United Liberty

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) is talking about tax hikes to deal with the ever growing national debt:

In the shorter term, Hoyer raised the possibility that Congress will only temporarily extend middle-class tax cuts set to expire at the end of the year. He pointedly suggested that making them permanent would be too costly.

Tax cuts enacted under former President George W. Bush are scheduled to expire at the end of the year, affecting taxpayers at every income level. President Barack Obama proposes to permanently extend them for individuals making less than $200,000 a year and families making less than $250,000—at a cost of about $2.5 trillion over the next decade.

“As the House and Senate debate what to do with the expiring Bush tax cuts in the coming weeks, we need to have a serious discussion about their implications for our fiscal outlook, including whether we can afford to permanently extend them before we have a real plan for long-term deficit reduction,” said Hoyer, a Maryland Democrat.
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In the short term, government spending has been necessary to stimulate the economy, Hoyer said. But in the longer term, Congress  will have to rein in spending and raise taxes to tackle the debt, he added.

“Raising revenue is part of the deficit solution, too,” Hoyer said.

Hoyer talks about some cuts that are should be considered, mostly dealing with entitlements, but fails to call for cuts with the same fervency that he talks about tax hikes.

Since Rep. Hoyer is so casually tossing around the idea of tax hikes, we should put it all into context. Over at the Mercatus Center, Veronique de Rugy shows us exactly how much in taxes each taxpayer would have to pay to balance the budget. I hope you’re sitting down:

While we’re on the subject, a tax hike on the middle class explicitly violates a campaign pledge by Barack Obama not to raise taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 a year:

I can make a firm pledge. Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

Of course, that pledge was already broken with tax hikes passed with ObamaCare and the cigarette tax hike to fund SCHIP.