The Patriot Post® · Income Redistribution Day — Late and Loathed

Income Redistribution Day has arrived. In a normal year, of course, tax day occurs on April 15, but 2020 is anything but a normal year. Due to the coronavirus pandemic shutdown, the Treasury Department ever so graciously (ahem) moved the filing deadline to July 15. Of course, the IRS is also sitting on $1.5 billion in tax refunds waiting to be claimed.

Think that’s bad? The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released figures this week that should alarm every American, though most either won’t notice or will shrug it off. Gone are the days of $1 trillion annual deficits. We’re now staring down monthly deficits of nearly that much. June’s deficit was $864 billion — bigger than the annual deficit in 2018. For further comparison, in June 2019, the monthly deficit was “just” $8 billion.

The annual deficit over the last 12 months is $3 trillion, and the CBO expects the fiscal year ending September 30 will sport a deficit of $3.7 trillion — smashing the previous record of $1.4 trillion and nearly equaling the entire federal budget as recently as 2017.

Back in May, we asked, How Much More “Relief” Can We Afford? Some may counter that this pandemic was a once-in-a-century anomaly and things will level out. That’s also what people said about the 2008 financial bailouts and drastic increase in spending. Do you really think Democrats — or even Republicans — won’t embrace new spending levels as the baseline? Granted, there may be some pullback as true emergency measures phase out, but don’t be surprised to see annual federal budgets from here forward include a great deal of these increased spending levels.

That means more debt now and an unsustainable burden for our children and their children.

Joe Biden’s plan? He’ll raise your taxes by quite a bit, primarily because he says the “first thing” he’ll do is repeal the 2017 Republican tax cuts. But he’d also hike taxes further to pay for his radical leftist agenda to expand the already grotesquely bloated federal budget. Remember that if you still have to file your taxes today.

It is indeed ironic that one of the biggest sparks igniting the fires of the American Revolution was the contentious subject of taxation. While some celebrate the spirit of those Bostonians who famously protested the British crown’s Tea Act of 1773, many Americans today seem content to merely utter a few grumbles over our tax burden. And for most, this is done while also wondering if everyone else has paid their “fair share” rather than challenging the government’s plunder for the express purpose of wealth redistribution.