Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Taxes and Debt Ceilings

I've got to get this off my chest because I believe many partisans are revising or forgetting some things, and whether it's on purpose or not, it's driving me nuts.  I don't claim to know all the answers and I would happily receive any corrections to the following statements about Taxes and Debt Ceilings.

Virtually everyone's taxes went up this month

The Payroll Tax Holiday expired and essentially everyone who works is getting less net pay this year, (unless you change your allowances so less money is withheld).  The major reason they went up has nothing to do with the Bush Administration.  In 2010, President Obama proposed a 2% Tax Holiday.  Your pay went up that year because this measure was passed and then extended the following year.  That's right, President Obama temporarily cut your taxes. OK, here's a question: What political party "went to the mat" to ensure we had this holiday extension for 2013? Well, my taxes went up, and I didn't hear much news about either party fighting for the extension, so we can thank them all for raising our taxes.

Oh, and if by chance you are in one of the households dealing with additional increased taxes due to income levels exceeding $400K, I'm sorry.  If it bothers you, I can understand why you might make some partisan statements.  I personally don't have this problem.

The Debt Ceiling

More Briefly...

Obama says not raising the Debt Ceiling would be absurd and irresponsible while Boehner and McConnell are showing a great deal of resistance in doing so.

During the Bush Administration, Representative Boehner and Senator McConnell voted 5 times to raise the debt ceiling while then Senator Obama said that doing this indicated a lack of leadership.

I have seen both sides exposing the hypocrisy of the other regarding this.  I believe as an act of bipartisanship, we should all come together and simply state that there are self-interested hypocrites on both sides of the aisle.

There, I feel better now.