Obama Officials Don't Dismiss Possibility of New Taxes
"President Obama may have to break his campaign pledge and raise taxes on middle-class Americans to pay for public health care and the growing deficit, an eventuality that administration officials touched lightly on Sunday as they promoted an economy emerging from recession.
"With an expected deficit next year of $1.8 trillion, and spending still being planned for a $1 trillion, 10-year health care reform, officials say something will have to be done to prevent further erosion of the economy.
"We will not get this economy back on track, recovery will be not strong and sustained, unless we ... can convince the American people that we're going to have the will to bring these deficits down once recovery is firmly established," Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner said on ABC's "This Week."
Alternately they could simply repeal the remainder of the Porkulus legislation. 80 percent of it won't be spent until 2010 and is sure as hell hasn't helped the recession.
And speaking of the recession, here's what Nourial Roubini had to say about it. If you'll recall, he was the first to predict the financial meltdown, so he has some credibility.
Recession Won’t End Until Year-End, Roubini Says
Hey, that's not so bad. We can make it another 5 months, cant we? But wait. There's more--
"Roubini, chairman of Roubini Global Economics and a professor at NYU’s Stern School of Business, predicted on July 23 that the global economy will begin recovering near the end of 2009 before possibly dropping back into a recession by late 2010 or 2011 because of rising government debt, higher oil prices and a lack of job growth."
I agree with Turbotax that the deficit needs to come down. But if you raise taxes people are going to have less money to spend. That means they will buy less. That means businesses will lay off more people.
How about if the federal government learned to get by on less just like everyone else?