President Bush’s notorious tax cuts for the wealthy are set to expire in 2010 unless action is taken by Congress to either extend them, or make them permanent. While many on the left will cheer non action by Congress on this matter, they are only cheering their own ignorance. The so called “tax cuts for the rich” have saved the average American family $3,000 per year, which Democrats have decided is money that can be better used by the government. Last week the Senate approved a spending plan assuming the expiration of the tax cuts, allowing them to bring discretionary spending to record levels. NewsMax summarizes a recent IBD editorial on the issue:

Simply by not making Bush’s tax cuts permanent, taxes will rise by a minimum of $2.8 trillion between now and 2018.”

The IBD says that if the tax cuts are allowed to expire in 2010:

• Spending will rise by half a trillion dollars over the next five years. And the Democrats will pay for it by raising taxes by $683 billion — “the biggest such increase ever.”
• About 48 million married couples — “the heart of the middle class that Democrats say they want to help” — will see an average annual tax increase of $3,007.
• The tax bill for the elderly will rise $2,181 a year on average.
• A single parent with two children earning $30,000 a year will see a tax hike of $1,600.
• A family of four earning $50,000 a year will be hit with a tax increase of 191 percent.
• The 2009 budget for the first time ever spends $1 trillion on discretionary items — non-defense, non-entitlement.

“This is a foretaste of future fiscal recklessness under a Barack Obama presidency (he voted for the bill),” the IBD observes.

Anyone interested in fact checking the above calculations, feel free to goto the Tax Foundation which lists all tax rates from 1913-2008. A quick calculation shows that in 1998 a single person earning $30,000 paid $5,104.5, while in 2008 that same person paid only $4,098.75.

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Barack Obama, Congress, Election 2008, Features, Politics, Taxes