1% Financial Transaction Fee – E.J. Smith
Rumor has it the Obama administration finance team will impose a 1% financial transaction fee. While this can’t be proven it seems to fit the current administration’s agenda. The idea was first introduced by Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa) in 2004 to increase federal spending to provide universal health care, support an equitable public school finance system, and fund economic development in urban and rural areas.
Here’s Fattah’s policy recommendation in his updated bill, the 2010 Debt Free America Act: “The bill further proposes to implement a 1 percent fee on all financial transactions, except for transactions involving stock, as well as retail transactions, which will immediately reduce the size of the national debt.” President Obama is awaiting the policy recommendations from his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. If they use Fattah’s bill as their guide it will be just the beginning of a VAT. If such a tax system is implemented it won’t tackle the problem of runaway government spending.
A 1% financial transaction fee will be a new political tool that is unlikely to be used to reduce debt especially when congressman like Fattah introduce such a bill to finance universal health care and an equitable public school finance system. It wouldn’t take long to ratchet the 1% up to 2% or remove the exemption on stock transactions. This is not the solution we need from Washington and will unfairly harm small businesses and the investor class.
America’s Problem – Dick Young
This morning at National Review, James Capretta writes that there is no avoiding “repeal and replace” for Obamacare. As Capretta writes “Scores of House and Senate candidates are campaigning on a platform of reestablishing limited government.” Much of the support for these new congressmen comes from the public’s absolute ire at the passage of Obamacare. Some have said that repealing Obamacare now that it has been enacted will anger the public so much that they will turn on the party that does it. That is a ridiculous sentiment. An overwhelming majority of Americans opposed the passage of Obamacare. Are you to believe that now those Americans will fight to keep it? None of the people who showed up to massive rallies across the country are going to mind one bit if Obamacare is repealed, in fact they will probably reward the party that brings repeal with continued loyalty.
Yesterday Naftali Bendavid wrote for the Wall Street Journal that GOP leaders in the House want to move legislation forward, even if it means compromise with the Democrats. That is a terrible strategy. Americans are looking to the GOP as a bulwark against the bad policy ideas of Democrats. They are not looking for Nancy-Pelosi-lite. Repeal and replace should not only be the motto of the GOP in the fight to nix Obamacare, but for any number of federal government programs. The GOP needs to listen to the people, and hear the message. Americans want a drastically reduced government, not trimming around the edges.
As Victor Davis Hanson writes today in National Review, Americans heard all about bipartisanship from Barack Obama. They were fooled. Fool them once, shame on you, fool them twice and there will be a revolution. Today Americans aren’t looking for “bipartisanship.” I would say they really don’t even care about bipartisanship. What they really want to see is a government that gets things done. What needs to get done is a massive reduction in government spending, a reduction in tax rates, and a reduction in the national debt. Get those three things right, and bipartisanship will be a word Americans remember fondly but don’t give much thought.
The only people still talking about bipartisanship are Democrats, who are trying their very hardest to distract conservatives from their goals of small government. The Democrats supporters, as Walter Williams writes today at Human Evets, are socialists and Marxists. For all the denials by the administration that the ideals of Barack Obama are socialist, his supporters don’t seem to agree. Williams goes on to say that “When Hitler, Stalin and Mao were campaigning for political power, you can bet they didn’t campaign on the promise to murder millions of their own people, and probably the thought of doing so never crossed their minds. Those horrors were simply the end result of long evolution of ideas leading to consolidation of power in central government in the quest for “social justice.” It was decent but misguided earlier generations of Germans, Russians and Chinese, like many of today’s Americans, who would have cringed at the thought of genocide, who built the Trojan horse for a Hitler, a Stalin or Mao to take over.”
To fight against the socialists showing up at rallies in support of Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich will be heading out on a tour of the country for a number of “Jobs Here, Jobs Now” rallies, where he will push an agenda of economic freedom for Americans. Newt and Co. will be targeting several cities including Phoenix, San Diego and Las Vegas tomorrow.
Don’t stand on the sidelines on November 2nd. Fight with other conservatives and independent voters who have had enough of the radical Obama administration. There is no excuse for what Barack Obama has done to America. Massive budget deficits and debt, higher taxes and more bureaucracy are not the answers to America’s problems, they are America’s problems.
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