Debts, Deficits, Taxes, and Tea Parties

In watching the MSM coverage of the Tea Party protests, the following arguments are used to try and debase the factual arguments of the protests:

  1. Obama plans to lower taxes on the majority of Americans while raising them on the rich.
  2. Obama’s budget cuts the deficit in half over the next 10 years.
  3. Right now tax rates are the same as they were when Obama took office.
  4. Most Americans are OK with their taxes.

These are all true, but none invalidate the point of the protests.  The protests are not talking about current taxes, they are talking about future taxes.  Each and every dollar borrowed today is a dollar taxed out of the economy at some point within the next 30 years.  This is a simple, undeniable fact.

When trying to figure out bad our future tax burden is, one number concerns us:  The National Debt.  This number is staggering, standing at $11,176,642,012,673 at the moment I type this.  According to the CBO, Obama’s budget will increase this debt by over $1,800,000,000,000 in just the next year.   So, while Obama is correct that his budget cuts the yearly budget deficit in half by 2019, that means that his spending plan will add a mere $900,000,000,000 to the national debt that year.  If the CBO estimate holds, the debt will top $20,000,000,000,000 in 2019.  This means that between 2009-2019, the amount of money borrowed against the full faith and credit of the US taxpayer will almost have doubled.

Say it to yourself… twenty trillion dollars.  That’s the massive future tax liability for the citizens of the United States being protested today.  The anger about this future tax liability is very real among those who see it.  While the tea party movement might get co-opted by big-spending Republicans and fade away, the sentiment that started it is as genuine, grassroots, and truthful as any protest movement in American history.