Editorial: Tax-and-Spend at its Worst, by Mary Fallin

Press Release

Editorial: Tax-and-Spend at its Worst, by Mary Fallin

Every day, families in Oklahoma and across America are forced to make tough spending decisions. Working men and women learn to live within their means and to separate those things that they want to spend money on from those that they need to spend money on. That's life, and those are the choices families in America have become accustomed to making.

Unfortunately for American families and taxpayers, the U.S. Congress has not been able to abide by the same principle. Our country now faces a deficit of historic proportions due to the failure of Washington politicians to make the same kind of spending decisions that their constituents make every day.

It appears the new leadership in Congress is intent on making the situation worse. Rather than cut wasteful spending, liberal Washington Democrats now propose to increase taxes by almost $400 billion. Rather than reform our Social Security and entitlement programs, whose costs are ballooning at an alarming and unsustainable rate, they have chosen to ignore the coming crisis.

The budget proposed by the leadership of the 110th Congress is tax-and-spend economics at its worst. By passing this budget, Washington politicians chose to stick their heads in the sand rather than make the kind of real reforms that we need to fight the growing federal deficit. And worst of all, they have done so at the expense of American families that now face the largest tax increase in American history.

It may sound alarmist to say that Congress has proposed an economic assault on the American family, but consider the facts: Liberal Democrats are proposing to raise taxes on single moms and families by cutting the child tax credit in half. They want to reinstate the death tax, making it harder to pass down hard-earned family inheritance. And they will punish marriage by reinstating the marriage penalty.

In addition to that, the Democrats' budget would raise taxes for 115 million taxpayers, including more than 1.1 million Oklahomans. Nationwide, that includes 48 million married couples, 12 million single mothers and 17 million elderly individuals.

It simply is not credible to say that one is "pro-family" while proposing and supporting a plan that drains the bank accounts of American families.

Oklahomans and Americans deserve better than this. They deserve a budget that is family friendly and fiscally responsible. That means balancing the budget and addressing the federal deficit without raising taxes. It means tackling entitlement reform now so that we don't jeopardize the economic security of our children and their children.

And it certainly means supporting a tax code that sees the American family as the sacred foundation of our democracy and not just another taxable entity.

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