Tax and Spend

If insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting different results, then congressional Republicans who went along with tax increases on the promise of deficit reduction and spending cuts are -- you get the point. As Milton Friedman pointed out many times, giving Congress more tax money will never reduce the deficit because they always spend it all plus some. And while I feel very sorry for the losses suffered by people due to Sandy, this is what private insurance is for. I have no idea why I, as a taxpayer, need to pay for casualty losses of people who had or should've had casualty insurance.

Sandy relief bill eats up taxes on the rich

Congress is poised to clear the final $50 billion chunk of emergency aid for Superstorm Sandy relief Monday — and in one vote, it will have used up all the new tax money President Obama won by raising rates on the wealthy in the “fiscal cliff” deal.

The tax deal that Congress and Mr. Obama reached in early January cut taxes overall but let them rise on individuals making more than $250,000 a year and families with income of more than $300,000. Those increases brought the government somewhere on the order of about $40 billion for fiscal year 2013.