President’s promise that families who earned less than $250,000 a year would not be hit set to be shattered
The Democratic co-chairman of President Obama’s debt commission, Erskine Bowles, told Fox News Sunday that tax hikes for Americans are “on the table,” despite Obama’s election campaign promise that no individual earning under $200,000 dollars a year would be hit with any tax increases.
Asked if he felt bound by the President’s pledge, Bowles responded, “Everything is on the table, we’re going to look at every single way to right this fiscal ship….raising revenue, we have to have everything on the table.”
Bowles also said that a European-style VAT tax, which would increase living costs by as much as 25 per cent, was also under consideration.
“I think that there are many good arguments that you could make for a value-added tax or a consumption tax as oppose to a tax on wages but I think it’s just one of the things that ought to be on the table that we ought to discuss.”
Bowles’ suggestion that a VAT tax would supplant or be offset by a reduction in income tax is likely a ruse. People in Europe pay the highest levels of income tax in the world but they are also forced to pay VAT on most goods at a level between 15-25 per cent in addition to costly income tax rates.
VAT taxes are typically introduced at low rates in order to dampen opposition, but then gradually raised over the course of decades. For example, Denmark’s VAT tax started at 9 per cent in 1962, but today has bloated to a whopping 25 per cent.
The 18 members of the debt commission will unveil their plan by December
The prospect of income tax hikes contradicts Obama’s pre-election promise that he would not raise taxes for American families earning under a quarter of a million dollars a year.
During a speech on the campaign trail, Obama guaranteed, “No family making under $250,000 dollars a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”
“You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime,” Obama repeatedly vowed.
Even aside from any income tax hikes, Americans already face a myriad of tax increases under Obamacare, a potential VAT tax, not to mention a future consumption tax based on CO2 emissions.
As the Associated Press reported On April 1, the largest ever increase in tobacco tax, and one that would disproportionately affect the poor, was passed by Obama despite his pledge to protect lower earners.
Last week, Obama himself said that a value-added tax, which would hit Americans across the income bracket but particularly the poor and struggling middle class, was “still on the table” just days after White House aides had assured otherwise.
The only fair thing that you can say about a VAT tax is that it will hit everyone equally. Obamas constituents and voters will now have to pay for the services that they are demanding. Free healthcare is not free.
Of course, I am enraged that I have to pay any of this garbage. This is sure to stop this economy cold.
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