Morning Bell: It’s About The Spending, Speaker
Conn Carroll /
Yesterday on ABC’s This Week, host Christiane Amanpour asked Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA): “You are, by all accounts, one of the most — if not the most — powerful and successful speakers of — in the history of the United States. You’ve passed so much legislation. The President was elected with a significant majority. You had control of both houses of Congress. And yet now, people are talking about you might lose your majority in the House. The gap seems to be growing wider between what’s achieved and what’s making an impact with the people. How did this happen? …how did you get to this place where, perhaps, you might lose your majority?” Pelosi responded: “We don’t see it that way. We are very proud of the agenda that we have put forth to the American people.”
The American people sure aren’t proud of the Pelosi agenda. According to Gallup, the American people’s trust in Congress is at a historic low and their low approval ratings point to big changes in November. Tops among the people’s concerns? The economy. Also according to Gallup, 64% of Americans mention some aspect of the economy as the top problem, which isn’t surprising since the unemployment rate, at 9.5%, is still 1.5 points higher than the Obama administration promised it ever would be.
Now Speaker Pelosi wants to dig the economic hole even deeper by allowing the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire. Pelosi claims that cutting taxes on “the wealthiest people in America, increases the deficit and doesn’t create jobs.” This is just plain false. Research on the last seven recessions shows that small businesses generate about two out of every three new jobs during recoveries. Hitting small businesses with tax increases would kill this job growth. Speaker Pelosi and her allies at The Washington Post may claim that these tax hikes will hurt only a small number of small businesses. But these claims are deceptive. As Heritage Foundation analyst Curtis Dubay has detailed, while only eight percent of small businesses pay the highest two tax rates, those businesses earn 72 percent of all small business income and pay 82 percent of all income taxes paid by small businesses. In other words, those small businesses that would be hit hardest by the impending Obama tax hike earn an overwhelming majority of small business income and employ most of the workers hired by small businesses. Higher tax rates would drain these businesses of cash flow, the lifeblood of any business, and would diminish the incentives to grow and add new workers. (more…)