After the fiscal cliff deal was done, imposing higher taxes this year on all those making $40,000 per year or more, three different Democrats took to three different Sunday shows to push for more taxation on the American people.
First up was Democrat House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). She appeared on CBS’ Face the Nation and Bob Schieffer asked her if the “revenue side” of the fiscal cliff is complete. For Democrats, revenue means taxes.
“No, no, it is not,” Pelosi replied. “I mean, the president had said originally he wanted $1.6 trillion in revenue. He took it down to $1.2 as a compromise. In this legislation (fiscal cliff) we had $620 billion, very significant, high-end tax — changing the high-end tax rate to 39.6 percent. But that is not enough on the revenue side.”
“Are you talking about more taxes?” Schieffer asked.
“We’re talking about looking at the tax code, putting everything on the table from the standpoint of closing loopholes… and we know that we can do that… special subsidies for big oil, for example, $38 billion right there,” Pelosi said. Which was a long answer for, “Yes we are talking about more taxes.”
“But again, not to take things in isolation, just to say, OK, well, how much more revenue can we get as we go forward?” Of course this is isolated. It’s exactly what she and her accomplices in Washington are saying and doing across the board.
When Schieffer asked if the Democrats wanted to eliminate tax deductions, Pelosi replied, “My idea of tax reform is to have a comprehensive view. We’ve talked about tax simplification and fairness as something that we should be engaged in all along — long before these fights came along. And now we have a chance to do that with I’d say a heightened awareness by the public on why we need to do certain things.”
“So let’s, you know, put on the table what it is that we can, in order to increase revenue,” Pelosi said. “We’ve changed the rate, the high-end tax rate, (to) 39.6 percent, a very important step. And again, there’s much more that we can do by just subjecting it to the scrutiny of what is bringing in revenue, what is creating growth. And we don’t want to hurt that if there’s some tax provisions that create growth. We want to support that.”
While she attempted to talk about not raising taxes on those in the middle class, sort of like they did with the previous deal and then taxed us, she used the same rhetoric as before stating that taxing those in higher income brackets was “not off the table.”
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D_MD) appeared on Fox News Sunday and echoed the talking points that Pelosi put forward. When asked about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement that there would be no more tax hikes, Van Hollen replied, “Well, if Mitch McConnell is going to draw the line in the sand, it’s going to be a recipe for more gridlock. We have to take a balanced approach to long-term deficit reduction — meaning additional (spending) cuts.”
For Democrats “balanced” means getting all they want and giving nothing in return, like real spending cuts, for example.
Van Hollen told a lie of about $110 billion concerning the fiscal cliff deal. He said, “”We raised $730 billion in revenue from very high income individuals. As we go forward, we need to adopt the same framework as the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission, meaning a combination of cuts and revenue.” Actually Congressman you guys might raise $620 billion, if you are lucky. That’s peanuts in the big scheme of things. Obviously the Maryland congress man needs a course in economics as he referenced “closing tax loopholes” and declared, “So, through tax reform, we can raise more revenue matched by additional cuts to address the sequester issue and long-term deficit.” Raising taxes produces less revenue. It always has and everyone knows you don’t do that when the economy is in the toilet.
Finally, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and continued with the whole “close the loopholes” rhetoric. “I can tell you that there are still deductions, credits, special treatments under the tax code which ought to be looked at very carefully,” he said. “We forgo about $1.2 trillion a year in the tax code, money that otherwise would go to the government, and when you look closely, some of those things are near and dear to us individually and to the economy — the mortgage interest deduction, charitable deductions, deductions for state and local taxes, but beyond that, trust me, there are plenty of things within that tax code, these loopholes where people can park their money in some island offshore and not pay taxes, these are things that need to be closed. We can do that and use the money to reduce the deficit.”
Host Candy Crowley asked him, “So there are other taxes that you believe that you can, however you want to put them, raise, retrieve, whatever, from the wealthy?” Note his response.
“Absolutely,” replied Durbin. “And I’ll also tell you that I think we need to open our minds to our tax revenue. You know, we’ve had conversations about an infrastructure fund that will really start America building again, for the highways and airports and locks and dams and things like that…I believe we should have energy taxes that really fund infrastructure investment.”
“Open our minds” is code for steal from the American people’s wallets. He’s talking about the same “infrastructure” that Barack Obama talked about in 2008 and threw hundreds of thousands of dollars at that apparently still didn’t get things fixed as he made that a part of his 2012 campaign also.
Oh I almost forgot, Durbin also thinks that raising gas taxes should be raised too, as well as, higher taxes on electricity. Tell me, just who are those taxes affecting? It isn’t just the rich!
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