Faced with the worst joblessness in decades (including a new peak for the North Carolina unemployment rate), the Obama administration appears poised to fire another shot into the nation?s foot.
Jane Sasseen explains in the latest Business Week:
If you thought the fight over health care was tough, wait until the White House tries to raise corporate taxes.
The budget deficit, bloated by the costs of President Barack Obama’s stimulus plan and the sharp fall in tax receipts due to the recession, will hit $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2010, for the second year running?more than twice what it was in 2008. If Obama sticks to his pledge to keep the Bush tax cuts for families earning less than $250,000 a year, the move will add a projected $230 billion a year on average to the deficit over the next decade.
That leaves only one viable source for the hundreds of billions in extra tax revenue needed to sponge up all that red ink. With his Jan. 14 proposal to raise up to $117 billion through a levy on the nation’s largest financial institutions, Obama took a stab at increasing corporate taxes. It won’t be the last.
We want more jobs, so we?re going to take more resources away from those who create jobs. I wonder if Roy Cordato would label that idea insane.