Barack Obama Part 10

Below Is a Snapshot of the U.S. Economy Under President Obama, As of September 2012

23,136,000 Americans are unemployed, underemployed, or have stopped looking for work.

12,544,000 Americans are unemployed.

8,031,000 Americans are underemployed, working part-time but seeking full-time work.

5,033,000 workers have been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.

1,043,000 construction jobs have been lost since President Obama took office.

582,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost since President Obama took office.

The unemployment rate when President Obama took office was 7.8%. Under Obama, the country experienced 43 consecutive months of unemployment above 8% (though the administration predicted that the January 2009 passage of the stimulus bill would keep unemployment from ever reaching 8%, and would reduce it to 5.4% by 2012).

The nation's labor-force participation rate is 63.5%, the lowest level since 1981.

Had the labor-force participation rate remained steady since President Obama took office, the official unemployment rate would now be 11.2%.

The government's official unemployment rate does not include those unemployed individuals who have entirely given up looking for work (and thus have dropped out of the job market); nor does it include the underemployed—i.e., those with part-time jobs who rare seeking full-time employment. The most significant unemployment-related statistic, known as the U-6 figure, does factor these two important categories of individuals into the equation. When these workers are included, the U-6 un/underemployment rate stood at 14.7% as of September 2012.

Between January 2009 and September 2012, median gasoline prices nationwide more than doubled, from $1.84 per gallon to $3.85 per gallon. (Note: In 2008, Obama's energy secretary, Steven Chu, advocated steep rises in gasoline prices as a means of coaxing Americans into being more fuel-efficient and purchasing green energy cars: “Somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe”—i.e., approximately $10 per gallon. In March 2011, Chu reiterated his support for high gasoline prices.)

Throughout the 2012 presidential campaign, President Obama has claimed credit for “creating 4.5 million new jobs.” But “jobs created” is only half of the equation; the other half is “jobs lost.” When both figures are considered, the Obama presidency has overseen a net jobs gain of just 325,000. As Washington Post Fact Checker Glenn Kessler puts it, “Obama is on track to have the worst jobs record of any president since World War II.”

Weakest Economic Recovery Since the 1880s

In October 2012, economist John B. Taylor reported that of all the American economic recoveries that have followed previous financial crises, the current recovery is the weakest since the 1880s. The previous 7 recoveries during that 130-year time span were, on average, 4 times stronger than the Obama recovery.

In August 2013, the Weekly Standard reported: "New estimates derived from the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey by Sentier Research indicate that the real (inflation-adjusted) median annual household income in America has fallen by 4.4 percent during the 'recovery,' after having fallen by 1.8 during the recession.  During the recession, the median American household income fell by $1,002 (from $55,480 to $54,478). During the recovery—that is, from the officially defined end of the recession (in June 2009) to the most recent month for which figures are available (June 2013)—the median American household income has fallen by $2,380 (from $54,478 to $52,098). So the typical American household is making almost $2,400 less per year (in constant 2013 dollars) than it was four years ago, when the Obama 'recovery' began."

Between Obama's Inauguration and 2012, the Following Economic Developments Took Place

Median household income fell from $54,983 to $50,964.

Disposable income per capita in fell from $33,229 to $32,677.

The median number of weeks of unemployment for a jobless worker in January 2009 was 10.7. That figure reached a peak of 25.0 in June 2010. As of August 2012, it stood at 18.0.

The number of people participating in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps) in January 2009 was 31,983,716. By June 2012 it was 46,670,373.

Black Unemployment Under Obama

As of July 2012, the unemployment rate for black Americans stood at 14.4%, compared to 7.4% for whites and 11% for Hispanics. For black youth, ages 16-19, the unemployment rate was a staggering 39.3%—nearly double the 20.9% figure for whites in the same age group.

Obama Called President Bush's Debt “Irresponsible” and “Unpatriotic”

During the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama derided George W. Bush for having added, “by his lonesome,” some $4 trillion to the national debt during his eight years as president. “That's irresponsible,” he said. “It's unpatriotic”

Obama Pledged to Cut Annual Deficit in Half, but Instead Presided over Record Debt

During the 2008 campaign, Obama said, “We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. Contrary to the prevailing wisdom in Washington these past few years, we cannot simply spend as we please and defer the consequences to the next budget, the next administration, or the next generation. We are paying the price for these deficits right now. In 2008 alone, we paid $250 billion in interest on our debt—one in every ten taxpayer dollars.... That's why today I'm pledging to cut the deficits we inherited by half, by the end of my first term in office.... I refuse to leave our children with a debt that they cannot repay. And that means taking responsibility right now, in this administration, for getting our spending under control.”

