The economy is treading water and struggling for breath. This is exactly the wrong time to raise taxes. Yet with Taxmageddon bearing down on the economy, that is exactly what some members of Congress have proposed. This would be a terrible mistake.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported recently that if Congress and the President do not act before the end of the year to prevent Taxmageddon, America will have another recession on its hands in the coming year. With 12.5 million Americans already out of work, imagine a fresh recession.
Taxmageddon, scheduled to hit on January 1, 2013, will be the largest tax increase in American history. It’s a one-year, nearly $500 billion tax hike that will hit businesses, families, young people—its impact will be devastating. Heritage has calculated that a middle-class family of four will see their taxes go up by more than $4,100 just next year. [See how Taxmageddon will impact you.]
If Congress and the President do not prevent Taxmageddon, the CBO said sluggish economic growth won’t be our problem next year. Instead, the U.S. economy will actually shrink. It will shrink by 0.5 percent, and the unemployment rate will spike to 9.1 percent…
A shrinking economy. More than a million jobs out the window. The country cannot afford this. The time for political speeches is over. It’s time for Congress and the President to do the one thing that matters most before the end of the year: preventing an economic catastrophe from happening on New Year’s Day.
