There is nothing these Democrats controlling Congress and Obama will not do to kill the capitalist engine and destroy the US economy.  To pay for all their wild spending and socialist mandates they finally have gone where they never dared to go in the past.  A National Sales Tax or Value Added Tax (VAT). 

From Francis Cianfrocca at Redstate

So at some point, you’re stuck. You can’t confiscate all business profits because that will leave you without an economy, and you can’t suck out all the private capital because the high interest rates will leave you without an economy. And higher income and payroll taxes are verboten, because you promised to cut those taxes. (And besides, it’s politically expedient to do so.)

There’s only one answer: a VAT, or value-added tax. Europe and Canada have had one for years, and it generates a gusher of revenue because it’s largely hidden from view. What happens is that every business that adds value to a good or service pays a tax on that value. The tax gets baked into prices at every step, so there’s no big ugly percentage that a consumer has to pay, as with a sales tax.

You start off with a tiny percentage, maybe less than 1 percent, and you expand it steadily as you need revenue. In Europe and the UK, it’s gotten up to the high teens now. This of course is in addition to income and payroll taxes.

Cianfrocca links to a Washington Post story which tells about the

latest move by Democrats and Obama to push this new hobbling and crippling of the economy.
At a White House conference earlier this year on the government’s budget problems, a roomful of tax experts pleaded with Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner to consider a VAT. A recent flurry of books and papers on the subject is attracting genuine, if furtive, interest in Congress. And last month, after wrestling with the White House over the massive deficits projected under Obama’s policies, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee declared that a VAT should be part of the debate.

“There is a growing awareness of the need for fundamental tax reform,” Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said in an interview. “I think a VAT and a high-end income tax have got to be on the table.”

It’s been a constant barrage from Obama and the Democrats how this deficit is a ‘Bush’ caused situation. The numbers (which don’t lie) tell a different story:

Jim Hoft (from Gateway Pundit) writes a story at American Issues
explaining with indisputable facts how the Bush economy was pretty amazing considering the 911 attacks and fighting 2 wars while having to rebuild a military downsized and defunded through the Clinton years.

This wasn’t a one time event. During the Bush years, despite the 2000 Recession, the attacks on Sept. 11, the stock market scandals, Hurricane Katrina and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush Administration was able to reduce the budget deficit from 412 billion dollars in 2004 to 162 billion dollars in 2007, a sixty percent drop. In 2004, the federal budget deficit was 412 billion dollars. In 2005, it dropped to 318 billion dollars. In 2006, the deficit dipped to 248 billion dollars. And, in 2007, it fell below 200 billion to 162 billion dollars. During the Bush years, the average unemployment rate was 5.2 percent, the economy saw the strongest productivity growth in four decades and there was robust GDP growth. These were amazing accomplishments considering the unexpected challenges. You certainly didn’t read much about this in the press.

What changed in 2007? The Democrats took clear and commanding control of the House and Senate!

But, things changed in 2007. Democrats took over Congress, gas prices started to rise, and at the end of the year and into 2008 several financial institutions started to crumble as the housing bubble began to burst. Of course, it should be noted that President Bush publicly called for the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac 17 times in 2008 alone before Congress acted. Democrats, on the other hand, blocked reform numerous times. It was later reported after the 2008 election that Bush had nothing to do with the financial crisis. Hoover Institution visiting fellow Scott S. Powell wrote in Barron’s in February of this year that the present crisis began in the 1970s, during the Carter administration, with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act to stem bank redlining and liberalize lending in order to extend home ownership in lower-income communities. This risk was acknowledged in the Bush administration’s first fiscal-year budget, released in April 2001. Sadly these warnings were ignored by Congress.

As much damage that the high gas prices caused in 2007 has done nothing to stop Democrats from eliminating domestic oil drilling or to develop anything other than additional taxes on energy while attempting to destroy the oil industry in the US, instead relying on unproven and weak alternatives for energy sources. The Cap and Trade bill will do nothing but tax individuals, tax companies while creating a junk trading system called Cap and Trade which inevitably will become the Democrats new Wall Street bubble.

US National Sales Tax, VAT, Value Added Tax, Obama, Democrats, Cap and Trade, Sen Kent Conrad, Senate Budget Committee

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