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CNN's Romans: Unemployment Benefits Extension 'Would Not Come Out of Your Pocket and My Pocket'

Posted by Mike Bates on Thursday, November 05, 2009 10:28:33 PM
On her segment of CNN Newsroom this morning, anchor Heidi Collins asked business correspondent Christine Romans about Senate action on extending yet again unemployment benefits:
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: You're right. And Heidi, all of those things that you mentioned are incredibly important to your money and all of them could affect you very, very near-term here. This extension of the unemployment benefits, it would be the third.

The Senate has passed it. It goes to the House. It's expected to be voted on and passed very, very quickly here. Because, remember, your Congress member and your senator, they are being inundated in their offices with questions from people saying, wait, how am I going to survive when this check runs out? Seven thousand checks running out every week.

It would be a 14-week extension nationwide, 20 weeks of unemployment. More unemployment benefits for the states with 8.5 percent unemployment or more. And this would be paid by a two-year extension of an existing -- existing tax on employers. So this would be paid for by a tax on employers.

It would not come out of your pocket and my pocket. But it would be the third extension here, Heidi. And it's critically important. Like I said, so many people are losing their unemployment benefits right now. Some 200,000 have lost their jobless benefits just as the Senate has been negotiating this.

In parroting the liberal theme that big bad business, not taxpayers, will actually foot the tab, Romans does a disservice to viewers.  The late Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate in Economics, explained why in 2005 testimony given the President's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform:

All taxes ultimately -- the consumer pays the taxes.  Nobody else pays the taxes.  Corporations don't pay taxes.  They collect them, but they don't pay them.  The only people who pay taxes are people and people are all consumers.
Yet Christine Romans claims you and I won't pay for the extension of unemployment benefits.  One way or the other, we will.   
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CNN'S Romans: 'Everyone Is Getting This Big Tax Break'

Posted by Mike Bates on Tuesday, August 25, 2009 1:52:34 PM
On CNN's American Morning today, business correspondent Christine Romans explained to anchor Kiran Chetry why there are new estimates showing the Federal deficit to be much worse than originally projected by the Obama administration:
ROMANS:  Why? OK, this is really -- it's a complicated problem with a very simple analysis. It's how much money the government is taking in and how much money is going out.

Let's look at how much is going out. Government spending has skyrocketed as you all know over the past couple of years, up 21 percent in the first ten months of this year. Unemployment benefits, health care, bailout programs. We are spending more money than we take in. We are spending gobs of money constantly on lots of different programs to try to get this economy out of the mess it's in. At the same time, revenue is plunging.

The money that's coming in to the Treasury Department is plunging down 17 months in the first ten months, or 17 percent, rather, in the first ten months, declining income and peril taxes. People are out of work. We're not making as much money.

CHETRY: Right.

ROMANS: That's going down. Non-wage income. All other kinds of income people have down sharply. And then that stimulus tax credit -- that has to come from somewhere. Right? Everyone is getting this big tax break, that means less money going in.

So this is the situation. Money is not coming in like it used to, and money is going out much, much, more quickly than it used to. And the bottom line is that's red ink, red ink, red ink, red ink for ten years.

Giving credit where it's due, Romans accurately noted that Obama's administration has routinely been "overly optimistic" in budget projections.  But what about "this big tax break" everyone is getting?

On February 22 of this year, USA Today carried the Associated Press article "Obama: Stimulus tax cuts will be felt by April 1."  According to the AP:

Most workers are to see about a $13 per week increase in their take-home pay. In 2010, the credit would be about $7.70 a week, if it is spread over the entire year.

Barack Obama and his Democratic Congress did not deliver a big tax break to everyone.  However, Romans's observation that he is "spending gobs of money. . . to try to get this economy out of the mess it's in" is correct.  It's Obama's profligate expenditures that are undeniably the principal cause of huge deficits, not illusory big tax breaks.    

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