Sarah Palin: The Case for Extending All the Tax Cuts

"This is not a difficult argument to make. It’s common sense."
*
On Facebook, Gov. Palin references economist Thomas Sowell, who makes the case for extending the Bush tax cuts:

The Case for Extending All the Tax Cuts

In “America By Heart” folks will get a feel for some of my favorite writers and thinkers. One of them is the great economist Thomas Sowell. Some of you may recall that in “Going Rogue” I mentioned Sowell’s famous book “A Conflict of Visions” to explain the way the liberal or “progressive” world view and philosophy differs from the conservative view. Sowell’s articles are always worth reading, and his most recent column is no exception. He reminds us where our attention needs to be during this lame-duck session of Congress. He notes that the Democrats have articulated their tired class warfare argument about “tax cuts for the rich,” but conservatives have still not articulated our proven time-tested argument that tax cuts spur economic growth, which in turn helps everyone from all income levels and increases tax revenue as the economy grows. Sowell reminds us:

“These are not new arguments on either side. They go back more than 80 years. Over that long span of time, there have been many sharp cuts in tax rates under presidents Calvin Coolidge, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and George W. Bush. So we don’t need to argue in a vacuum. There is a track record.

“What does that record say? It says, loud and clear, that cuts in tax rates do not mean cuts in tax revenues. In all four of these administrations, of both parties, so-called “tax cuts for the rich” led to increased tax revenues — with people earning high incomes paying not only a larger sum total of tax revenues, but even a higher proportion of all tax revenues.

“Most important of all, these tax-rate reductions spurred economic activity, which we definitely need today.”

But as Sowell later points out, having a proven time-tested policy isn’t enough if we don’t articulate it. We need to remind people that tax cuts help everyone. And we should also remind the Democrats that many of the so-called “rich” they’re dismissing are our small business owners who account for 70% of all job creation in this country. At a time when we need job growth, we should not target job creators with tax hikes. Closing our deficit gap requires us to cut spending, but we also need to spur economic growth. With that in mind, the last thing we should do is hamper our economic innovators and entrepreneurs with excessive taxes, overly burdensome regulation, and more uncertainty. This is not a difficult argument to make. It’s common sense.

- Sarah Palin

- JP

Sarah Palin: Democrat Pants Still on Fire

*
Sarah Palin continues to battle President Obama, the Democrat-controlled Congress and the liberal “fact-checkers” at the St. Petersburg Times. On Facebook late Friday night, Gov. Palin promised to keep holding the president, Congress and lamestream media accountable on their intentions concerning the Bush tax cuts, which are scheduled to expire at the end of this year:

Pants on Fire, Still

A $3.8 trillion tax increase is coming down the pike, folks. America’s tax cuts which can incentivize small businesses to expand and hire more people (thus fulfilling the mission to grow more private sector jobs), or even just to keep our doors open, will expire in four months. That expiration equates to an increase on your tax bill, starting at midnight, December 31.

I’ll keep calling out President Obama and the Democrats until they tell the American people what the plan is to save the incentives – to not allow the mom and pops’ tax cuts to expire. Granted, liberals (including stubborn “fact-checkers” who claim I’m lying about the soon-to-be tax cut expiration) are trying to clobber me for holding them accountable and prodding them toward revealing their intentions (because they’ve had 18 months to publicly propose a plan to stave off the $3.8 trillion tax increase that will soon slam us, but have revealed no plan). If they have a bill to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, let’s see it. Time for them to put up or shut up.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Take the word of the “fact-checkers” at PolitiFact, who, before moving the goal posts in their second dissembling “fact-check” on the Democrats’ tax hikes, wrote in their original “fact-check”:

There are no formal congressional proposals yet to keep the Bush tax cuts in place, so we don’t have precise estimates from official sources like the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Still, there’s a good bit of consensus on what the tax increases would look like, both if lower rates expired only for high earners and also for all incomes.

As Ed Morrissey noted:

And there’s a big problem with this argument, which is that “consensus” means nothing without passing a bill, and especially not without proposing one first. Thanks to Democrats in 2001 and 2003, those bills cutting the tax rates have hard-and-fast sunset provisions that create an expiration date absent of any other action. We are now less than four months away from that expiration date after seven years of seeing it coming, after more than 3 years of Democratic control of Congress, and after eighteen months of the Obama administration. Democrats don’t even have a proposal on the table yet, and the legislative calendar is rapidly shrinking to take action before the expiration date hits. Without action, we will see a $3.8 trillion tax hike across the entire spectrum of earners.

