2010: The Year of Tax Hikes Beyond Belief

This Tax Day I’m sure we’ll all raise a glass to our friends at the IRS.

After all, their ranks are only growing. While the private sector is still struggling, with unemployment hovering just under 10 percent and real unemployment (including those who have quit looking for work) estimated at over 16 percent, this is a boom time for hiring at the IRS. Come to think of it, it’s always a boom time for government hiring in general.

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All the tax increases in the health care takeover legislation – more than $500 billion – and the new enforcement mechanisms required to make sure every American is purchasing health insurance mean thousands upon thousands of new IRS employees.

But there’s more on the tax front. Almost another $1 trillion in tax increases are heading our way on December 31, 2010, when the Bush tax cuts expire. I don’t think Americans are ready for this massive tax hike. They’ve forgotten it’s coming. They’re still having trouble finding new jobs, or getting their mortgages in order. They’re not ready for higher capital gains taxes, a return of the death tax, and a tax penalty slapped on married filers.

And with President Obama and Speaker Pelosi still looking to “spread the wealth around” as part of their radical liberal agenda, we’re looking at additional tax threats in coming months. First, there’s the cherished Holy Grail of Al Gore’s nutty environmental movement: cap-and-trade, with its crippling new energy taxes.

Gas is already headed back toward $4 a gallon, but the environmental movement and President Obama want to take us to European levels with $6- or $7-a-gallon gas. I was in Copenhagen for the U.N. “Climate Change” conference last December, and we shot a video at a local gas station where gas was the equivalent of $7.50 per gallon because of their cap-and-trade energy tax.

Now prominent economic names like Paul Volcker, a former Federal Reserve chairman, are getting behind the idea of a Value-Added Tax (VAT). It’s grossly misnamed, because it doesn’t add value to anything you buy – it only adds cost. How many new IRS workers would we need to implement and enforce a new tax like the VAT that would hit every good produced at every step of the production process? I shudder to imagine.

Is all this new tax-and-spend Washington, D.C. big government bringing us prosperity or a better life? Of course not. The budget deficit keeps climbing – it’ll hit over $1.5 trillion this year – but our personal incomes keep dropping.

Since President Obama took office, the personal income of Americans has DROPPED by 3.2 percent when you exclude government handouts. It’s no surprise, really. When you raise taxes on American families and businesses and you make inefficient government even bigger and more inefficient, you hamper the ability of Americans to create jobs and increase their own prosperity.

A lot of people are asking me this Tax Day: “What does the tea party movement want?” Having attended hundreds of rallies, tea parties, bus tour events and town hall meetings in recent years, I can tell you that these activists want to be left alone to create opportunity, enjoy their God-given freedoms, and strengthen their communities family to family. They don’t want to worry about an ever-encroaching government that stifles freedom, kills prosperity and actually harms the very people it claims to help.

That’s why millions of Americans are now grassroots activists – modern freedom fighters – who are calling out Congress and this president on their big-government agenda.

April 15 has taken on new meaning for Americans. More people are paying attention to the growing amounts the government is taking out of their paychecks. That’s the best thing that can happen – Americans becoming more aware and more informed about where their tax dollars are going.

When they see them going to companies that are in the good graces of the administration, or to pork projects, or to massive expansions of bureaucracy, it spurs people to action. That’s why www.NovemberIsComing.com isn’t an empty warning to members of Congress. It’s a solemn commitment from millions of American citizens: if members of Congress continue to vote for this tax-hiking government explosion, then Americans will vote them out.

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