This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2012, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
President Barack Obama's never-ending push to let the Bush tax cuts expire on Americans making more than $250,000 will amount to an increase in revenue to cover a mere eight-and-a-half days out of a year of federal spending. The added revenue would not balance the budget.
Obama is using this issue not to address the national debt but to divide Americans for his own political advantage. I would like to see the House pass this bill and send it on to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the Senate (which I doubt would pass it).
If Congress passed the bill, Obama could not blame the supposedly do-nothing Congress for not addressing the debt. The president would then have to campaign on the record of the success of his proposals, and Americans would then see how out of touch he is on how to bring in revenue for the federal government.
The real solution is to create a larger tax base by putting Americans to work by lowering taxes — not by having excessive taxes on the ones who do most of the hiring.
Joe Rakes
Murray