Legend of a fail: Obama

Monday, August 3, 2009

AP: Biggest tax revenue drop since 1932

Picture. Thousand Words:Ouch. You have to wonder if Obama knew this when he delayed the mid-year budget report in July. Should come out in two weeks or less and it will be BAD! From the AP via Yahoo! News (HT: HotAir):

The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation's plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.

The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.

I'm sure this is all Bush's fault:

Obama in his short time in office has increased the deficit by more than all prior presidents. COMBINED! And that includes W!

Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession's impact: Individual income taxreceipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent.Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.

The last time the government's revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.

Social Security is in danger of running out of money earlier than the government projected just a few month ago. Highway, mass transit and airport projects are at risk because fuel and industry taxes are declining.

The national debt already exceeds $11 trillion. And bills just completed by the House would boost domestic agencies' spending by 11 percent in 2010 and military spending by 4 percent.

"You could easily move that number up three or four years, then you're talking about 2013, and that's not very far off," said Kent Smetters, associate professor of insurance and risk management at theUniversity of Pennsylvania.

Yikes! Is there any good news here? Well, yes and no:

Meanwhile, the recession is taking a toll on fuel and industry excise taxes that pay for highway, mass transit and airport projects. Fuel taxes that support road construction and mass transit projects are on pace to fall for the second straight year. Receipts from taxes on jet fuel and airline tickets are also dropping, meaning Congress will have to borrow more money to fund airport projects and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Now, isn't the whole point of liberal policies, EPA regulations, cap-and-trade legislation, to specifically decrease fuel consumption to combat a non-existent problem called global warming? If so, isn't this good news? Not to liberals. They want their cake and eat it too. They want to reduce fuel consumption, but don't want to decrease taxes taken into their coffers. If that sounds like backwards logic, or rather lack of logic, than you're with me!