When Taxes Are Not Taxes And Cuts Are Not Cuts

 I hate half truths and double talk, it drives me nuts. And nowhere do you find more of it than in politics. Washington’s political parties feed them to us on a regular basis. They can’t seem to make single political statement argument without them. The most recent such drivel that has really irritated me is coming from the republicans.

 During the recent debt ceiling limit debates the republicans continuously expounded upon the fact that the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the world at thirty five percent. This was one of the basic arguments that they used against raising taxes - any taxes at all – even in the form of removing corporate jet loop holes. According to a several studies, the majority of corporations pay little or no taxes. And even when they show a huge tax bill that money may never make it to the IRS. What these companies actually end up paying is not really known since they are not required to disclose this information. These corporations use various tricks to shelter the income that they earn from Americans in order to not pay their fair share of taxes. Of course, this gets it start by democrats raising the corporate tax rates to levels that would stifle any company’s ability to grow and compete in the world in order to support their favorite cause.
Then we have the democrats who have always loved to complain about republicans “cutting” their federal programs. The problem is that those cuts were seldom real cuts, which of course they don’t bother to tell you. You see, most programs within the federal government have an automatic increase in their level of funding every year. So if social program “x” got two billion last year then it will get two point two billion this year. When the republicans attempt to curve government spending by preventing this increase the democrats scream “budget cut”!

If you went into your job tomorrow and the boss said, “I’m very sorry but we cannot afford to give pay raises this year due to the economy” would you consider that a pay cut? No, you would probably be happy that you didn’t get a real pay cut!

Half truths and double talk, I hate it.