What Happened to Timely, Targeted, Temporary?

Senate Democrats’ Small Business Tax Hike Bill Extends Stimulus Spending Through the Tax Code

WASHINGTON – Senate Democrats seem to have forgotten the President’s promise that his failed near trillion-dollar stimulus would prevent unemployment from going over 8 percent and that it would be “timely, targeted and temporary.” Their latest tax hike bill hits small and growing businesses – the engines of America’s economy - with the double-whammy of tax hikes on the top two marginal tax rates and imposition of the death tax on 20 times as many family farmers and ranchers during the longest period of economic stagnation since World War II. But Senate Democrats also decided to extend $27.2 billion in failed stimulus spending through the tax code in their bill as well. Of course, hitting small businesses with a 17 percent hike in the top marginal income tax rate will harm job creation.

“What happened to the failed stimulus being ‘timely, targeted and temporary?’ With our economy as weak as it is, stopping the President’s massive tax increase on nearly a million small businesses and then overhauling our burdensome tax code is how we’ll get America moving again – the same can’t be said for doubling down on failed stimulus spending through the tax code,” said Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Orrin Hatch (R-Utah).

While the President and Senate Democrats continue their tax the so-called rich game, the reality is that the tax code has turned into another means of redistributing the wealth with fewer and fewer Americans supporting an unchecked social-welfare state.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that these tax policies in the stimulus have made it so that typical family in the bottom quintile of taxpayers receives about $3 in transfer payments through the tax code for every dollar earned. This is on top of traditional welfare and social safety net payments that have ballooned during this President’s time in office. In fact, transfers through the federal tax code now exceed federal taxes paid, on average, for a majority of taxpayers.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has found that the United States has the most progressive tax code in the world.

According to the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), in 2009, 51 percent of all American households do not pay federal income taxes.

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