The annual deficit in 2008, the final year of the Bush administration, was $482 billion.

When Obama took office in January 2009, the national debt stood at $10.6 trillion. By the time of the Democratic National Convention in September 2012, it was $16 trillion. In short, under Obama's watch, the debt had grown by $5.4 trillion in three years and eight months.

According to the U.S. Treasury, America's government debt climbed by more than $1.2 trillion in fiscal year 2012, meaning that the federal government had borrowed an additional $10,855 for each household in the United States during the year. This brought the nation's total debt to approximately $136,690 per household.

For every $7 in federal revenues in 2012, the government spent $10.95.

In July 2012, the White House delivered its 10-year budget forecast to Congress. This forecast projected $42.6 trillion in spending over the ensuing decade, and a federal debt that would grow to $25.4 trillion by 2022 (nearly $1 trillion in additional debt, each and every year)

Treasury Secretary Geithner Acknowledges that Obama's Debt-Laden Budget Is “Unsustainable”

On February 17, 2011, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner confirmed to the Senate Budget Committee that President Obama's budget proposal would create a “very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time.” In the Budget Committee hearing, ranking Republican Senator Jeff Sessions asked Geithner about the effect of Obama’s newly proposed budget on the economy, specifically as it related to the increasing percentage of debt as related to gross domestic product. Geithner’s response was a stark contradiction of Obama's pledge that “we will not be adding more to the national debt.” Said Geithner: “You’re absolutely right that with the President’s plan, even if Congress were to enact it, and even if Congress were to hold to it and reduce those deficits to 3 percent of GDP over the next five years, we would still be left with a very large interest burden and unsustainable obligations over time.”

The Stimulus Bill's Massive Wastefulness

Just a few days after Barack Obama was elected President, the left-wing billionaire financier George Soros stated: “I think we need a large stimulus package which will provide funds for state and local government to maintain their budgets—because they are not allowed by the constitution to run a deficit. For such a program to be successful, the federal government would need to provide hundreds of billions of dollars. In addition, another infrastructure program is necessary. In total, the cost would be in the 300 to 600 billion-dollar range....” Soon thereafter, as one of the first priorities of his presidency, Obama pressured Congress to pass a monumental $787 billion economic-stimulus bill (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or AARA) whose text was 1,071 pages long­—and which few, if any, legislators in the Democrat-dominated Congress read before voting on it.

Obama stressed the urgency of passing this bill at the earliest possible moment, so as to forestall any further harm to the U.S. economy. But after the bill was passed by Congress on February 13, it sat on the President’s desk for three days before it was signed, as the Obamas were away on a family holiday.

Hoover Institution Fellow Thomas Sowell made the following observations about the hasty manner in which the stimulus bill was passed: “The urgency with which [the Obama administration] has rushed through a monumental spending bill, whose actual spending will not be completed even after 2010, ought to set off alarm bells among those who are not in thrall to the euphoria of Obama's presidency. The urgency was real, even if the reason given was phony. President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, let slip a valuable clue when he said that a crisis should not go to waste, that a crisis is an opportunity to do things that you could not do otherwise. Think about the utter cynicism of that. During a crisis, a panicked public will let you get away with things you couldn't get away with otherwise. A corollary of that is that you had better act quickly while the crisis is at hand, without Congressional hearings or public debates about what you are doing. Above all, you must act before the economy begins to recover on its own.... That would undermine, if not destroy, a golden opportunity to restructure the American economy in ways that would allow politicians to micro-manage other sectors of the economy the way they have micro-managed the housing market into disaster.”

One of the stimulus bill’s most significant provisions was its repeal of the essentials of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the welfare-reform legislation passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1996, which reduced the welfare rolls by two-thirds. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, who helped write the ’96 law, said that under the Obama plan “the federal government will pay 80 percent of cost for each new family that a state enrolls in welfare.” By promising bonuses to states that put more people on welfare, the Obama plan reversed the incentives created by the 1996 legislation.

According to a Heritage Foundation report, 32% of the new stimulus bill—or an average of $6,700 in “new means-tested welfare spending” for every poor person in the U.S.—was earmarked for social-welfare programs (e.g., Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; Medicaid; food stamps; the Women, Infants, and Children food program; public housing; Section 8 housing; the Community Development Block Grant; the Social Services Block Grant; Head Start; and the Earned Income Tax Credit).

