Joe Wurzelbacher, “Joe the Plumber”, asked Barack Hussein Obama a question during the last election campaign.
“Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn’t it?”, complaining that he was being taxed “more and more for fulfilling the American dream.”
“The One” our eminence answered Mr. Wurzelbacher:
“It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance for success too,” Obama responded.
“My attitude is that if the economy’s good for folks from the bottom up, it’s gonna be good for everybody … I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”
Obama set the bar for “rich” people at $250,000 and the attacks on Joe the Plumber began in earnest. Barack Obama told a tax-burdened plumber, Joe Wurzelbacher in Toledo, that his economic philosophy is to “spread the wealth around”. 
We told everyone that Obama’s “95% tax-solution” was not a promise but a lie. Obama is very, very good at lying. Obama’s 2008 campaign pledges were a vow that anyone making less than $250,000 a year “will not see their taxes increase by a single dime” if he was elected. Well Brother, can you spare a dime?
People working directly for Mr. Obama are confused:
Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” White House economist Larry Summers wouldn’t repeat Mr. Obama’s pre-election promise.
“It is never a good idea to absolutely rule things out no matter what,” Mr. Summers said.
Turning to ABC’s “This Week,” Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner also skipped around Mr. Obama’s vow and said,
“We have to bring these deficits down very dramatically. And that’s going to require some very hard choices.”
The New York Times declared in a headline that
“The Rich Can’t Pay for Everything, Analysts Say.”
The Times quoted Leonard Burman, a veteran of the Clinton Treasury who now runs the Brookings Tax Policy Center, as saying that,
“This idea that everything new that government provides ought to be paid for by the top 5%, that’s a basically unstable way of governing.”
Jake Tapper asked Obama spokesperson at a White House press briefing,
“Look, if economists — including the president’s own economists — don’t necessarily think that it’s possible to do so without raising taxes on the middle class, how is that dealing candidly with the American people?”
Robert Gibbs answered:
“Again, Jake, there are a series of thing that have to be done. I think you’ll actually hear an announcement from Treasury later this afternoon about how much money has to be borrowed versus what they thought was gonna have to be borrowed and what will have to be borrowed as a result of financial stabilization, in terms of cutting the amount of money that’s needed. Uhhhh… Again, I think the president has been clear on this.”
Clear as mud!
Another unidentified reporter asks: “Did Geithner and Summers go off script or were they testing the temperature on it?”
Robert Gibbs answers:
“I don’t… I — I — I — (pause) I — I know the president’s been clear about his commitment on it.”
Reporter followup: So there’s no real scenario there where middle class taxpayers might be hit with a higher hike?
Mr. Gibbs responds:
“The president’s been clear. Very clear!”
Obama and his ilk talk about payroll tax when they discuss Joe the Plumber, Joe Six-Pak and the rest of the middle-class. Afterall, Obama is smart, the public is stupid.
The Wall Street Journal opines:
Democrats have already taxed the middle class by raising cigarette taxes to pay for the children’s health-care expansion. They’re also teeing up average earners with their cap-and-tax energy bill. Mr. Obama had hoped that cap-and-tax would raise some $646 billion over a decade, but Democrats in the House had to give most of that away in bribes to business to pass their bill. To finance ObamaCare, they’re also proposing another 10-percentage-point increase in the payroll tax on firms and individuals that don’t purchase health insurance. But this won’t raise enough money either.
So waiting in the wings is the biggest middle-class tax increase of them all: a European-style value added tax, or VAT. This tax would apply to every level of production or service, and it is beloved by politicians in Europe because it raises so much money so easily without voters noticing. Ezekiel Emanuel, a White House aide and brother of Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, has advocated a 10% VAT to finance national health care. Look for a VAT to be one of the prominent options when Mr. Obama’s tax reform commission issues its report later this year.
The undeniable reality is that you can’t run a European-style welfare-entitlement state without European-style levels of taxation on the middle class (and eventually without low European-style growth and high jobless rates). It’s looking more and more like Mr. Obama’s no-middle-class-tax pledge was one of the greatest confidence tricks in American political history.
Joe the Plumber has his answer, but it didn’t come from Barack Hussein Obama.
Confidence “trick” and pathological liar, indeed!
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August 5th, 2009 at 7:30 pm
It’s a shame how badly you hate taxes. Do you ever think about how much you hate highways, or the military? Because that’s where your taxes go.
