Listen to Barack Obama, in his own words, admit that he’ll raise taxes and then explain that “spreading the wealth” is good for everybody.

Plumber: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more. Isn’t it?”

Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too… I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

Obama has tried to keep his economic plans vague up to this point… and for obvious reasons. As his own admission above shows, his plan has nothing to do with American values and everything to do with socialism and redistribution of wealth. The Wall Street Journal has dug a little deeper on the details of Obama’s plan, and it should come as no surprise what they’ve uncovered…

One of Barack Obama’s most potent campaign claims is that he’ll cut taxes for no less than 95% of “working families.” He’s even promising to cut taxes enough that the government’s tax share of GDP will be no more than 18.2% — which is lower than it is today.

It’s a clever pitch, because it lets him pose as a middle-class tax cutter while disguising that he’s also proposing one of the largest tax increases ever on the other 5%. But how does he conjure this miracle, especially since more than a third of all Americans already pay no income taxes at all? There are several sleights of hand, but the most creative is to redefine the meaning of “tax cut.”

For the Obama Democrats, a tax cut is no longer letting you keep more of what you earn. In their lexicon, a tax cut includes tens of billions of dollars in government handouts that are disguised by the phrase “tax credit.” Mr. Obama is proposing to create or expand no fewer than seven such credits for individuals[.]
…
Here’s the political catch. All but the clean car credit would be “refundable,” which is Washington-speak for the fact that you can receive these checks even if you have no income-tax liability. In other words, they are an income transfer — a federal check — from taxpayers to nontaxpayers. Once upon a time we called this “welfare,” or in George McGovern’s 1972 campaign a “Demogrant.” Mr. Obama’s genius is to call it a tax cut.

The Tax Foundation estimates that under the Obama plan 63 million Americans, or 44% of all tax filers, would have no income tax liability and most of those would get a check from the IRS each year.

As Ed points out, “These are not “tax cuts” but instead welfare grants based on specific social policy. It’s blatant redistributionism, as the money comes from tax increases on the wealthy.”

If it walks like a socialist and quacks like a socialist…

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI

You must be logged in to post a comment.