Echoes of the past could be heard in President Obama’s Tuesday night State of the Union Speech. Unbowed by failure to alleviate the economic malaise during his first term, Mr. Obama vows to continue tax-and-spend liberal policies for another four years. Jimmy Carter is back.
Mr. Obama prefaced the laundry list of new federal programs he wants by saying, “Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime. It is not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.” Of course, he wants Uncle Sam to do a lot more, and he has no appetite for eliminating existing government undertakings. That means there’s only one way his outsized bureaucracy can be sustained, and that’s through tax hikes. Those hikes will be massive because everything the White House desires will cost taxpayers hundreds of billions — possibly trillions — in new outlays.
The president asked for more cash for “high-speed rail and Internet, high-tech schools, self-healing power grids” as well as mapping the human genome, scientific research and green energy programs. He would also repay his union allies for their campaign support by throwing money at preschools and transportation boondoggles. Mr. Obama used the word “investment” five times, which is his way of avoiding getting caught saying “spending” aloud. He called for Congress to pay for this by “getting rid of tax loopholes and deductions for the well-off and the well-connected.”
Eliminating deductions is only a good idea in the context of tax reform that offers lower rates. Otherwise, forcing families to hand more of their hard-earned cash to the Internal Revenue Service isn’t going to help the economy grow.
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