Raising Taxes On The Rich Will Cost The State Of Iowa At Least $30 Million A Year

Here's another Democrat partisan / history revisionist getting a letter printed in the Des Moines Register:

People who support continuing the Bush tax cuts on taxable income beyond $250,000 usually give two basic reasons. They say the tax cuts on the wealthy help in job creation; and, second, because of this alleged positive effect on jobs, they say the economy grows and the deficit shrinks.

Except for the Hoover presidency, which covers 1929 to 1933, the George W. Bush presidency had the worst record of job creation since 1921, the earliest year shown by the Bureau of Labor statistics figures. So almost 10 years of Bush tax cuts have coincided with an unprecedented, abysmal record of job creation.

How about the deficit? Can we see positive effects there? Just the opposite. George W. Bush was inaugurated in January 2001. On Sept. 30, 2001, the final year of the Clinton presidency budgets, the national debt was $5.8 trillion.

On Sept. 30, 2009, the final year of the Bush budgets, the national debt was $11.9 trillion. The debt more than doubled during the Bush presidency.

This increase was not despite the tax cuts; according to analysis based on the Congressional Budget Office figures, the Bush tax cuts are the single largest cause of the Bush presidency deficit. The Iraq war is second.

Extending tax breaks on taxable income exceeding $250,000 during a time when Social Security recipients are asked to economize, civil servants are told to step up and the unemployed face cessation of their benefits is not only unconscionable, it is totally unjustified by the economic facts of the last 10 years.

- Sue Ravenscroft, Ames

What I hate about Democrat partisans who write letters like this to justify class warfare and hatred of "the rich" is that they don't take into account that a lot of Republicans and Independents were pissed off at President Bush and the Republican majorities in Congress between January 2001 to January 2007 because they didn't control spending.  Look at Republicans like Chuck Grassley wanting to waste $50 million on that stupid rainforest and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Why do you think Bush's ratings were in the toilet in the final two years of his term?  It's because he was a weenie who hardly vetoed anything and let the Democrat majority Congress run over him with spending, TARP, and other insane crap.  Bush blew it with the fiscal conservatives.

Sue Ravenscroft has a convenient history here.  Her justification is that "raising taxes on the rich" leads to economic growth is complete BS.  She totally ignores the Republican Class of 1994 in Congress, which helped slow the growth of government spending in the mid to late 1990s.  I'll give Bill Clinton credit here, too, because he signed on to all of this legislation.

Sue also totally ignores the huge surge in spending in the past two years under Pelosi, Reid, and Obama.  Who cares what the income tax rates are on "the rich" if out of control government spending can't fix the banking industry, high unemployment, and massive numbers of foreclosures?

It's sick how all of a sudden the partisan left is upset about the deficit and how the only cure is letting the Bush-era tax rates expire.  Please.  How much revenue are you going to extract out of "the rich" if the tax rates expire?  We never see that figure in all the rants of the far left.  Is the deficit going to magically disappear next year if "the rich" are paying 39% of their income to the Feds rather than 35%?  No way.

And what is the impact on the State of Iowa if Federal income tax rates go up?  Iowa Independent quoted Iowa State University economist David Swenson back in September.  Swenson said that because of Federal deductibility in Iowa, those earning above $250,000 a year facing higher Fed tax rates will result in a $30 million loss of revenue for the State of Iowa starting in 2012.

Sue Ravenscroft of Ames, you forgot to mention that in your letter.

And who is Sue Ravenscroft of Ames?  Why it turns out she's a Professor of Accounting at Iowa State University!

How funny is that?  Somehow Sue's position and status was not mentioned by herself in the letter or by the Des Moines Register, nor did she reference the impact on the State of Iowa's coffers which had been previously analyzed by one of her colleagues.

Busted!