Ah nope, I'm not relying on foreign aid or bloated government waste.
> and raise your taxes,
Nope:
http://www.mittromney.com/issues/tax
Reducing and stabilizing federal spending is essential, but breathing
life into the present anemic recovery will also require fixing the
nation’s tax code to focus on jobs and growth. To repair the nation’s
tax code, marginal rates must be brought down to stimulate
entrepreneurship, job creation, and investment, while still raising the
revenue needed to fund a smaller, smarter, simpler government. The
principle of fairness must be preserved in federal tax and spending policy.
Individual Taxes
America’s individual tax code applies relatively high marginal tax rates
on a narrow tax base. Those high rates discourage work and
entrepreneurship, as well as savings and investment. With 54 percent of
private sector workers employed outside of corporations, individual
rates also define the incentives for job-creating businesses. Lower
marginal tax rates secure for all Americans the economic gains from tax
reform.
•Make permanent, across-the-board 20 percent cut in marginal rates
•Maintain current tax rates on interest, dividends, and capital gains
•Eliminate taxes for taxpayers with AGI below $200,000 on interest,
dividends, and capital gains
•Eliminate the Death Tax
•Repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
Corporate Taxes
The U.S. economy’s 35 percent corporate tax rate is among the highest in
the industrial world, reducing the ability of our nation’s businesses to
compete in the global economy and to invest and create jobs at home. By
limiting investment and growth, the high rate of corporate tax also
hurts U.S. wages.
•Cut the corporate rate to 25 percent
•Strengthen and make permanent the R&D tax credit
•Switch to a territorial tax system
•Repeal the corporate Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT)
> assuming you're not already so strapped that
> you're in the 47% of those who are too poor to pay federal income tax.
Another lie, facts:
http://taxvox.taxpolicycenter.org/2011/07/27/why-do-people-pay-no-federal-income-tax-2/
Much has been made of TPC’s estimate that fully 46 percent of Americans
will pay no federal individual income tax this year. Commentators have
often misinterpreted that percentage as indicating that nearly half of
Americans pay no taxes. In fact, however, many of those who don’t pay
income tax do pay other taxes—federal payroll and excise taxes as well
as state and local income, sales, and property taxes.
The large percentage of people not paying income tax is often blamed on
tax breaks that zero out many households’ income tax bills and can even
result in net payments from the government. While that’s the case for
many households, a new TPC paper shows that about half of people who
don’t owe income tax are off the rolls not because they take advantage
of tax breaks but rather because they have low incomes. For example, a
couple with two children earning less than $26,400 will pay no federal
income tax this year because their $11,600 standard deduction and four
exemptions of $3,700 each reduce their taxable income to zero. The basic
structure of the income tax simply exempts subsistence levels of income
from tax.
What about the rest of the untaxed households, the 23 percent of
households who don’t pay income tax because of particular tax breaks? We
divided tax expenditures (special provisions in the tax code that
benefit particular taxpayers or activities) into eight categories and
asked which ones made the most people nontaxable. The conclusion:
Three-fourths of those households pay no income tax because of
provisions that benefit senior citizens and low-income working families
with children. Those provisions include the exclusion of some Social
Security benefits from taxable income, the tax credit and extra standard
deduction for the elderly, and the child, earned income, and childcare
tax credits that primarily help low-income workers with children (see
graph). Extending the example offered above, the couple could earn an
additional $19,375 without paying income tax because their pre-credit
tax liability of $2,056 would be wiped out by a $2,000 child tax credit
and $57 of EITC.
> Why would you support someone who isn't shy about telling you he's going
> to pick your pocket?
I don't know why ANYONE supports Obama the BIG tax and spender.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703906204575027181656362948.html
Whether or not Americans choose to believe him, there's no denying the
fiscal reality created by the rollout version of President Obama last
year, as detailed in the Congressional Budget Office report released
yesterday. For the second year in a row, fiscal 2010 will see a
trillion-dollar deficit—an estimated $1.35 trillion, or 9.2% of GDP,
which is down slightly from last year's post-World War II record of 9.9%.
But as the nearby chart shows, Mr. Obama's major contribution to
deficits has been a record spending spree. In 2007, before the
recession, federal expenditures reached $2.73 trillion. By 2009
expenditures had climbed to $3.52 trillion. In 2009 alone, overall
federal spending rose 18%, or $536 billion. Throw in a $65 billion
reduction in debt service costs due to low interest rates, and the
overall spending increase was 22%.
In one year.
CBO confirms that Democrats have taken federal spending to a new and
higher plateau: 24.7% of GDP in 2009, 24.1% this year, and back to an
estimated 24.3% in 2011. The modern historical average is about 20.5%,
and less than that if you exclude the Reagan defense buildup of the
1980s that helped to win the Cold War and let Bill Clinton reduce
defense spending to 3% of GDP in the 1990s.
This means that one of every four dollars produced by the sweat of
American private labor is now taxed and redistributed by 535 men and
women in Congress.
> Stockholm Syndrome?
That might be the reason, sure...