Deficit Commission to Call for Massive Tax Hikes

It looks like Obama's Deficit Commission (officially National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform) will recommend dramatically huge hikes in taxes to cover the tremendous increase in spending since the Democrats took control of the budget process in 2007.  A token member of the "bipartisan comission," Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, on ABC News,, has hinted that the debt commission will recommend an unprecedented $26.7 trillion tax increase.   He said,

"Everything has to be on the table - there's no question about that... Erskine Bowles, one of the co-chairmen of the commission, has suggested a 75-25 split -- 75 percent of the savings being in spending, and 25 percent in revenues... I think it's likely that there will have to be a revenue component, but it should be significantly, dramatically -- and a 3-1 ratio is pretty dramatic -- dramatically less than the initiatives in the spending side of the ledger."

 I suspect that this is so much bull shit, my self.  What I think will occur is while cuts in spending will be suggested, no such cuts will occur.  Neither the Democrats or the Republicans have ever really cut spending in the past.  Nor have they ever actually cut programs.  The GOP has a history of continuing spending while cutting taxes (Reagans tax cuts of the 1980's)...which has hurt the country nearly as much as the gigantic increases under the Democrats in the past 3 years. 

In addition to a whole raft of new taxes that stem from ObamaCare and the proposed new "fees" and "penalties" in Cap & Trade, we'll see steep increases in capital gains (which will strangle business investment) as well as a sharp increase in income tax rates across the board.  That won't touch the unfunded liabilities that are inherent in Social Security or Medicare. 

Bowles and Gregg can only be talking about cutting $3 in promised Social Security and Medicare benefits in exchange for $1 in tax increases. In other words, 1/4 of the unfunded liabilities of Social Security and Medicare would be paid for with tax hikes. So how big is that? According to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Actuaries' Report, the long-run insolvency of the Social Security and Medicare systems is $106.8 trillion (with a "t") over the infinite horizon. To close this gap with one-quarter tax hikes is, therefore, to raise taxes by $26.7 trillion.

All of this will give the Democrats cover (as well as  the GOP for that matter) to enact a Value Added Tax, which the Dem's have been covetting since the 1960's...so the Mad Duck session of Congress in December should be wildly entertaining at the least.