So much for “consensus” without action. PolitiFact is curiously stating that in his 2011 budget, the President mentioned some “plan” to do something about not raising taxes on all Americans. Um, don’t know about you, but I don’t find this general, vague promise of some “plan” all that reassuring. The Left also “plans” to do something about our out of control deficits and high unemployment, and the President “planned” for his nearly trillion dollar stimulus to keep unemployment under 8%. We’ve seen how successful that “plan” worked out. The President’s budget “plan” hasn’t worked out so well either. As the economist Bruce Bartlett explained at the time, the President’s budget – including the tax promise – was never much more than a vague statement of intent. Practically speaking, it was dead on arrival. Even Bartlett couldn’t have known how dead, though, because in the end Congress didn’t even succeed in passing a budget, let alone in taking a decision on the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts.

Bottom line: until we see a formal proposal – an actual bill before Congress – then get ready for that $3.8 trillion hit.

(By the way, the Left sure gets wee-wee’d up when they’re called on something like this, eh? And here I am, thousands of miles away from DC out on a commercial fishing boat, working my butt off for my own business, merely asking the Democrat politicos and their liberal friends in the media: “What’s the plan, man?”, and they seem to feel threatened by my question. So, I’ll go back to setting my hooks and watching the halibut take the bait, and when I come back into the boat’s cabin in a few hours, I’ll log back on here to read their reply. I’ll have succeeded if they’re forced to finally reveal to Americans how they plan to increase taxes, and what they intend to do with our money. In the meantime, I’m catching fish.)

- Sarah Palin, in Homer, Alaska

- JP

Gov. Palin: Where's Obama's Plan?

*
Sarah Palin is keeping the pressure on the Obama Administration and Congressional Democrats. She just asked via Twitter:

"What's the plan,man? Still no Obama/Dem's formal proposal telling Americans how they'll increase taxes in 4 mos, nor what they'll do w our $"

Reminds us of the wildly successful "Where's the beef?" ad campaign for Wendy's 25 years ago.

- JP

Video: Gov. Palin talks domestic policy on 'Hannity'

*
From TheRightScoop:



- JP

Video: Sarah Palin on FNS - August 1, 2010

*
Gov. Palin made her third appearance on "Fox News Sunday" today. Here's the video from Fox News:



- JP

Sarah Palin: Brewer Has 'Cojones'; Obama, not so much (Updated)

*
Sarah Palin offered praise for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer Sunday morning for defending her state's immigration law in court against Eric Holder's lawsuit. Gov Palin said her friend Brewer has the "cojones" that President Obama lacks on the critical issue of border security:

Palin said on "Fox News Sunday" that Brewer is tackling border security and putting her faith in legal immigration where Obama is not.

"Jan Brewer has the cojones that our president does not have," she said. "If our own president will not enforce our federal law, more power to Jan Brewer."

[...]

Palin called the judge's ruling "unfortunate" but hopefully "temporary."

"There are many, many more steps to take," she said, adding that the case could come before the Supreme Court.

Gov. Palin also called Obama and congressional Democrats "all wet" for planning to let the Bush tax cuts expire, adding, "It's idiotic to think about increasing taxes at a time like this."

Asked by host Chris Wallace what she had written on her palm, the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate held up her hand to show the words "$3.8 trillion over 10 years," the cost, Republicans say, of allowing the cuts to expire. Wallace inquired why she wrote the palm note, and she replied:

"...so I don’t say ‘$3.7 trillion’ and then get dinged by the liberals saying I don’t know what I was talking about."

We'll have the video of her comments up when Fox releases it, and, no, we're not going to link to any of the biased lamestream media stories on this FNS appearance. The usual media suspects can float down the River Styx in a hand basket to Hades. Frankly, we've grown weary of giving them page hits to spread their DNC attack memes about Sarah Palin.

Update: More quotes from Gov. Palin's FNS appearance via Chris Wallace's blog:

"To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you rein in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his. His commitment to let previous tax cuts expire are going to lead to even fewer job opportunities for Americans, because it's the job creators who will be taxed.”

[...]

“I think President Obama is trying to deceive the public in pretending that he was not a part of Congress that has made some decisions in the past that got us to where we are today. It just amazes me that he continues to look backward and blame solely President Bush for the conundrum that we're in right now… We're not out of the problem. We have a jobless recovery and that's no recovery in the minds of most Americans.”

[...]

“As for the unfavorable, you know, I don't blame people for not really knowing what it is, in some instances what I stand for, what my record is because if I believed everything that I read in or heard in the media, I wouldn't like me either.”

- JP