Orrin Hatch: “over the last few weeks the Senate has been engaged in a familiar exercise. The Democratic majority, urged on by the…”

“over the last few weeks the Senate has been engaged in a familiar exercise. The Democratic majority, urged on by the President, offers up an increase in spending to be paid for by an increase in taxes. If anything, this familiar refrain should cement in the minds of the American people that President Obama and his congressional allies remain committed to a policy of tax and spend. Let's not mistake any of this for carefully designed stimulus spending or tax policy. No, the series of tax-and-spend proposals brought to the Senate floor during the past few months were designed for political reasons only. It remains unclear what any of this has to do with job creation. In fact, I suspect that much of this bread and circus routine is meant to distract the families and taxpayers from the President's mediocre record on job creation and economic growth. For months the Senate has been asked to consider higher taxes, including surtaxes on the so-called rich to pay for whatever the Democrats have settled on as their spending idea of the week. Most of those ideas were sold as stimulus even though they include things such as an infrastructure bank, which would be a brandnew GSE to gobble taxpayer resources--just like Fannie and Freddie--and which would take years just to get off the ground.…”