There is no end to the good deeds Congress can do with your money, although rarely efficiently. Waste seems inherent in government spending since administrators have little incentive to be efficient. Private firms, on the other hand, must make sure they are efficient or they go out of business.
Geithner said that raising taxes on those earning $250,000 or more would affect only 3 percent of small businesses. This statistic is very misleading, using as the denominator in their fraction the number of people with any business income reported on a Schedule C tax form (like eBay sales). That's about 30 million people. However, only six million firms in the United States employ people beyond the owner, and those firms matter for job creation.
The percentage of small-business employers affected by a higher tax is really five times larger than Geithner asserts. Most small businesses are not corporations, they pay taxes based in the individual tax schedules.
This is at the heart of the debate between President Obama and members of Congress over spending cuts and higher taxes for the wealthy. Geithner clearly values record-high (25 percent of gross domestic product) government spending more highly than private spending, asserting that the "modest change in revenue" (a trillion dollars is to be collected by the proposed tax increase) would be less damaging to the economy than the spending cuts that would have to be made if revenues were not increased.
In simple terms, Geithner believes the government can spend a dollar more wisely and efficiently than you or I. There must be some magic involved in that assertion, because a private dollar spent adds at least as much to GDP as a government dollar spent.
