Morning Bell: The Economic Toll of the Obama Tax Hikes

Conn Carroll / September 20, 2010

In today’s Wall Street Journal, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) identifies two justifications for his unequivocal opposition to any impending tax increases: “The first concerns the pain that tax increases threaten to inflict on our economy over the short term. The second is to stop the slide under our current leadership towards becoming a stagnant European-style welfare state with limited individual opportunity and entrepreneurship.”

We’ve written before about how President Barack Obama’s reckless spending threatens to undermine our nation’s economic vitality. Before the recession, federal spending totaled $24,000 per U.S. household. President Obama’s FY 2011 budget would hike it to $36,000 per household by 2020 — an inflation-adjusted $12,000-per-household expansion of government. But spending is just one-half of this White House’s economic plan. Massive wealth-distributing tax hikes are the other half of President Obama’s wish list, and they are just as big a threat to our nation’s economy. (more…)