Obama Should Learn A Lesson From His Home State

Moving into 2011, the Democrats of the Illinois State legislature and a Democrat Governor rammed through a 67% across-the-board tax increase in an effort to stop the accumulating red ink in that state.  Now, nearly 2-years later, the bleeding continues and is picking up steam.  It's as if that $7 billion a year in tax increases did nothing.  You see, like our Federal government, Illinois didn't have a revenue problem.  It had, and still has, a spending problem.

What Illinois is finding out is that government spending has a life of its own unless curtailed.  Pensions are rising fast as the base of retired Illinois State workers continues to broaden.  Healthcare costs are increasing because costs are rising faster than inflation and because more people, without jobs, are applying for Medicaid.  The over 9% unemployment rate is stressing all of the state's social support programs.

Like the Illinois Democrats, Obama and the D.C. Democrats want to increase taxes to cure our deficit problems; but only for the so-called rich. They seem to think we have a revenue problem. But, letting the Bush tax cuts expire for the so-called rich will only increase revenues by, at best, $85 billion a year; while, at the same time, the federal government is overspending by more than a trillion dollars a year.  So, mathematically, there is no way that simply increasing taxes on the rich is going to solve our deficit spending problems.  If anything, the increase in taxes on the rich might actually result in less revenues because the rich will naturally take whatever measures are necessary to legally use holes in our tax codes to reduce their tax burden.  Then, too, some individuals and their businesses may actually leave the country to move to a more tax favorable country; like Canada.

Obama created most of our massive debt problem over the last four years; despite promising to cut the deficit in half in that same amount of time.   Now, we're supposed to believe that he can fix it by simply taxing the rich.  Obama has an Illinois mentality that matches that state's inability to fix its own deficit problems.  This is why we seriously need to change management at the top and in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Senate.

--- Chicago Tribune: Record tax hike isn't fixing Illinois' problems:  http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-05-28/news/ct-met-illinois-budget-20120528_1_pension-payments-income-tax-tax-hike