http://www.autoobserver.com/2009/10/cash-for-clunkers-tab-24000-per-vehicle-of-taxpayer-cash.html

October 28, 2009

This summer's so-called Cash for Clunkers program cost taxpayers $24,000 per vehicle sold, according to an analysis by Edmunds.com.
 
Nearly 690,000 vehicles were sold during the Cash for Clunkers program, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS), but Edmunds.com analysts indicate that only 125,000 of the sales were incremental. The rest of the sales would have happened anyway.

(CNSNews.com) – As a candidate for president, Barack Obama decried the financial toll that the Iraq war was taking on the economy, but Obama’s proposed spending on welfare through 2010 will eclipse Bush’s war spending by more than $260 billion.
 
“Because of the Bush-McCain policies, our debt has ballooned,” then-Sen. Barack Obama told a Charleston, W.V., crowd in March 2008. “This is creating problems in our fragile economy. And that kind of debt also places an unfair burden on our children and grandchildren, who will have to repay it.”
 
During the entire administration of George W. Bush, the Iraq war cost a total of $622 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service.
 
President Obama’s welfare spending will reach $888 billion in a single fiscal year--2010--more than the Bush administration spent on war in Iraq from the first “shock and awe” attack in 2003 until Bush left office in January. 

Obama’s spending proposals call for the largest increases in welfare benefits in U.S. history, according to a report by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. This will lead to a spending total of $10.3 trillion over the next decade on various welfare programs. These include cash payments, food, housing, Medicaid and various social services for low-income Americans and those at 200 percent of the poverty level, or $44,000 for a family of four. Among that total, $7.5 trillion will be federal money and $2.8 trillion will be federally mandated state expenditures.
 
In that same West Virginia speech last year, Obama said, “When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you’re paying a price for this war.”
 
The Heritage study says, “Applying that same standard to means-tested welfare spending reveals that welfare will cost each household $560 per month in 2009 and $638 per month in 2010.”
 
The welfare reform package of 1996 only targeted one program, which was Aid for Families with Dependent Children, pushing work requirements for recipients to encourage them to get off the rolls. There are still 70 different welfare programs spread across 14 different federal agencies, said Robert Rector, senior research fellow in domestic policy studies at the Heritage Foundation, who co-wrote the study.
 
“The average person says I thought we ended welfare. Well, it’s a good thing we ended it, otherwise we’d be spending some real money,” Rector joked while speaking about the report on Tuesday. “Reform was grossly oversold by Clinton and the Republicans. It reformed one program out of 70. Medicaid, public housing, the Earned Income Tax Credit were not reformed.”
 
According to his White House budget proposal, President Barack Obama will increase annual federal welfare spending by one-third, from $522.4 billion to $697 billion in his first fiscal year. Adjusted for inflation, the combined two-year increase of $263 billion is greater than any increase in welfare spending in history.
 
By 2014, annual spending on welfare programs will reach $1 trillion for the fiscal year.
 
“One in seven in total federal and state dollars now goes to welfare. But this is a completely unknown story,” Rector said. “This is not being reported. No one knows Obama is spending $10 trillion on welfare.”
 
Welfare spending has taken its toll on the federal debt. Since the beginning of the “war on poverty,” $15.9 trillion has been spent on welfare programs. The total cost of every war in American history, starting with the American Revolution, is $6.4 trillion when adjusted for inflation.
 
Welfare has been the fastest growing part of the federal government’s spending, increasing by 292 percent from 1989 to 2008. That’s compared to Social Security and Medicare, which grew 213 percent, the study says.
 
Adjusted for inflation, welfare is 5 percent of the gross domestic product today. It was only 1.2 percent of GDP in 1965, the report says. Also, over the next decade, $1.5 trillion in welfare benefits will be paid to low-skilled immigrants.
 
Still, high levels of poverty are reflected by the U.S. Census Bureau because the bureau counts only 4 percent of the total welfare spending as income when it calculates poverty. Thus, most discussions on poverty begin on the virtual premise that welfare does not exist, the study says.
 
“None of the $800 billion being spent is counted as income, so the Census comes back and they say, ‘Oh my goodness, we have 40 million poor people. We need to spend more money,’” Rector explained. “That is a game the taxpayer can never win.”
 
Changing how the money is spent could go a long way in achieving better results, the study says.
 
“Annual means tested welfare spending is more than sufficient to eliminate poverty in the United States,” the study reports. “If welfare spending were converted into case benefits, the sum would be nearly four times the amount needed to raise the income of all poor families above the official poverty line.”

Obama's Policies Would Redistribute Nearly $1 Trillion in Wealth Every Year
Thursday, September 24, 2009
By Karen Schuberg

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/54468

 

Logo for the White House Web site on health care reform, "Reality Check."

(CNSNews.com) - By 2012, nearly $1 trillion from the top 30 percent of American families will be redistributed among the bottom 70 percent if Obama’s proposals on taxes, health care, and climate change become law, according to the Tax Foundation.
 
“Even if none of Obama’s policies becomes law, the extent of income redistribution is remarkable,” Scott Hodge, president of the nonpartisan, nonprofit organization, said. “The top-earning 40 percent of families will transfer $826 billion to the bottom 60 percent in 2012.”
 
