Are your taxes going “up?”

From the AP:

The president has been seeking an extension and expansion to the payroll tax cut that will expire at the end of the year. The White House says taxes on the average family would increase by $1,000 if the cuts are not extended.

To make its point, the White House went so far as to put up a countdown clock during spokesman Jay Carney’s briefing to show when middle-class taxes would go up “if Congress doesn’t act.”

Fiddling with the isolated stream of Social Security revenue is a bad idea, we’ve talked about that before.  But it is also a bad idea to propagate false concepts and politically expedient rhetoric. If the scheduled expiration of a temporary reduction of the payroll tax on December 31 is a pending disaster, what will we call it on December 31, 2012?

According to the President, extending the tax reduction “Will spur spending. It will spur hiring and it’s the right thing to do.”  That’s a tall order for a tax reduction that has been in effect for a year with little or no such effect.  The latest version of paying for this is a lower temporary surtax on millionaires and new fees on lenders.

And then we have this from the White House:

Good afternoon,

It’s simple. If lawmakers don’t vote to extend the payroll tax cut, taxes for 160 million Americans will go up on January 1st.

President Obama just left the press briefing room at the White House where he called on Congress to extend the tax cut, pay for it responsibly, and expand it so middle class families get a $1,500 break next year.

He told Congress to put country before party and stop wasting time.

Every day, folks are fighting to make ends meet and businesses are working to keep their doors open. The longer Congress waits to extend the payroll tax cut, the more uncertainty it creates for ordinary Americans. So we’ve put a clock on every page of the White House website, counting down the days, hours, and minutes until taxes for the middle class increase. In the briefing room, where the President just spoke, that same clock is ticking down as well.

And to make sure you have the information you need to know exactly what this means for your family, we’ve put together a calculator to show how much of your money hangs in the balance.

This calculator illustrates for you what nearly every independent economist has said: letting this tax cut expire will be a blow to the economy. We can’t let that happen. Now is the time to make a real difference in the lives of the people who sent us here.
Check it out and pass it along:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/taxcu

Thanks,
David Plouff

Senior Advisor to the President

The clock is also ticking on a 27% reduction in  fees paid  to physicians treating Medicare patients. If that is fixed how  will it be paid for?  Perhaps a new temporary tax on health insurers, that won’t have any negative impact on anyone.    The estate tax was supposed to be temporary and the AMT was only to affect a handful of people who escaped paying any income tax.  Politicians have no common sense and economists find a way to validate that.