August 5th, 2009 at 8:37 pm
I hate the military? Watch your step sonny!
I pay exponentially more taxes than you, and you simply live off of them.
August 6th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
I suppose you could see it that way. We both live in Donor states, though, so really both of our money is being sent off to Alabama, never to be seen again. But my point is, if you really don’t want to pay taxes in proportion to your wealth, then stop using the things that taxes provide first. Pull your kid out of the desert, stop driving anywhere, and don’t eat anything made from or fed Gov’t subsidized corn. GOOD LUCK!
August 6th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Paying taxes at 70% is based in proportion of one’s income?
That is subsidizing the country from less than 5% of the working population.
Why should the few support the masses?
When Reagan took over as President the highest tax rate of 70% was dropped to 28%. The result was revenues to the Treasury more than doubled and 21-million new jobs were created.
Imagine that!
August 6th, 2009 at 7:26 pm
Okay, so going from 70% to 28% fuels a spike. No duh, that’s a crazy benefit. But every cut you make after that point is going to be far less substantial (a 48 percent decrease means you’re getting 1.98 when you used to get 1.00. That’s awesome. But lower it from 28% -to ZERO- and you don’t even get that high of a rate of return. The argument you can just plunge the government into bankruptcy to save the economy is ludicrous, and provable by this week’s revelation that gov’t revenues are WAY down. That means your kid isn’t getting the body armor he deserves, and the education and health care we all deserve are less attainable. Government revenue is important, unless you’re advocating for an abolition of government. That sounds like me when I was sixteen, and then I grew up.
August 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
You should read this:
Shawn B.S. Propaganda by Nobody Authors
Since conservatives are more likely to read opposition pieces.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:54 pm
How do you know what Conservatives read? Answer, You have no idea.
And Libtards read DailyKos hate site and the Puffington Host.
August 6th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
My brave hero, not a kid that’s you, purchased his own body armor because Liberals cut defense and didn’t supply the finest equipment available.
And I’m the economist and you’re the fuzzy math guru. You are really clueless. Go get an education. Oh that’s right, you can get that here.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:30 pm
Yeah, I’d blame the Liberals for the situation your son is in. That’s not “clueless.” A suggestion that I’m not educated functions as a “dodge.” Supply-side economics has been proven false. Interest rates are near zero and we’re broke.
August 7th, 2009 at 5:45 pm
Walk lightly discussing my son, very, very lightly.
He chose to join the Army, and he chose his MOS.
The FACT is GWB had to fight Democrats in Congress like Barney Frank to upgrade the service. GWB inherited an Armed Forces with many on food stamps and not ready to protect the US. FACT!
And…..Supply-Side economics does work and Monetarist Economics is the gold standard of functional economics. Period!
August 21st, 2009 at 1:54 pm
About the Reagan tax cut myths.
Another serious flaw in the doubling of revenues argument is that it looks at all revenues. The FICA tax rate increased from 6.13 percent in 1980 to 7.65 percent in 1990. To include an increase in revenues gained through a tax hike in order to argue in favor of tax cuts would seem extremely hypocritical. Hence, we need to look only at revenues obtained from individual income taxes. According to the second table, the real growth in individual income tax receipts was 10.63% from 1981 to 1991 and 11.94% from 1982 to 1992. These were the lowest growth rates of any of the 58 10-year spans from 1940 to 2007. Incidentally, these record lows are projected to be surpassed by 1999 to 2009 (10.11%) and 2000 to 2010 (9.18%).”
In other words, while nominal levels of revenue did increase, most of the increase came from increases in FICA (a regressive tax), and the figures always cited by mythholders are not adjusted for inflation. In addition to these two facts, Reagan enjoyed an economy that was receiving a huge economic boost by the reduction of interest rates following the double digit rates when Fed. Chairman Volker fought inflation.
Plus, during his tenure in office, Reagan did raise tax rates in a number of areas.