Added the Heritage Foundation report: “But this welfare spending is only the tip of the iceberg. The bill sets in motion another $523 billion in new welfare spending that is hidden by budgetary gimmicks.... [T]he total 10-year extra welfare cost is likely to be $787 billion.... In the first year after enactment of the stimulus bill, federal welfare spending will explode upward by more than 20 percent, rising from $491 billion in FY 2008 to $601 billion in FY 2009. This one-year explosion in welfare spending is, by far, the largest in U.S. history…. Once the hidden welfare spending in the bill is counted, the total 10-year fiscal burden (added to the national debt) will [be] $1.34 trillion. This amounts to $17,400 for each household paying income tax in the U.S.”

In May 2011, university economists Timothy Conley and Bill Dupor published an exhaustive study concluding that that AARA (i.e. the stimulus bill) had “created/saved approximately 450 thousand state and local government jobs and destroyed/forestalled roughly one million private sector jobs.” Added the study: “State and local government jobs were saved because ARRA funds were largely used to offset state revenue shortfalls and Medicaid increases rather than boost private sector employment. The majority of destroyed/forestalled jobs were in growth industries including health, education, professional and business services.”

In December 2009, Obama outlined yet another set of multibillion-dollar stimulus and jobs proposals while explaining that America must continue to “spend our way out of this recession.”

Contrast to President Reagan

In 1981 President Ronald Reagan also inherited a severe recession in which unemployment rose to 10.8% in November 1982. But as economist Peter Morici notes, Reagan “put in place a very different set of stimulus measures—emphasizing private-sector leadership.” In the fourth year of Reagan's first term (1984), the quarterly economic growth rates were 8.5%, 7.9%, 6.9%, and 5.8%—figures that dwarf the corresponding numbers under Obama.

Printing Money out of Thin Air: “Quantitative Easing”

In September 2012, the Federal Reserve announced that it would purchase each month some $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities bonds (in addition to $45 billion in Treasury bonds) under a new “stimulus program” known as QE3 (Quantitative Easing 3), and would continue to do so until the U.S. unemployment rate was reduced to 7%. Forecasts from 52 economists for the ultimate size of the program ranged from $250 billion to $2 trillion.

In two prior rounds of Quantitative Easing, the Federal Reserve purchased $2.3 trillion in mortgage and government debt in an effort to push down borrowing costs.

Quantitative Easing invariably erodes the value of the dollar and eventually results in steep inflation.

Credit Rating Agencies Downgrade U.S. Credit Rating

Dagong Global Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating: Based in Beijing, Dagong Global Credit Rating is a relative newcomer to the credit rating industry. In July 2010 it published its first report on global sovereign debt ratings, and assigned the U.S. a less-than-stellar rating of AA. In November 2010, after the Federal Reserve had launched its second round of quantitative easing—dubbed “QE2”—in which the Fed purchased $600 billion worth of treasury securities, Dagong, warning that QE2 would erode the value of the dollar, downgraded the U.S. credit rating again, to A+.

Weiss Ratings Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating: Weiss Ratings is a small credit-rating agency based in Jupiter, Florida. In April 2011 Weiss—critical of the Obama administration's inability to reduce the country's annual budget deficit—released its first-ever ratings of the sovereign debt of 47 countries, giving the U.S. a debt rating of C, or “fair.” In mid-July 2011, Weiss lowered that to “C-minus,” or the Standard & Poor's equivalent of one notch above “junk” status.

Egan Jones Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating: In July 2011, the independent credit-research firm Egan Jones (one of 10 firms the Securities and Exchange Commission recognizes as a rating organization) downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, citing concerns over “the relatively high level of debt and the difficulty in significantly cutting spending.”

Standard & Poor's Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating: In August 2011, Standard & Poor's, one of the big three ratings firms, downgraded the U.S. credit rating from AAA to AA+, citing great concern over the country's skyrocketing national debt. “It’s always possible the rating will come back, but we don’t think it’s coming back anytime soon,” said David Beers, head of S&P’s government debt rating unit.

