The Voice of Reason: President's Tax Increase Will Put More Americans Out of Work

"The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of a recession.  Because that would just suck up, put more demand on the economy and put businesses in a further hole."

-- President Barack Obama, 2009

The President said this three years ago, but this year, an election year, the President apparently feels differently. He has made making high-income Americans pay their "fair share" a centerpiece of his campaign. The Democrat-controlled Senate voted on Wednesday to end the Bush-era tax cuts for couples earning over $250,000 a year or single earners making more than $200,000 per year.

I find it interesting that the dialogue in the news media is that no one wants taxes to increase for middle-income Americans, but at the same time Democrats and the President believe that the tax cuts for the rich should not continue.  Has anyone else notice this subtle difference in semantics?  Has anyone else noticed how the Democrats, President and the lamestream news media frame this issue?  Why is it that not extending the Bush-era tax cuts for the middle class would be a tax increase, but extending the same law for affluent Americans would result in "tax cuts for the rich?"

This is class warfare, plain and simple, and it's despicable. The President opposes the extension of tax cuts for high-income Americans because he is using this issue for political fodder.  Never mind that increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans will take away billions of dollars utilized for job creation. Never mind that unemployment remains at 8.2% and that the growth in our economy has slowed to a crawl.  Never mind that even the nation's leading financial experts predict that increasing taxes on anyone now could be devastating to an already-struggling economy.

The nationally-respected accounting firm of Ernst and Young issued released a study just this week indicating that increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans, as the President and the Democrats are proposing to do, would result in a reduction of nearly three-quarters of a million jobs. 
http://blog.heritage.org/2012/07/18/ernst-and-young-obamas-tax-increase-would-kill-710000-jobs/  Let me repeat those numbers.  Raising taxes on top earning Americans will result in a reduction of an additional 710,000 jobs in America. at a time we desperately need jobs.

The truth about this issue is that it isn't about fixing the economy or putting Americans back to work.  This issue isn't even about trying to drive down the deficit, because the President's proposed budget over the next several years increases our deficit significantly.  This issue is about one thing -- a President using every political trick possible as he works feverously to be reelected, even if it further slows the economy and leaves more Americans jobless.

Shame on you, Mr. President.   Shame on you.