President Barack Obama has signed the stimulus bill to help revive the U.S. economy, and hopes to cut the nations deficit in half by 2012, the end of his first term.
Republicans balk at the idea because it involves both scaling back the spending for the war in Iraq and not renewing the tax cuts that were put in by the Bush administration for those making over $250,000.
In his weekly radio address Obama said, ”We can’t generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control” and that his budget will be “sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline.”
Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, (R) told CNN “I don’t think raising taxes is a great idea.” Of course he doesn’t think it’s a good idea, Republicans seem to be fixated on getting tax cuts.
Somehow, a “small business owner” who pays himself a salary of more than $250,000 is suppose to get tax cuts. Most small businesses reinvest their profits, thereby adding more staff, larger office space, more equipment, and take reductions in profit as their tax break. Republican small business owners apparently like to pay themselves a large salary, not reinvest that money in their company and then want to whine about paying a higher tax rate. If they don’t want to pay all those taxes, why don’t they try running their businesses by growing it more and not taking all the profits in salary. If they want to take the profits in salary, that’s great. I applaud any small business owner who can pull off a $250,000 salary. But they need to realize their wealth in relation to the rest of the country, and pay their taxes.