Egan Jones Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating Again: On April 7, 2012, Egan Jones downgraded the U.S. credit rating for a second time, from AA+ to AA, again citing concerns over the sustainability of America's public debt. The firm had previously reduced America from AAA to AA+ in July 2011, just before Standard & Poor's did the same. “Without some structural changes soon, restoring credit quality will become increasingly difficult,” Egan Jones warned. The firm added that there was a 1.2% probability of U.S. default in the next 12 months. It also cited the fact that America's total debt, which was equal to its total GDP, was rising and would likely reach 112% of the GDP by 2014.

Egan Jones Downgrades U.S. Credit Rating a Third Time: On September 14, 2012, Egan Jones downgraded its rating on U.S. government debt for a second time in 5 months, from AA to AA-, stating that the Federal Reserve's plans to try to stimulate the economy by purchasing mortgage bonds would weaken the value of the dollar and cause prices for oil and other commodities to rise.

Moody's Threatens to Downgrade U.S. Credit Rating: On September 11, 2012, Moody's Investors Service said that it would probably lower its AAA rating on U.S. government debt unless congressional leaders could strike a budget deal in the coming months to bring down the country's annual deficit. “If those negotiations lead to specific policies that produce a stabilization and then downward trend in the ratio of federal debt to GDP over the medium term, the rating will likely be affirmed,” Moody's said in a press release. “If those negotiations fail to produce such policies, however, Moody's would expect to lower the rating, probably to Aa1.”

OBAMA AND TAXES

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Raising Capital Gains Taxes for Purposes of “Fairness”

In an April 2008 Democratic primary debate, candidate Obama was asked, by journalist Charlie Gibson, a question about his proposal to nearly double the capital gains tax (from 15 percent to 28 percent). Said Gibson: “… In each instance when the rate dropped [in the 1990s], revenues from the tax increased. The government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the [capital gains] tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down. So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?” Obama replied that he wished to raise the tax “for purposes of fairness.” “We saw an article today,” he explained, “which showed that the top 50 hedge fund managers made $29 billion last year…. [T]hose who are able to work the stock market and amass huge fortunes on capital gains are paying a lower tax rate than their secretaries. That’s not fair.”

Low Ratings for Senator Obama's Tax Policies

The National Taxpayers Union—an organization that “seeks to reduce government spending, cut taxes, and protect the rights of taxpayers”—gave then-Senator Obama ratings of zero percent, 16 percent, and “F” in 2005, 2006, and 2007, respectively.

Americans for Tax Reform—which “believes in a system in which taxes are simpler, fairer, flatter, more visible, and lower than they are today”—gave Obama a zero percent rating in 2005 and a 15 percent rating in 2006.

The Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council—which “works to influence legislation and policies that help to create a favorable and productive environment for small businesses and entrepreneurship”—gave Obama a rating of 9 percent in 2005.

The National Federation of Independent Business—which seeks “to impact public policy at the state and federal level and be a key business resource for small and independent business in America”—gave Obama a rating of 12 percent in 2005-2006.

The Business-Industry Political Action Committee—which “supports pro-business candidates who have demonstrated the skill and leadership necessary to fuel a pro-business Congress”—rated Obama 15 percent in 2005 and 10 percent in 2006.

Ernst & Young Says President Obama's Proposed Tax Hikes Will Greatly Harm Economy

In July 2012, Ernst & Young—a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services—examined four sets of Obama tax proposals: (a) the increase in the top two tax rates from 33% to 36% and 35% to 39.6%; (b) the reinstatement of the limitation on itemized deductions for high earners; (c) the taxation of dividends as ordinary income; and (d) an increase in the Medicare tax for high-income taxpayers (from 2.9% to 3.8%), and the application of a new 3.8% tax on investment income. The Ernst & Young report concluded that “the higher tax rates will have significant adverse economic effects in the long-run: lowering output, employment, investment, the capital stock, and real after-tax wages when the resulting revenue is used to finance additional government spending.” All told, Ernst & Young estimate that Obama's tax plan will kill 710,000 small business jobs.

Most small businesses pay their taxes using individual tax rates; thus, If individual tax rates are raised, small business tax rates are raised as well.

Obama's Plan for a Tax Hike Is Blocked by Senate Democrats

In July 2012, Senate Democrats blocked a vote on President Obama’s proposal to raise taxes on those earning more than $250,000 per year. Senate Republicans had proposed taking two immediate votes—one to extend the Bush-era tax cuts (for all Americans) in their totality, the other to raise taxes as per Obama’s plan. The Democrats, aware that Obama's plan was politically toxic, refused to bring either measure to a vote.