Under the Obama plan, 70 percent of American families as a group -- those earning less than $109,460 -- will receive more in benefits than they pay in taxes, Hodge said.
 
“The majority of people below the 70 percent mark will get more back than they pay in taxes,” Hodge told CNSNews.com.
 
This would leave the top 30 percent -- those making more than $109,460 -- paying more in taxes than they receive in federal spending, Hodge said.
 
According to the report, the lowest-income families will gain $10.44 in federal spending for every dollar they pay in taxes.
 
“Middle-income families (those earning $65,000 to $85,000 annually), who are the targeted beneficiaries of many Obama policies, will receive $1.15 in government spending benefits for every dollar they pay in taxes,” the report states.
 
“Under Obama’s policies, families making over $280,000 (the top 5 percent) will get back 56 cents of every dollar they pay in taxes while the highest earning families, those in the top 1 percent earning over about $700,000, will get back 33 cents in spending for every dollar they pay in taxes,” Hodge said.
 
Currently, families making $280,000 receive 61 cents on the dollar, while those earning over $700,000 receive about 40 cents for every tax dollar spent, Hodge said.
 
The report notes that “Obama’s policies (will) lead to tax increases for a curious mix of rich and poor families.”
 
Regressive cap-and-trade policies and increased tobacco taxes disproportionately impact families earning less than $23,700, and higher income tax rates will increase tax payments for families earning more than $280,000.

“On net, however, when spending is included, the lowest-income households gain more than $2,200 while the highest-income families lose more than $127,000,” the report states.
 
Hodge explained: “(These claims) are based on our redistribution model which looks at how much every family pays in taxes compared to what it gets in government benefits.  We look at that for families at every income level.  That adds up to a national accounting of how much is paid by each income group in taxes versus how much it gets in spending, and then you look at the overall amount of redistribution.  You compare the amount of people that get more back than they pay to the groups of people who pay more than they get.  And that difference is the amount of redistribution.”
 
The report is based on IRS data, Census Bureau data and information taken from the federal budget, Hodge added.

http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/09/15/taking_liberties/entry5314040.shtml

September 15, 2009 9:03 PM

Obama Admin: Cap And Trade Could Cost Families $1,761 A Year

(AP)

The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent.

A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year.

A second memorandum, which was prepared for Obama's transition team after the November election, says this about climate change policies: "Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation."

The documents (PDF) were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the free-market Competitive Enterprise Institute and released on Tuesday.

These disclosures will probably not aid the political prospects of the Democrats' cap and trade bill. The House of Representatives approved it by a remarkably narrow margin in June -- the bill would have failed if only six House members had switched their votes to "no" -- and it faces significant opposition in the Senate.

One reason the bill faces an uncertain future is concern about its cost. House Republican Leader John Boehner has estimated the additional tax bill would be at $366 billion a year, or $3,100 a year per family. Democrats have pointed to estimates from MIT's John Reilly, who put the cost at $800 a year per family, and noted that tax credits to low income households could offset part of the bite. The Heritage Foundation says that, by 2035, "the typical family of four will see its direct energy costs rise by over $1,500 per year."

One difference is that while Heritage's numbers are talking about 26 years in the future, the Treasury Department's figures don't have a time limit.

"Heritage is saying publicly what the administration is saying to itself privately," says Christopher Horner, a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute who filed the FOIA request. "It's nice to see they're not spinning each other behind closed doors."

"They're not telling you the cost -- they're not telling you the benefit," says Horner, who wrote the Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming. "If they don't tell you the cost, and they don't tell you the benefit, what are they telling you? They're just talking about global salvation."

The FOIA'd document written by Judson Jaffe, who joined the Treasury Department's Office of Environment and Energy in January 2009, says: "Given the administration's proposal to auction all emission allowances, a cap-and-trade program could generate federal receipts on the order of $100 to $200 billion annually." (Obviously, any final cap-and-trade system may be different from what Obama had proposed, and could yield higher or lower taxes.)

Because personal income tax revenues bring in around $1.37 trillion a year, a $200 billion additional tax would be the equivalent of a 15 percent increase a year. A $100 billion additional tax would represent a 7 or 8 percent increase a year.

One odd point: The document written by Jaffee includes this line: "It will raise energy prices and impose annual costs on the order of XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX." The Treasury Department redacted the rest of the sentence with a thick black line.

The Freedom of Information Act, of course, contains no this-might-embarrass-the-president exemption (nor, for that matter, should federal agencies be in the business of possibly suppressing dissenting climate change voices). You'd hope the presidential administration that boasts of being the "most open and transparent in history" would be more forthcoming than this.

Update 9/16/2009: The Environmental Defense Fund has responded to the documents' release with a statement saying, in part:
Even if a 100 percent auction was a live legislative proposal, which it's not, that math ignores the redistribution of revenue back to consumers. It only looks at one side of the balance sheet. It would only be true if you think the Administration was going to pile all the cash on the White House lawn and set it on fire.

The bill passed by the House sends the value of pollution permits to consumers, and it contains robust cost-containment provisions. Every credible and independent economic analysis of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (such as those done by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Energy Information Administration, and the Environmental Protection Agency) says the costs will be small and affordable -- and that the U.S. economy will grow with a cap on carbon.