Recently the story that Republicans are in favor of allowing the payroll tax to increase over President Obama’s opposition has been making the rounds on the internet. The story, presented as evidence of Republican hypocrisy on taxes, is more complex than it seems.
The cut in the payroll tax stems from last year’s compromise to extend the low, Bush-era tax rates for all Americans. A provision of the compromise deal lowered the Social Security payroll tax from 6.2 percent to 4.2 percent for employees during 2011. Employers were still required to pay the full 6.2 percent for their portion of the payroll tax. The self-employment tax was also cut by two percent. If not extended, the payroll tax will return to 6.2 percent for employees at the end of the year. The employer portion will remain the same.
In a tacit admission that the left is out of ideas on how to fix the economy, economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman recently proposed a new stimulus program in the form a military buildup to ward off an invasion by extraterrestrial aliens. Drawing upon the history of the Great Depression and an episode of “the Twilight Zone,” Krugman postulated on CNN that government spending on military hardware to combat aliens would revitalize the U.S. economy in short order. Krugman subscribes to the Keynesian belief that World War II and the debt-financed military buildup that followed finally ended the Great Depression after ten years of FDR’s debt-financed social programs failed to restart the economy.
In reality, the military buildup of the 1940’s and the New Deal stimulus programs were very similar. The military draft that removed hundreds of thousands of workers from unemployment rolls had civilian equivalents in the Civilian Conservation Corps, the Works Progress Administration and other New Deal government organizations that hired workers for make-work projects. Similarly, government orders for military hardware that busied factories were akin to New Deal construction projects commissioned by the Public Works Administration and the Civil Works Administration.
Jon Huntsman was born in California, but grew up in Utah. His father is the founder of Huntsman Corp., a global chemical company.
Huntsman dropped out of high school in his senior year in order to pursue a music career as keyboard player for his band, “Wizards.” His website notes that with “priorities adjusted,” he earned a G.E.D. and entered the University of Utah the next fall. After taking two years to serve as a Mormon missionary to Taiwan, Huntsman returned to enroll at the University of Pennsylvania where he graduated with a bachelor’s degree in International Politics.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has been a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination less than a week, has jumped to a commanding lead in Georgia. In an Insider Advantage poll released on August 19, Perry was preferred by 24 percent of likely voters in Georgia.
The second place candidate, Georgia native Herman Cain, was selected by fifteen percent of the respondents, trailing Perry by nine percent. Another Georgian, Newt Gingrich, finished a distant third with nine percent.
Rick Santorum is a native of Virginia, who grew up in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. In school, he was nicknamed “Rooster” because of his hair’s tendency to stick up and the fact that he did not back down. After his parents, who worked for the VA hospital system, were transferred to Illinois, Santorum graduated from high school there. His father was an Italian immigrant and his mother was half Italian, half Irish.
After high school, Santorum returned to Pennsylvania to attend Penn State. He graduated with a degree in Political Science and then went to the University of Pittsburgh for an MBA. Santorum then returned to Penn State to attend the Dickinson School of Law. He graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1986.
General aviation airports, like this one in Jackson Hole, bring money and jobs to local economies. (David W. Thornton
One of President Obama’s frequent talking points is about the wastefulness and elitism of corporate jets. In a June 2011 news conference, CNS News quotes the president as saying, “I’ve said to some of the Republican leaders, you go talk to your constituents, the Republican constituents, and ask them are they willing to compromise their kids’ safety so that some corporate jet owner continues to get a tax break.”
In contrast to the president’s statements, corporate jets are a valuable business tool. Many factories and business deals are found in far flung areas of the country that are not served by airlines or, after years of airline downsizing and bankruptcies, have only very limited service. While it is easy to find direct flights from Atlanta to every major metropolitan area in the country, smaller cities are primarily served by regional airlines and require layovers and connecting flights which add significantly to the length of the trip. This also increases the chance of delays and canceled flights.
Recently there have been a number of calls by liberals ranging from President Obama to Warren Buffett for the “wealthiest Americans” to pay their “fair share” in order to help the economy recover. According to this theory, taxes for the rich were cut to virtually nothing by President Bush. This led to the deficits and mounting national debt that we face today.
According to 2008 tax data, the most recent that is available from the I.R.S, in the Heritage Foundation 2011 Budget Chart the prevailing liberal view that rich Americans are getting a free ride is not accurate. The top one percent of wage earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008. When the view is expanded to include the top 10 percent of wage earners, the richest 10 percent of Americans paid almost 70 percent of all taxes. Conversely, the bottom 50 percent of wage earners paid less than three percent of all taxes in 2008. Democrats have not said what percentage of the tax burden they believe would constitute a fair share.
A Facebook friend recently objected to my criticisms of President Obama and the Democrat’s handling of the economy. Over the past years and months I have written about many possible solutions to the economic and debt crises that threaten to send the United States into a second recession or worse, a depression.
In a memorable episode of “Seinfeld,” George Costanza decides that since his every instinct is wrong, he should do the opposite of what he would normally do. As Jerry put it, “If every instinct that you have is wrong, then opposite would have to be right.” President Obama has had similar bad instincts on the economy and should adopt a similar strategy. Since President Obama’s fiscal policies have hastened the crisis and dramatically increased the federal debt while at the same time slowing the normal recovery cycle, a good start would be to do the opposite of what he has been doing for the past three years. The opposite of Obama’s past policies would be policies that have worked previously in U.S. history, notably under Presidents Harding, Coolidge, Kennedy, Reagan, and Bush.
According to a new Gallup poll, a slight majority of Georgians approve of President Obama’s job performance. By a margin of 48 to 44 percent, Georgians favor the president. The approval rating is actually one point higher than the percentage of the vote that Obama won in Georgia in 2008.
While not in the top ten Obama-approving states, at number twenty Georgia ranks higher than many of the swing states from the 2008 election. This fact is somewhat surprising considering the size of the Republican victory in Georgia in 2010.
As the presidential race heats up, a popular governor of Texas may be poised to sweep the head of the pack of forgettable Republican candidates. This is not a flashback to the 2000 presidential primaries that ended in the nomination of George W. Bush, but a possible outcome of the 2012 primary should current Texas governor Rick Perry decide to enter the race as appears increasingly likely.
Perry is a native Texan and a graduate of Texas A&M. After college, he joined the Air Force and served as a pilot of C-130 Hercules transports. After leaving the Air Force, Perry returned to Texas where he joined the family business as a cotton farmer.
Perry’s political career began as a Democrat in the Texas House of Representatives in 1984.
David W. Thornton
CaptainKudzu 