Obama Lies About His Record on Tax Hikes

In a nationally televised February 6, 2011 interview with Bill O'Reilly, Obama stated: “I didn’t raise taxes once. I lowered taxes over the last two years.” The following day, Mark Levin of Americans For Tax Reform debunked Obama's “blatantly false” statement, noting that the president had signed into law at least two dozen tax increases. For example:

On February 4, 2009—just 16 days into his presidency—Obama signed into law a 156% increase in the federal excise tax on tobacco, thereby violating his “firm pledge” that no American making less than $250,000 would see “any form of tax increase.” The median income of smokers is slightly more than $36,000.

In March 2010, Obama signed the healthcare reform bill into law, thereby enacting two dozen new or higher taxes (at least seven of which violated his “firm pledge” on taxes):

* Employer Mandate Excise Tax

* Small business 1099-MISC Information Reporting

* Surtax on Investment Income

* Excise Tax on Comprehensive Health Insurance Plans

* Hike in Medicare Payroll Tax

* Medicine Cabinet Tax

* HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike

* Flexible Spending Account Cap – aka “Special Needs Kids Tax”

* Tax on Medical Device Manufacturers

* "Haircut" for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI

* Tax on Indoor Tanning Services

* Elimination of tax deduction for employer-provided retirement Rx drug coverage

* Blue Cross/Blue Shield Tax Hike

* Excise Tax on Charitable Hospitals

* Tax on Innovator Drug Companies

* Tax on Health Insurers

* Biofuel “black liquor” tax hike

* Codification of the “economic substance doctrine”

The second part of Obama’s claim—that he had “lowered taxes over the last two years”—rested merely upon some temporary tax relief he had signed into law. The tax cuts he enacted—such as the temporary payroll tax holiday—were mostly short-term and conditional. By contrast, the tax increases Obama had signed into law were mostly permanent. Indeed, he had signed into law $7 in permanent tax hikes for every $1 in permanent tax cuts.

Obamacare: The Biggest Tax Hike in American History

On June 28, 2012, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare, particularly its core provision—the so-called “individual mandate” under which most Americans would be required to buy health care insurance with at least the minimum amount of coverage stipulated by the federal government or pay a fine. Although the Obama administration had tried to characterize the individual mandate as a legitimate exercise of congressional power under the separate Commerce Clause of the Constitution, the Court's opinion rejected that approach and opted to call the fine, imposed on individuals who decide not to buy health insurance despite the mandate, a tax—within the taxing authority of Congress. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, that “Because the Constitution permits such a tax, it is not our role to forbid it, or to pass upon its wisdom or fairness.”

Obamacare will force small businesses with more than 50 employees to purchase “qualifying” health insurance. If they fail to do so, they will be required to pay a tax of up to $2,000 per employee.

In September 2012, the Congressional Budget Office released a report estimating that 6 million people would be subject to the Obamacare “individual mandate” tax, which would cost them approximately $7 billion in taxes per year. According to the Washington Examiner, most of those 6 million are in the middle class (with incomes below “$60,000 for individuals and $123,000 for families of four). In 2008, Obama pledged that “no family making less than $250,000 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.”

The individual mandate is just one of many new taxes imposed by Obamacare. According to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Obamacare as a whole constitutes the largest tax hike in American history—and it affects mostly people in the middle class.

Obamacare's Massive Taxes on the Middle Class

Forbes.com identifies the following 7 taxes that Obamacare will impose on people earning less than $250,000 per year:

Individual Mandate Excise Tax: “Starting in 2014, anyone not buying 'qualifying' health insurance must pay an income tax surtax. It goes up each year until 2016 and beyond when a couple would pay a tax of the higher of $1,360 or 2.5% of adjusted gross income.”

Over-The-Counter Drugs Trap: “Since Jan. 1, 2011, employees with health savings accounts, flexible spending accounts, or health reimbursement accounts have no longer been able to use pre-tax funds stashed in these accounts to buy over-the-counter medicines for allergy relief and the like without a doctor’s prescription (there’s an exception for insulin).”

Healthcare Flexible Spending Account Cap: “Starting Jan. 1, 2013, employees will face a $2,500 cap on the amount of pre-tax salary deferrals they can make into a healthcare flexible spending account. There is no cap under current law.”

