{"id":3608,"date":"2005-02-24T11:05:34","date_gmt":"2005-02-24T16:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/3608.html"},"modified":"2005-02-24T11:05:34","modified_gmt":"2005-02-24T16:05:34","slug":"bushs-ubiquitous-tax-increases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-ubiquitous-tax-increases\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s ubiquitous tax increases"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up for a moment on yesterday’s post<\/a> about Bush’s tax increase on ammunition, I wanted to add that “user fees” (read: taxes) are, under the White House budget, poised to go up all over the government.<\/p>\n

According to the Office of Management and Budget, Bush’s 2006 budget includes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

* A proposed fee increase on explosives costing taxpayers $120 million.<\/p>\n

* A new fee for circuses, animal dealers, research facilities, which would pay a new fee for government monitoring of their treatment of animals, totaling $11 million.<\/p>\n

* Producers of meat, poultry and egg products would pay a new fee to subsidize food inspections during overtime shifts, costing $139 million.<\/p>\n

* Alcohol and tobacco producers would pay a new fee to finance education, testing and other “protect the public” efforts, totaling $29 million.<\/p>\n

* Federal recreation areas would impose new fees, costing taxpayers $9 million, to help offset modernization costs for the Army Corps of Engineers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This comes on top of new fees on air travelers<\/a> to help pay for airport security, and a new health care tax on injured veterans<\/a> who need prescription drugs.<\/p>\n

But every time the administration insists it’s merely increasing “user fees,” we should call them what they are: Bush’s new tax increases. When the government requires citizens to pay money to the state to finance a government service, it’s a tax. That’s essentially the definition<\/i> of a tax.<\/p>\n

Bush swore up and down that he’d never raise taxes, but left with few choices, he’s decided to embrace “fee increases.” By the rules created by Republicans<\/a>, this president is raising taxes. The more people are reminded of this fact, the better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just to follow up for a moment on yesterday’s post about Bush’s tax increase on ammunition, I wanted to add that “user fees” (read: taxes) are, under the White House budget, poised to go up all over the government. According to the Office of Management and Budget, Bush’s 2006 budget includes: * A proposed fee […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3608\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}