Dems Renew Commitment to Failed Policies

Obama Won’t Relent on More Failed Stimulus and Job-Destroying Tax Hikes

• President Obama continues to insist on a second stimulus to follow his first one and steadfastly refuses to back away from his failed policy.
• House Democrats are finally now confessing their support for more failed stimulus spending, but apparently they have yet to muster the courage to sign on as a co-sponsor of Stimulus 2.0.
• Democrats have been far more forthright, however, in demanding more job-destroying tax increases. Just in the past month, Obama himself has proposed nearly $2 trillion in tax increases, and now House Democrat leaders have joined Obama’s call for “significant” tax hikes. Even Obama’s former economist agrees that these tax hikes destroy jobs.

BACKGROUND 

President Obama continues to insist on a second stimulus to follow his first one and steadfastly refuses to back away from his failed policy: 

“OBAMA WON’T NEGOTIATE WITH REPUBLICANS” ON STIMULUS 2.0:“President Obama says he won’t negotiate a jobs package with Republicans unless they first propose solutions that can create jobs now. … If [Republicans] come around to his way of thinking, he said, ‘I’ll be right there. We’ll be ready to go.’

“Until then, the president said, he will work with Senate Democratic leaders to put forward individual pieces of the $447 billion jobs plan that Republicans blocked from consideration Tuesday night. That’s a strategy designed to force Republicans to oppose popular proposals.” (Richard Wolf, “Obama Won’t Negotiate with Republicans on Jobs,” USA Today, 10/13/2011)

House Democrats are finally now confessing their support for more failed stimulus spending, but apparently they have yet to muster the courage to sign on as a co-sponsor of Stimulus 2.0:

REP. LEONARD BOSWELL (D-IA) HELD A PRESS CONFERENCE TO TOUT SUPPORT FOR STIMULUS 2.0: (Pat Curtis, “Vilsack, Boswell Tout President’s Jobs Bill,” Radio Iowa, 10/10/2011) 

REP. BEN CHANDLER (D-KY) GOES OUT ON A LIMB FOR OBAMA’S SECOND STIMULUS: “U.S. Rep. Ben Chandler said Wednesday that he supports President Barack Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan, although the Republican-led House is not expected to vote on the plan soon, if ever.” (John Cheves, Chandler Urges Support for Obama’s jobs plan,” Kentucky Herald-Leader, 10/6/2011) 

DEMOCRAT LEADER NANCY PELOSI: “OUR CAUCUS IS VERY UNIFIED” ABOUT OBAMA’S NEW STIMULUS AND TAX HIKES. “Dem Leaders Pelosi adds ‘Our caucus is very unified about the American Jobs Act’ responding to ?s about some Dems not liking Obama plan” (Tweet from Kelly O’Donnell, NBC News, 9/15/2011) 

BUT THE STIMULUS BILL STILL HAS ZERO HOUSE DEMOCRAT CO-SPONSORS:(Thomas.gov, Accessed 10/13/2011)

Democrats have been far more forthright, however, in demanding more job-destroying tax increases. Just in the past month, Obama himself has proposed nearly $2 trillion in tax increases, and now House Democrat leaders have joined Obama’s call for “significant” tax hikes. Even Obama’s former economist agrees that these tax hikes destroy jobs:

“HOUSE DEMS WANT DEFICIT PANEL TO FIND ‘SIGNIFICANT’ NEW REVENUES”:“The policy package — consisting of recommendations from the senior Democrats on 16 top committees and sent to the leaders of the deficit-slashing supercommittee — calls for significant new revenue hikes to reduce the deficit. …

” ‘The American people overwhelmingly agree that significant revenues must be included in any plan,’ Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a letter to the supercommittee that accompanied the proposals.” (Mike Lillis, “House Dems Want Deficit Panel to Find ‘Significant’ New Revenues,” The Hill, 10/13/2011) 

“OBAMA VOWS VETO IF DEFICIT PLAN HAS NO TAX INCREASES”: “President Obama called on Monday for Congress to adopt his ‘balanced’ plan combining entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce the federal deficit by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, and said he would veto any approach that relied solely on spending reductions to address the fiscal shortfall.” (Helene Cooper, “Obama Vows Veto if Deficit Plan Has No Tax Increases,” The New York Times, 9/19/2011)

THE PRICETAG? $1.5 TRILLION. (Helene Cooper, “Obama Vows Veto if Deficit Plan Has No Tax Increases,” The New York Times, 9/19/2011)

OBAMA OFFERED $467 BILLION IN TAX INCREASES TO PAY FOR STIMULUS 2.0:“The Obama administration is asking Congress to raise taxes by $467 billion over 10 years to pay for the President’s one-year $447 billion stimulus, which he announced during a speech Thursday before a joint session of Congress.” (Neil Munro, “Obama Asks Congress for $467-Billion Tax Increase to Fund Jobs Plan,” The Daily Caller, 9/12/2011)

FMR WHITE HOUSE ECONOMIST CHRISTINA ROMER: TAX INCREASES HAVE A “HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT NEGATIVE IMPACT” ON GROWTH: “[T]ax increases appear to have a very large, sustained, and highly significant negative impact on output. Since most of our exogenous tax changes are in fact reductions, the more intuitive way to express this result is that tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects… Our baseline specification implies that an exogenous tax increase of one percent of GDP lowers real GDP by almost three percent.“(Christina D. Romer and David H. Romer, “The Macroeconomic Effects of Tax Changes: Estimates Based on a New Measure of Fiscal Shocks,” American Economic Review, June 2010)