Medical Itemized Deduction Hurdle: “Starting Jan. 1, 2013, taxpayers who face high medical expenses will only be allowed a deduction for expenses to the extent they exceed 10% of adjusted gross income, up from 7.5% now. Taxpayers 65 and older can still use the old 7.5% threshold through 2016.

Health Savings Account Withdrawal Penalty: “Since Jan. 1, 2011, taxpayers who withdraw money from health savings accounts for non-medical expenses before age 65 face a 20% penalty, up from 10% before.”

Indoor Tanning Services Tax: “Since July 1, 2010, folks using indoor tanning salons face a new 10% excise tax.”

Cadillac Health Insurance Plan Tax: “Starting in 2018, there will be a new 40% excise tax on taxpayers who are covered by high-cost health insurance plans (with premiums at or above $10,200 for a single or $27,500 for a family). Insurers or employers who are self-insured will pay the tax, but it is expected to trickle down to mean higher costs for consumers.

Obamacare Will Raise Self-Employment Tax Rate

The healthcare reform bill will raise self-employment tax from 2.9% in 2012 to 3.8% in 2013. This increase, coupled with the rise in the top marginal income-tax rates described above, would raise the marginal income-tax rate on small business profits from its current level of approximately 38%, to about 43% in 2013. This would be devastating to small employers, most of whom have thin profit margins. According to Fox News, “A company with $1 million in profits facing a higher tax rate of 5 percentage points will be saddled with another $50,000 in taxes.”

Obamacare Medical Device Tax

This 2.3% tax will take effect in 2013 and will affect companies that manufacture devices such as prosthetic limbs, pacemakers, and operating tables. Expected to bring in $20 billion in annual revenues, this tax will be levied on gross sales and thus must be paid even by companies that do not earn a profit in a given fiscal year. The medical-device industry employs 409,000 Americans in 12,000 plants nationwide; many of these incur losses for several years before they are able to turn a profit.

Obamacare Investment Surtax

“Also taking effect in 2013,” says a Fox News report, “this tax increase captures those few small business owners not covered by the self-employment tax hike: owners of Subchapter-S corporations and limited partners. These owners are currently exempt from self-employment tax, mostly because they are investors rather than proprietors. But Obamacare sweeps them into the IRS net too, forcing them to pay the 3.8 percentage point tax as an 'investor surtax.' This will make it far more difficult for investors to raise money to start up small firms. An investor is going to need to see even greater small business profit projections to overcome this higher 'hurdle rate' of taxes. Not only does a small business owner have to give his investor a strong return on his investment, he now has to do it with a giant tax mill around his neck.”

Obama Proposes Death Tax Increase

As of 2012, the estate tax—or “death tax”—has a top rate of 35% and a “standard deduction” of $5 million ($10 million in the case of a married couple or surviving spouse). President Obama calls for raising the rate to 45%, and reducing the exemption to $3.5 million. A Fox News report explains the implications of this measure: “When a family business owner dies, it’s up to the surviving family members to pay the death tax to the government. Needless to say, many successful, job-creating small businesses simply won’t survive this process. Such families will have little choice but to sell the business (and lay off all the employees) in order to pay the IRS. Or they will have to pay a small fortune to lawyers, accountants, and the life insurance industry to avoid this fate.”

Obama's Massive “Cap & Trade” Tax Hike That Was Averted by Congress

In a February 2009 speech to Congress, President Obama called for the implementation of a cap-and-trade environmental/energy plan designed to reduce carbon emissions. The cap-and-trade legislation (known officially as the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, or the Waxman-Markey bill, in honor of its congressional sponsors) would have established an economy-wide cap on carbon emissions and then permitted companies to buy or sell emission “credits.”

Robert Murphy, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to Capitalism, explained the mechanism by which cap-and-trade would impose costs on the American public: “Under a cap-and-trade scheme, the government sets an absolute cap on how much carbon dioxide industries can emit in the United States, and it enforces this cap by selling a limited number of allowances. All of the operations (utilities, factories, etc.) covered by the law must turn in the appropriate number of allowances based on how much carbon dioxide they release into the atmosphere each year. The government gets its revenues from auctioning off these allowances to the highest bidder.”

The ultimate result of cap-and-trade would be carbon rationing, since there would be a fixed number of carbon allowances available to American businesses as a whole. Such rationing would dramatically raise the operating costs of many businesses, which in turn would pass those costs on to their customers. According to the Heritage Foundation, the average American household would incur additional costs ranging from $1,870 to $6,970 per year. An MIT study placed the figure at $3,100. A March 2009 U.S. Treasury Department document said “a cap and trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually.” That is the equivalent of raising personal income taxes by approximately 15%, or $1,761 a year, per household.

