Taxing investment purchases

David Harsayni:

W ith good reason, the prevailing economic concern of most Americans is jobs.

With this in mind, two Democratic congressmen have cooked up a plan to help us out. The strategy entails sucking another $150 billion of capital investment out of the market each year and handing it to an organization that can't balance a budget, borrows money with abandon, runs massive deficits and excels at creating fairy tale jobs.

Under a bill being drafted by Democratic Reps. Peter DeFazio of Oregon and Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, every purchase of a financial instrument like stocks, options, derivatives and futures would face an additional .25 percent tax — because capital gains taxes simply haven't been hampering private investment enough.

The idea has the tortured (both logically and linguistically) title, "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act of 2009." Would legislation mean that the federal government mails $150 billion in refunded tax checks to those who laid out the money for the bank bailout that Perlmutter supported? Of course not.

Half of the $150 billion in tax revenue would go toward "reducing the deficit" — a confusing tidbit made all the more curious when you consider Fazio and Perlmutter have helped spend more of your money in the first year of this presidential administration than any in history, $3.52 trillion in fiscal 2009. Here's a restorative idea: Spend less.

The other half would be deposited in a "Job Creation Reserve." History tells us that any government reserves are actually sieves.

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This is another Democrat boondoggle to punish investment and capital creation. Is there any reason to trust them on their commitment to use the money as they say. It all will go into the same sink hold other tax money goes into.

It does cement the Democrats' reputation as tax and spend liberals.