The American people voted for change, but the Clinton Administration is giving us more and more of the same old tax-and-spend policies. The American people voted for reducing the deficit, but the Democratic Congress is voting to increase it.
The exit polls after the November 3 election showed that the American people are fed up with expensive federal social programs and they want tax cuts even if it means fewer government services. But the Democratic Congress is trotting out the same o1d make-work programs whose real purpose is to pay off those who voted for Bill Clinton.
President Clinton misjudged the mood of the public when he pushed his $16.2 billion “Emergency” Appropriations bill. The American people fear a tax increase much more than the “gridlock” caused by the Republican Senators’ filibuster.
This Emergency bill is just new deficit spending masquerading as “economic stimulus” and “jobs creation.” According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill would create 219,115 jobs at an average cost of $89,013 per job created.
This Clinton boondoggle will provide taxpayer funds for the biq-city mayors’ “wish list. ” This includes swimming pools, theaters, an ice skating warming hut, a sports park, an arts center, a media center, a picnic shelter, period-type street lighting, a white-water canoeing course, a parking garage on the Fort Lauderdale beach, collecting data on the sickle fin chub, am Ice Age Trail, and 28 projects to hire students for 12 weeks to make drawings of structures such as Mark Twain’s house in Connecticut and old ironclad ships. That’s called “pork, ” and in some areas of the country, the cost of each job created would be more than $200,000.
Let’s put the matter of jobs creation in focus. In the one month of February this year, the private sector created 365,000 new jobs, dropping the U.S. unemployment rate to 7 percent. That’s 145,885 more Jobs than the Clinton bill would create, and it didn’t cost the taxpayers a dine!
Clinton’s Budget Resolution, the other part of the Clinton Economic Program, sets revenue goals and spending limits for the next five years. The plan claims to achieve $466 billion in budget reduction, but that would be mostly by imposing the biggest tax hike in history: $267 billion.
Contrary to Clinton’s promises, two-thirds of the new taxes won’t go to deficit reduction but to higher spending. The Budget Resolution includes $267 billion in net new taxes, and 68 percent ($182 billion) will go to finance new spending.
The ratio of tax hikes to spending cuts is 2 to 1. That’s $267 billion in new taxes to $125 billion in net spending cuts.
The Energy tax will hit working families and farmers very hard, and is predicted to cost the country at least 610,000 jobs. The American Petroleum Institute estimates that, for the average family of four, the cost of the Energy tax will be between $390 and $652 per year and, for the average farmer, it will be $1,600 per year.
The new taxes on Social Security benefits will hit individuals earning more than $25,000 and couples earning over $32,000. They are the new “rich” in Clinton’s jargon.
A11 these new taxes aren’t necessary at all. The Republicans offered an alternative written by Rep. John Kasich (OH) that would have reduced the deficit by $430 billion over five years without higher taxes. How? By spending cuts, of course, and he listed 160 cuts.
Under the C1inton income tax plan, a couple with a newborn baby and an annual income of $14,500 would be hit with a $317 tax increase. That’s because the Clinton tax plan would repeal the Young Child Tax Credit, which has been available to low- and middle-income families with incomes less than $20,000.
Let’s hear that song again about taxing only the rich!
During the 1992 campaign, Clinton promised parents an $800 per-child tax credit. What a difference a year makes. Under Clinton’s 1993 tax plan, a family of four with an annual income of $36,000 will pay $1,114 more in taxes than they expected when they voted for Clinton last November.
By adjusting the income thresholds at which the top tax rates kick in, the Clinton tax plan resurrects the “marriage tax” that had been corrected by the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Under the Clinton plan, two yuppies making $140,000 each would save $5,425 in federal income taxes by cohabiting instead of getting married.
The Clinton Budget Resolution and Emergency Stimulus bill are only the appetizers for the big tax hit, which is sure to come when Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Force unveils its plan in May, Newsweek is estimating that Health Care reform will require $40 to $50 billion in new taxes, and other estimates run as high as $90 billion.
No single issue is more important to the American people than taxes. President Clinton and the liberal Democratic Congress just don’t get it.
