Welcome to The Portage County Ohio TEA Party

Six Months to Go Until
The Largest Tax Hikes in History

In just six months, the largest tax hikes in the history of America will take effect.  They will hit families and small businesses in three great waves on January 1, 2011:

First Wave: Expiration of 2001 and 2003 Tax Relief

In 2001 and 2003, the GOP Congress enacted several tax cuts for investors, small business owners, and families.  These will all expire on January 1, 2011:

Personal income tax rates will rise.  The top income tax rate will rise from 35 to 39.6 percent (this is also the rate at which two-thirds of small business profits are taxed).  The lowest rate will rise from 10 to 15 percent.  All the rates in between will also rise.  Itemized deductions and personal exemptions will again phase out, which has the same mathematical effect as higher marginal tax rates.  The full list of marginal rate hikes is below:

- The 10% bracket rises to an expanded 15%
- The 25% bracket rises to 28%
- The 28% bracket rises to 31%
- The 33% bracket rises to 36%
- The 35% bracket rises to 39.6%

President Barack Obama adjusts the collar of Mort Zuckerman, Chief Executive Officer of U.S. News and World Report, right, as Janet Murguia, President and CEO, National Council of La Raza, looks on, after Obama spoke about immigration reform, Thursday, July 1, 2010, at American University in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

(CNSNews.com) - President Barack Obama said Thursday (7-1-10) that U.S. borders cannot be secured with fences and border patrols. “It won’t work,” he said.
 
Obama made the statement in a speech at American University in Washington, D.C. in which he called on Congress to enact a “comprehensive immigration reform” law that would include a “pathway for legal status” for illegal immigrants—or what critics call amnesty.
 
“Even as we are committed to doing what’s necessary to secure our borders, even without passage of the new law, there are those who argue that we should not move forward with any other elements of reform until we have fully sealed our borders,” said Obama. “But our borders are just too vast for us to be able to solve the problem only with fences and border patrols. It won’t work. Our borders will not be secure as long as our limited resources are devoted to not only stopping gangs and potential terrorists, but also the hundreds of thousands who attempt to cross each year simply to find work.”

Obama, Bernanke pile on debt when de-leveraging is needed.

Michael Pento

If policymakers do not understand the real cause of a problem, they will in all likelihood be unable to provide a genuine solution. Messrs. Barack Obama, Benjamin Bernanke and Timothy Geithner do not understand the real cause of this debt crisis. They are politicians first and economists or students of the market second–if at all. Therefore, it is not wise to count on them to tell us when the Great Recession is over, or to provide a plan to prevent another one in the future.

The cause of the Great Depression in the 1930s, and the Great Recession beginning in 2007, was one and the same: an overleveraged economy. Excessive debt levels are the direct result of the central bank providing artificially low interest rates and of superfluous lending on the part of commercial banks.

The easy money provided by banks eventually brings debt in the economy to an unsustainable level. At that point, the only real and viable solution is for the public and private sectors to undergo a protracted period of deleveraging. The ensuing depression is, in actuality, the healing process at work, which is marked by the selling of assets and the paying down of debt.

Unfortunately, our politicians today are focused on fighting this natural healing process by promoting the accumulation of more debt.

When all government, domestic and foreign, in little as in great things, shall be drawn to Washington as the centre of all power, it will render powerless the checks provided of one government on another, and will become as venal and oppressive as the government from which we separated.” — Thomas Jefferson, in 1821

 

The popular election of our Senators is bad public policy because it stripped the states of the one voice of representation they had in Washington, DC. James Madison, remembered as the Father of the Constitution, cautioned against “nationalism,” wherein a strong national government would rule from Washington. Madison instead favored a new system, to be known as “federalism,” which would give co-equal powers to the state and the federal governments. One of the key aspects of maintaining this distinction was the manner in which U.S. Senators were selected.