Re: "if you own a business, you didn't build it. Somebody else made that happe" -- O
1. Letting the Bush tax cuts expire then passing tax cuts on those with incomes below 250k will hit small businesses hard. Especially LLPs and LLCs.
According to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire on family income above $250,000 will affect 3 percent of America's small businesses.
According to the
Tax Policy Center, 1.5 percent of tax filers reporting business income are in the top two income tax brackets that President Obama wants to let expire at the end of this year.
A
Treasury Department report finds that only 2.5 percent of business owners taxed at the individual rate are in those top two tax brackets.
Sorry, the alarmist conservative thinktanks may try to scare you into thinking this is armageddon for millions of small businesses, but it is empty rhetoric. Very few small businesses will be negatively impacted by the BTCs expiring.
2. He talks over and over about how the state is key to success in the US. This speech embodies that.
He talks over and over as to how important it is. But he also stresses how important individual effort and hard work as well. This is just a disagreement as to the relative value of having collective government. I put more emphasis on it than you do, but I certainly hope you aren't so foolish as to pretend that it doesn't play a very important role in creating a healthy environment for business to thrive in.
3. Recent polling data indicates that 77% of people think small business owners work harder than most. This speech reeks of "fair share" arguments.
And I think you'd find that, on average, small business owners earn more than others. In other words, they are often rewarded for that effort-just as it should be.
4. He cannot balance the budget without raising taxes and has moved the goal posts on what the limit is for "rich", ACA alone will be a gigantic tax hike.
Taxes must be raised, spending must be cut. He cannot do it alone. Far from it. In fact, it is nearly impossible with the uncooperative Republican majority in the Congress.
5. We have NEVER had a federal program cut below the previous year operating budget. Cut the rate of growth, but actual cuts? No.
Completely erroneous. Community Development Fund was cut. Public Housing Capital Fund was cut. National Science Foundation was cut. WIC was cut. Justin Department was cut. Many more. Not sure where you got this number, but plenty of programs were cut. I will agree with you, however, that the cuts were rather minor and did not go far enough. Would love to see our military budget get knocked to its knees. Probably won't happen though.
6. He doesnt understand the risk because hes never faced it. Until you do it, its pretty hard to appreciate it. This entire speech stank to high heaven of chiding business owners for not wanting to pay more to the state. Its his MO, has been since hes been a politician, social justice through wealth redistribution was one of his favorite talking points before he became a senator. Im from Illinois, I know this assholes record, apparently you dont.
He was chiding SOME business owners for their misguided "I did this all on my own, with no help from anyone" argument. Not the same as telling them they need to pay more taxes. You've perhaps interpreted as such because you seem willing to assume the worst about our president and assign the worst of intentions to him. I think we are probably due from a little bit of wealth distribution myself. The top 5% have seen there share of national income for several decades now and I think it high time to stop and even reverse this trend a bit. Obama is, remember, letting the BTCs expire for only the wealthiest of our citizens.
7. Chrysler and GM TARP bailouts ring any bells? How about upending first lien law? How about EPA regs that are shutting down coal? Its not just taxes, the power to regulate a business to death amounts to the same thing. The state will do what it wants, when it wants.
Im not hitting you with a ton of arguments, Im giving you about 7
No wall of text rebuttal for you, keep it brief.
I plead with the EPA to do everything it can to stop the burning of coal. Global warming is dangerous and the burning of coal needs to stop, period. Nuclear needs to be ramped up and we need to invest huge amounts of money(as a nation, through our government if we have to), in cleaner energies. It's time to move on from 19th century modes of generating electricity. Very few businesses/industires have been regulated to death. That's a myth. And the ones that have are often those that needed to be regulated out of existence in the first place because their activities were too harmful to our economy as a whole.
Also, seeing as how our government reps are up for election every four years I feel fairly confident in saying that they will not do "whatever they want, whenever they want". In addition we have a two-party system and a system of checks-and-balances that ensures they act with some degree of restraint!