From C-SPAN's Washington Journal Jan. 28, 2010. Rep. Jeb Hensarling does his best bit of fear mongering over heaven forbid bringing back a higher tax rate for the rich in America. First he decides to play born again deficit hawk:
Hensarling: If you look at his budget it is trillion dollar deficit as far as the eye can see. You cannot use enough Draconian or apocalyptic language to describe what’s in America’s future if we don’t come to grips with this.
Yeah, like you or anyone in your party was concerned with deficits under Bush. Now they’re suddenly concerned with our spending… with the exception of course for paying for more ill informed invasions… or as he calls them, wars.
The host reads a question from Twitter for the Congressman: “We’re 12 trillion in debt, when do we start raising taxes to pay for it?” Hensarling decides to pretend that if taxes were raised, it would be on everyone equally and not just upper income earners who can afford it.
I don’t expect any honesty out of these people. Sadly C-SPAN with its hands off approach to allowing these guys on there with no questioning by the hosts when they spout bullshit is no better than the mainstream media for bringing some honesty to political debates in the United States.
Hensarling fear mongering that all Americans would have their taxes raised by 60% to fix the deficit below the fold. Apparently Hensarling is completely oblivious to any concept of progressive taxation.
Hensarling: Well I know I personally don’t believe that we are under taxed. I think instead we have a spending problem in Washington. You look at the record of taxes still going up substantially over the last decade. And so our taxes have consistently run, if you look in the post-war era about 18.5% of our economy. Now spending has been about 20% of our economy, but under the spending program that we have now in the next generation, spending is going to go from 20% of the economy to 40% of the economy.
And that’s why Republicans would like to put on binding spending caps and force Congress to do what they needed to do and figure out reforms and draw up priorities. I myself and working on a Constitutional amendment that would insure that the federal budget doesn’t grow beyond the ability of the family budget to pay for it. And that is limited growth of government with the exception of emergencies and declarations of war, but limit the growth of government to the growth of the economy.
Otherwise we’re on the verge of being the first generation in America’s history to leave the next generation with fewer jobs, less opportunity, less freedom and a lower standard of living. You know you’re liberal Twitterer who said why not raise taxes, we can do that. But all the estimates are if you want to balance the budget in the next ten years by raising taxes you will have to put a sixty, 60% tax increase on the American people. How many Americans will no longer own a home, send a kid to college or start a business because of a crushing 60% tax increase? That’s the magnitude of the tax increase that would be necessary to balance the budget and I’m not going to go there.
