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Townhall
Finance
Obama’s
Growth-Busting Budget
by Larry Kudlow
No
matter how you slice the Obama
budget pie, the inescapable fact is that the president wants to get rid
of the
roughly $1 trillion budget-cutting sequester and substitute in a $1
trillion-plus tax hike. In other words, more spending, more taxing.
Growth-busting. The GOP should just say no.
And
let me provide some counsel to
my Republican friends in Washington, in particular in the House.
Balanced
budgets don’t create growth. This mantra is wrong. It’s growth that
creates
balanced budgets.
Cut
spending? That’s a pro-growth
measure. Lower tax rates? Another pro-growth measure. The combination
of
limited government and true tax reform will balance the budget soon
enough, with
government coming in at a
smaller share of GDP while sufficient investment and work incentives
get growth
moving towards the 4 or 5 percent range.
That
kind of growth would make up
for the lost ground of the past 15 years. And if you add in
deregulation and a
sound King Dollar, you’d have a growth budget that would propel America
back
into prosperity.
Indeed,
with some tweaking of
eligibility requirements, a true economic-growth budget would lower
food-stamp
enrollment, unemployment compensation, disability benefits, and other
forms of
welfare-dependency spending that plague the country. Medicare is a more
complex
issue, but Social Security would be solved by a long-run growth spurt.
Of
course, this is not what
President Obama is aiming for. He wants more than $500 billion in tax
revenue
from a 28 percent income-tax deduction limit. But this is not tax
reform, since
there are no offsetting reductions in marginal tax rates. He also wants
a $50
billion Buffett rule that would jack up taxes on capital gains and
dividends.
He would slap energy companies with a $100 billion tax hike, at least.
Offshore
corporate income would see a $150 billion tax increase. And banks and
financial
institutions would get slammed with $100 billion in new taxes…
Read
the rest of the article at Townhall
Finance
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