Do you know how much President Obama has raised taxes?
Oh, by about $3 trillion.
In a new paper, Heritage expert Curtis Dubay reminds us: "President Obama has already raised taxes substantially twice -- first as part of Obamacare and then as part of the fiscal cliff deal earlier this year.
"Together, those increases raised taxes by more than $1.3 trillion over 10 years. Including the payroll tax increase that was also part of the fiscal cliff deal, taxes have risen by almost $3 trillion during President Obamas tenure."
Thats right: Taxes have risen by almost $3 trillion during President Obamas tenure.
See the 13 tax increases just in 2013.
Earlier this week a special congressional committee met to start hashing out what the next budget could look like. Members of this committee faced a lot of pressure to raise taxes again.
They should not.
Why stop now? Dubay gives three reasons. Raising taxes yet again --
1) would further burden an already sluggish economy;
2) would not fix the real Washington problem of overspending; and
3) is unnecessary.
Creating a budget is deciding how to spend taxpayers money. And spending is where the focus should be. As Dubay says, budgeting is exactly the time where a conversation about desperately needed entitlement reform should happen.
Congress and the president have long known that overspending will load future generations with debt that will greatly reduce their standard of living, but they have continually refused to act.
About the only way to force them to address the issue is when the law requires them to pass a budget each fiscal year (the Senate even ignored this requirement for three years) or periodically raise the debt limit.
The need to set a budget has led to this conference and created a rare opportunity for Congress to focus on spending.
Beware of the old phrases closing loopholes and raising revenues -- tax hikes by any other name are just as devastating. We need tax reform, but first, we need spending restraint.
Amy Payne is an assistant director of digital media at The Heritage Foundation.
