Taxes and military cuts will pay for Jobs Act, says Obama

“We know what’s right. It’s time to do what’s right.” With those words, President Obama ended a 20-minute-long speech from the White House this morning in which he outlined how the US will afford the $4 trillion needed for his American Jobs Act.

“There shouldn’t be any reason for Congress to drag its feet,” Obama told reporters from the rose garden just before 11 a.m. Today marked one week since he sent his legislation to Capitol Hill, and in the span of just those couple of days the economic woes plaguing America have only gotten worse. Statistics released last week from the Department of Labor confirmed that the unemployment epidemic wasn’t getting any better as more Americans filed for jobless benefit claims than expected. Another report from the Labor Department revealed that the purchasing power of Americans have dropped in recent weeks, as well. As a result, Obama once again insisted that the right thing for Congress to do is to vote in favor of his act immediately and he harped once more on his now notorious plea that lawmakers should pass his plan “right away.”While the president’s plan is seemed unlikely to gather enough votes out of the GOP, Obama again reminded Republicans that the American Jobs Act will be paid for in full and not add to the nation’s debt. Speaking this morning, the president revealed that by emptying out troops from the Middle East and restructuring taxes among the wealthy, the roughly $4 trillion needed for the plan will be accounted for without complication.“We have to cut what we can’t afford to make way for what really matters,” said Obama. Among those cuts are spending on the nation’s defense. The president said that troop withdrawal in Afghanistan and Iraq will afford the country $1 trillion to be used towards his American Jobs Act. Elsewhere, Obama is looking towards the rich to pay what he says is a more logical tax rate, noting that “everybody, including the wealthiest Americans . . . have to pay their fair share.”“Explain why somebody who is making $50 million a year in the financial market should be paying 15 percent on their taxes, when a teacher making $50k a year is paying more than that?” asked Obama.Obama attacked Republican proposals that would see middle class Americans largely paying the price to get the country afloat once again, assaulting them for offering a package that “would ask sacrifices of seniors, middle class and poor,” but not the rich. “Middle class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires. That’s pretty straightforward,” said Obama.In particular, the president went after Speaker of the House John Boehner throughout his speech, first calling his efforts during the debt discussion earlier this year not “all that great” and later saying that Boehner’s proposals were “not smart” and “not right.” Objecting to the speaker’s intentions to cut back on entitlement programs to save costs, Obama responded that “If we’re going to meet our responsibilities were going to have to do it together,” repeatedly returning in his speech that middle class Americans should not be footed with the task of tackling the economic problem themselves. “Those who have done well…should pay our fair share in taxes”“Both parties agree that we need to reduce the deficit by the same amount…so what choices are we going to make to reach that goal? Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes or we have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare. We can’t afford to do both,” he said.“I will not support any plan that puts all the burdens for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” added Obama. He announced that he would veto any bill that would change benefits for those that rely on assistance programs such as Medicare while not asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a more fair tax rate.Obama told the crowd that this isn’t “about numbers on a ledger” or “figures on a spreadsheet,” but is simply rather a matter of fairness. “This is not class warfare,” said the President. “It’s math”Economist Lew Rockwell of the Ludwig Von Mises Institute is unimpressed with the president’s plan and tells RT that is sounds like more “Obama-loney.”“He actually wants to help the ruling class and stick it to the productive class,” says Rockwell. “Anybody who proposes more taxes seeks to make us poorer as a group.”Rockwell adds that Obama’s plan isn’t going to hurt Warren Buffet or George Sorros, despite what the president might lead America to believe. Rather, he says, young entrepreneurs will be the ones hit hard by the president’s new tax plan.