In 2008, candidate Obama readily acknowledged that cap-and-trade would impose significantly higher energy costs on Americans of all income levels: “[U]nder my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

On June 26, 2009, the House of Representatives gave President Obama what he wanted, passing a cap-and-trade bill that called for the U.S. to cut its emissions of carbon dioxide by 83% over the next 41 years. By 2050, the average American would be allowed the same level of emissions as was produced by a citizen in 1867. Environmental groups celebrated, but the bill was extremely unpopular with the American public at large. Therefore, the bill was never passed by the Senate and did not become law, thereby preventing Obama from imposing an enormous tax on the American people.

Thus rebuffed by Congress, Obama next sought to impose cap-and-trade by circumventing the legislative process and imposing cap-and-trade through edicts by his Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). In March 2012, for example, the Obama EPA issued a final rule limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from electric utilities to no more than 1,000 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt of electricity produced—far below the 1,768 pound-average of existing coal plants. As Bonner Cohen, senior fellow with the National Center for Public Policy Research, writes: “The rule requires future plants to use as yet non-existent carbon capture and control technologies to cut their emissions to the new standard. With no technology available to bring down CO2 emissions to the new standard, EPA, in the name of combating climate change, is effectively telling the coal industry, which produces 55 percent of our nation’s electricity, that its days are numbered.”

Obama's Devotion to Failed “Keynesian” Economic Policies

President Obama is an adherent of what is known as Keynesian economics, named after the early-to-mid-twentieth century economist John Maynard Keynes. As Forbes magazine contributor Peter Ferrara explains: “The [Keynesian] idea is that the increased government spending and deficits will increase demand in the economy for more production, and that producers will increase supply to meet that demand, hiring more workers and reducing unemployment in the process. Keynesian economics arose in the 1930s in response to the Depression. It never worked then, as the recession of 1929 extended into the decade long Great Depression. And it never worked anywhere it’s been tried since then, in the U.S. or abroad. By the 1970s, Keynesian policies had produced double digit unemployment, double digit inflation, and double digit interest rates, all at the same time, along with four successive worsening recessions from 1969 to 1982. Keynesian monetary policy involves running up the money supply to increase demand, with artificially lowered interest rates promoting more spending. That is where the inflation came from.”

Ferrara then explains: “Ronald Reagan explicitly scrapped Keynesian economics for the more modern supply side economics, which holds that economic growth results from incentives meant to boost production. That results from reduced tax rates, which enable producers to keep a higher proportion of what they produce. It results from reduced regulatory costs, which also increases the net reward for increased production. And it results from monetary policies maintaining a strong, stable dollar, without inflation, which assures investors that the value of their investments will not be depreciated by inflation or a falling dollar, or threatened by repeated recessions resulting from policy induced boom/bust cycles, as in the 1970s.... [Under Reagan] inflation was quickly whipped, cut in half by 1982, and in half again by 1983, never to be heard from again until recently. At the same time ... the economy took off on a 25-year economic boom from 1982 to 2007, interrupted by just two, short, shallow recessions, widely recognized in the economic literature, and by the National Bureau of Economic Research, as one long boom. During the first 7 years of that boom alone, the economy grew by almost one-third, the equivalent of adding the entire economy of West Germany, the third largest in the world at the time, to the U.S. economy.”

Adjusting for inflation, more wealth was created in America during that 25-year boom than in the previous 200 years combined.

From 2002-2007, the growth in the U.S. economy was the equivalent of adding the entire economy of China to the American economy.

In light of these facts, Ferrara notes that “Obama has turned out to be the most regressive, backward looking President in American history, taking us back to the failed, discredited Keynesianism of the 1930s to 1970s, as if nothing at all interesting happened from 1980 to 2007.... Obama’s first major act in office was to pursue the unreconstructed Keynesianism of the nearly $1 trillion so-called 'stimulus,' which we now know didn’t stimulate anything except government spending, deficits and debt. Obama promised us at the time that if his 'stimulus' bill passed, the unemployment rate would never exceed 8%, and would decline to 5.8% by May of [2012]. But in reality it was 8.2% and rising in May.”

Obama articulated his devotion to Keynesian economic policies when he stated, in December 2009, that America must continue to “spend our way out of this recession.”