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Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy Archives

How much Federal Tax you paid then - and now

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A comparison of income taxes under Presidents Clinton and Bush has been making the rounds of the Internet, showing up in forwarded e-mails and on numerous blogs and message boards. The message claims what should be intuitively obvious to most people, i.e., that individual marginal income tax rates under President George W. Bush are lower than marginal income taxes rates under President Bill Clinton. After all, a 3% lower rate on an Adjusted Gross Income of $100,000 results in a taxpayer savings of $3,000 - annually.

Tax Foundation data was relied upon to make the original comparison. While the message circulating on the Internet contains some mathematical errors, the basic message of the comparison is correct.

The Tax Foundation subsequently issued an interesting statement saying that the comparisons are exaggerated by the fact that annual inflation adjustments in the tax code would have lowered tax bills in 2008 relative to 1999 under a constant nominal income amount. What they say is true, to an extent. However, the Tax Foundation does not quantify their statement and they appear to be trying to obscure important facts. Not only are taxpayers in 2008 paying fewer numbers of tax dollars, adjusted for inflation, and at lower marginal rates, but those taxpayers are paying with tax dollars having far less value in a constant-dollar comparison with 1999. In fact, taxpayers will pay significantly less tax in 2008 than they paid in 1999. Maybe some examples will help:

If you earned $30,000 in 1999, unless you earn $38,009.60 in 2008, your standard of living will have diminished.


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Posted February 26, 2008 07:55 PM    Permalink
Read more on Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy

Is there ever a day that Congressmen are not on sale?

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A word of introduction to the feature article by Congressman John Shadegg that follows:

There are two chambers of the United States Congress. One is the U.S. Senate and the other is the U.S. House of Representatives. Each state receives representation in the House of Representatives proportional to its population. For example, California, the most populous state, has 53 representatives while Arizona (ranked 6th in square miles and 16th in population) has eight representatives - currently four Republicans and four Democrats.

Recent legislative history suggests that a representative's political party may be a 'distinction' without much of a 'difference' when it comes to appropriations bills, as you will soon learn.

Of the 12 House-passed fiscal appropriations bills in 2008, eight contain identifiable earmarks – a staggering 5670 earmarks which totaled $4,196.5 million dollars. Most of the money is designated for “pet projects” attributed either to a relatively small number of requests from lawmakers or to the White House. The vast majority of earmarks are sponsored by a single lawmaker and not connected to any broad governmental program. The total count also includes 15 earmarks for intelligence activities in the Defense bill of an undisclosed value. Source: Taxpayers for Common Sense

Arizona’s Congressional Representatives and Districts are:
Rick Renzi (R-1)
Trent Franks (R-2)
John Shadegg (R-3) (no earmarks)
Ed Pastor (D-4)
Harry Mitchell (D-5)
Jeff Flake (R-6) (no earmarks)
Raul M. Grijalva (D-7)
Gabrielle Giffords (D-8)

The total number of U.S. Representatives is currently fixed at 435 voting members and four non-voting delegates. Each member of the House of Representatives serves a two-year term. The Speaker of the House of Representatives (currently Nancy Pelosi, D-CA) is the presiding officer and is elected by the members.

Only eight members of the House of Representatives (including Rep. John Shadegg and Rep. Jeff Flake from Arizona) are NOT on the take! The other 427 members of the House of Representatives (including six members of the Arizona delegation listed above), regardless of what you think of them personally, are willfully and recklessly defrauding United States taxpayers! Earmarks are nothing less than unbridled corruption involving theft of public funds diverted from the U.S. Treasury to the benefactors of specific representatives, regardless of protestations to the contrary. In other words, they are stealing your money.

If your representative has sponsored or co-sponsored an earmark, they are up to their necks in the “game.” The most egregious House member is Representative John Murtha (D-PA) who personally sponsored 47 earmarks this session alone totaling $166,500,000. He remorselessly ripped off the taxpayers of every other state in the process. Doesn’t anybody care?

Take a few minutes to read below what an ethical congressional insider has to say about the feeding frenzy at the public trough to misappropriate taxpayer dollars. Read how incredibly brazen the looting of the U.S. Treasury has become. If Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi would be willing to offer a candid verbal assessment of the situation, she might say, “I laugh because there is nothing you can do about it.”


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Posted January 4, 2008 11:14 PM    Permalink
Read more on Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy ~ Congress

There is no such thing as Government Money

There is no such thing as government money - only taxpayer’s money. This is the second in a series that addresses the fiduciary legacy of Congress, the state of the federal budget and the accumulated national debt. The first was "What is a Billion."

After collecting tax revenues from 6 million businesses and the top 50% of American-citizen wage earners, the Congress last year spent a peacetime-record (adjusted for inflation) of $23,760 per household, arguably $20,000 more per household than strictly authorized by the U.S. Constitution – but hey, liberals claim it’s a living Constitution, a roadmap. No longer is the U.S. Constitution a contract with and between Americans. To a liberal in Congress, reality is an illusion that only occurs due to the lack of tax revenue – a situation easily rectified.

Where does the money come from that Congress spends?


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Posted September 7, 2006 05:56 PM    Permalink
Read more on Articles - Raymond Kraft ~ Articles - Red State Patriot ~ Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy

What is a Billion?

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The next time you hear liberal politicians such as Senator John McCain and other members of the Democratic Party use the word "billion" in casual conversation, think about their priorities. Would you consider yourself one of Senator John McCain’s top priorities?

For most people, a billion is a difficult number to comprehend. Congressmen don’t give it much thought either. Why not put that number into some perspective?

A. One billion seconds ago - it was 1959.
B. One billion minutes ago - Jesus was alive.
C. One billion hours ago - our human ancestors were living in the Stone Age.
D. One billion days ago – no human walked on the earth on two feet.
E. At the rate our government is spending, a billion U.S. dollars ago was just 8 hours and 20 minutes.

While this thought is fresh in your mind, take a look at New Orleans. It represents only one of many thousands of recent examples of profligate spending by Congress.

Louisiana Senator, Mary Landrieu (D), asked the Congress of the United States for 250 BILLION dollars to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. Before all is said and done, whether directly to the States of Louisiana and Mississippi, or through the Army Corps of Engineers, most of that tax money will find its way to the Gulf Coast.


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Posted September 7, 2006 03:28 PM    Permalink
Read more on Articles - Red State Patriot ~ Budget, Taxation and Fiscal Policy

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