up during his first 24 months in office. Pelosi and Reid even had a hand in the record deficits of the previous administration since those records were set in Bush's final 2 years in office after the Democrats gained control of both houses of Congress.

I will trust you on this - I haven't taken the time to look up the numbers myself.

And paying higher prices at the pump, to fund the taxes levied against the oil companies, won't reduce the amount of our tax dollars that the federal government gets to control, unless of course, the closing of those tax loopholes is accompanied by a substantial rate reduction in both the corporate and the individual income tax levels, at which point the federal government won't actually realize any additional revenue from closing the loopholes.

I've got some sources that I've been meaning to get to posting, but that'll have to be for another day - it's been a long day today for me! Soon...

I am unsure if you are talking about cuts to both spending and taxes or cuts to spending and increasing taxes in your remarks. I can tell you that the quickest demonstrable recovery from bad economic times occurred when the government drastically cut their spending and also drastically cut the tax rates.

Yes, cuts to both spending and certain specific taxes.

When you look at what happened in the wake of the 1920-21 recession, it clearly illustrates the point I am trying to make. There is a good graph here: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=3015 that shows how high individual tax rates resulted in the top earners paying about 30% of the total burden, which is less than the burden shouldered by the top 1% today (40%), but when that top rate was dropped from 73% to about 25%, the percentage of revenue that those top earners paid went from 30% to nearly 65%. Why? The answer is pretty simple. If you only get to keep 27 cents of the next dollar you earn, you have less incentive to earn that next dollar. If, however, you get to keep 75 cents of the next dollar you earn, you have more incentive to earn that next dollar. Unreasonable tax rates result in tax avoidance behavior SC, it really is just that simple. Let's face it, those millionaires and billionaires the progressives are hoping to soak for more taxes don't really need to work. They are already rich, they don't need to make more money. The economy, however, needs them to invest that capital into it rather than having the capital sit in a bank account. Investing, however, comes with a risk. Is 27 cents enough of a reward to justify the risk that is being taken? Probably not, but 75 cents, 277% more than 27 cents, probably is. Which will benefit the federal coffers more? The 73 cents that isn't remitted because that next dollar wasn't earned, or the 25 cents that is remitted because the next dollar, and quite a few more after that next dollar, was earned.

No, they don't need to make more money, but they are and without having to work harder for it. And they aren't spending it that I've seen or read, at least not to the same extent that lower and middle class are.