DAYTONA BEACH SHORES -- The battle over the “fiscal cliff” resulted in pretty much a total victory for Barack Obama. Never mind that the income tax increases he won will only fund the government for 6 1/2 days.
Never mind that increased taxes on dividends, capital gains and inheritance will serve to stifle private sector investment. Never mind that the Bush tax cuts for all Americans which Obama and the Dems had attacked for years as drains on the flow of revenue into government coffers have suddenly become good for the country.
What Obama wanted, and what he got, was a Republican surrender of principle, as the GOP leadership agreed to increases in income tax rates only on the wealthy, a move which has split and further weakened a Party already diminished by its second straight loss of the White House.
Having won such an overwhelming victory, you might think that the President would now reach out to an opponent he has shown that he can dominate and offer to work together to help preserve the nation from financial collapse due to our ever growing deficit and debt. But not Barack Obama!
The man who would be king takes no prisoners. Instead Obama and his lackeys in the House and Senate immediately announced that they would press for additional tax increases. Ignored is their earlier promise to increase taxes only on the wealthy.
All of us have felt the bite in our paychecks, made smaller by the jump in the payroll tax. And there are more bites to come.
This month alone, new Obamacare taxes will kick in, including a tax on medical devices such as pacemakers, increases which will be passed on to all of us. Americans with high medical bills are now able to deduct a smaller amount of those bills from their income taxes.
The 24 million Americans, including many who have special needs children, who have Flexible Spending Accounts now find those accounts capped at $2500. Obamacare also imposes a surtax on those making the most from returns on investments via dividends and capital gains.
Ah wait, you say, none of this affects me. Perhaps not directly, but if you think this is all that is coming down the road in the form of tax increases I have some really attractive swamp land to sell you.
Quite apart from the 22 other taxes to be found in Obamacare, I believe that we should expect to see Democratic efforts to impose a value added tax ( a kind of national sales tax) and some kind of wealth tax on assets owned, not to mention new and higher taxes on the production and use of fossil fuels.
Just as there is no limit to Obama’s desire for power, there is also no limit to the amount of our money he is willing to confiscate and redistribute to buy the support of those who will stupidly give him that power.
But Obama’s camel has many noses to slip under our tent and increased taxes is only one of them. In his ambition and arrogance Obama is finally showing us who and what he really is. President Obama appears on television virtually every day. And as he smiles haven’t you noticed that, every day, his canines get a little longer?
I have to give Obama credit. He didn’t let any cobwebs grow on his coffin. Immediately after the election he sprang forth from his casket in full caped regalia and began signing executive orders as fast as his little taloned fingers would write.
On gun control alone, he signed 23, seeking to weaken and limit the Second Amendment protections for gun ownership.
Yet, though he certainly wants to weaken the people’s capacity to resist the tyranny he intends to impose, Obama is using the crisis presented by the massacre at New Town to divert attention from the need to deal with the greatest threat facing the country (apart from Obama himself), the debt and deficit.
Let’s be clear. Obama will never agree unless forced to cut spending or otherwise reduce the deficit or the debt in any significant way because those are his primary weapons for the destruction of the American economy, without which he cannot create the Marxist dictatorship of his dreams. He showed his hand when he demanded, and then repeated several times, that he be give the sole power to decide how much to borrow and what the nation’s debt level should be.
Even now the White House and its neutered Senate minion Harry Reid are calling for the Republican-controlled House to pass a “clean” bill raising the debt limit. By “clean” of course they mean one that raises the limit to whatever level Obama wants without any conditions whatever.
Once again we see King Barackula extending the dark shadow of his great bat wings by demanding control of the borrowing power of the purse. The Republican Party in the House is almost all that stands between the American Republic and life under the Fang.
Even in their current weakened condition, the House Republicans must never give up the limited leverage they still enjoy via the debt limit and, to a lesser extent, the sequestration funds and the extension of the Continuing Resolution which pays for the operations of government. But it will be hard for them to hold the line.
Already Obama’s thralls in the media are attacking the Republicans on the debt limit. They are lying in articles and on TV talk shows which raise the threat of default on our debt when it is abundantly plain that there are ample tax revenues to pay the interest on that debt which is all that need be done to prevent default.
It is the Republicans who are trying valiantly to drag Obama and his Administration into the sunlight where workable agreements could be reached in plain view.
It is Obama who refuses to discuss spending, the deficit and the debt, suggesting only that there might be some vague discussions on the subjects at some unspecified future time.
And now we are faced with the spectacle of the House offering a three month debt limit increase to bribe the Senate just to pass a budget - something it has not done for four years despite the legal requirement that it do so. Our nation is in an ever more perilous state.
Barackula has driven his fangs deep into the throat of a barely resisting America and is rapidly sucking out of her the very essence of what it means to be American. Looking to 2014 and 2016, it is time for true Americans to begin gathering up crosses, holy water and stakes.