Tax Reform Act of 1986
reduced individual income tax rates (top rate 28%) and repealed capital gains exclusion
repealed investment tax credit
lowered corporation income tax rates; top rate lowered to 34 percent
increased personal exemption amount from $1,080 to $2,000
set uniform capitalization rules for manufacturing or construction
increased standard deduction from $3,670 to $5,000 (joints)
limited deduction for nonbusiness interest
repealed second earner deduction
limited passive losses
established income limits on use of IRAs for taxpayers covered by pensions
revised corporate minimum tax
repealed sales tax deduction for individuals
set 2-percent floor on miscellaneous itemized deductions
As can be seen, a number of these provisions are effectively tax hikes, offsetting the additional cuts in the tax rates. Those provisions include items 2, 7 through 10, 12, 13, and the second half of item 1 (repeal of the capital gains exclusion). That is likely the major reason why revenues did not fall further. In any case, this shows that the top marginal rate does not always tell the whole story about the level of individual income taxes.”
Or the same thing explained a little more simply here.
CLAIM: “Lesson #2: Lower tax rates do not mean less tax revenue.
The Reagan tax cuts: Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during
the 1980s. The results are even more impressive, however, when one
looks at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the
economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, personal
income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54
percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).”
There are four kinds of distortions used here.
The first is bait and switch. What do they mean by “during the 1980s”?
Doesn’t that include both Carter and Bush1’s terms? While their
statement is technically true…. revenues were 517 Billion in 1980
and 1032 billion in 1990… which I assume are the years they used…
the Heritage Foundation fails to mention that Reagan’s own first FY82
budget bought in a mere 617 billion… going up to 991.2 billion in FY89… Reagan’s last budget. Where Heritage implies a 515 Billion dollar increase there was but 374 billion…. 72% of their number. In reality revenue growth was predictably anemic after Reagan’s tax cuts.
The second distortion is not to include Reagan’s own tax HIKES in
those revenue numbers. How could they have omitted that?
The third distortion is not to compensate for inflation.
The fourth distortion is to pull numbers out of a hat with no
historical context. Just claiming revenues grew under Reagan means
little unless you know how that compared to historical RATE of revenue
growth under Carter and Ford.”
Or you can consider this from Fortune Magazine in 2001.
(FORTUNE Magazine) – Before George W. Bush became the Paul Bunyan of tax cutters, there was Ronald Reagan. And if we’re looking for possible clues about what may be in store for us this time around, Reagan’s $750 billion reduction of the marginal tax nearly 20 years ago isn’t a bad place to start. In the early 1980s, you’ll recall, the U.S. economy was an awful sight to behold–sluggish growth, high unemployment, and runaway inflation. Radical treatment was needed, and that’s what we got in Reagan’s tax cut. The supply-side argument went something like this: Cutting the top marginal tax rate would provide incentives for high-income earners, who pay the most in income taxes, to save, invest, and create all kinds of earnings. That in turn would stimulate the economy through higher productivity and investment. In fact, Reagan’s economic team predicted that the impact would be so large that the economy could easily steam ahead at an average annual rate of 6%.
No such luck. The economy did grow, but at a more moderate pace of 3%, while inflation and unemployment came down. The problem was that growth wasn’t fast enough to offset lost tax revenue, and the federal budget deficit ballooned. The upshot was rising interest rates, low national savings, and ever-increasing foreign debt in the form of the current-account deficit. But Reagan’s plan had one indisputable benefit: The top marginal tax rate fell from a ridiculously high 70% to 28%. And that, as any economist will tell you, can do a world of good as far as incentives go. ”
For an inflation adjusted record of revenues brought in during the Reagan years, we have here the data.
Since World War II, federal tax receipts have fluctuated within a few points of 18 percent of the Gross Domestic Product. Because they have been so stable, tax collections have regularly grown with the economy. Almost always, the only drops in tax collections have been during recession years; otherwise, tax collections have expanded in the years that the rest of the economy expanded.
There are a few notable exceptions to the above rule: those periods following large tax cuts. After Reagan’s income tax cuts took effect in 1982, real income tax collections took a long fall, despite the fact our economy continued to grow. For the moment, let’s ignore the fact that tax collections could have been expected to grow after 1981. Let’s simply use 1981 as a baseline, multiplying it 8 times, and compare that to what was really collected over the next 8 years.
Individual Income Tax Collections (millions) (1)
Year Current Constant (87 dollars)
——————————————-
1981 $285,917 $367,692
1982 297,744 356,366
1983 288,938 332,033
1984 298,415 328,470
1985 334,531 354,677
1986 348,959 359,307
1987 392,557 392,557
1988 401,181 387,128
1989 445,690 411,533
—————————–
82-89 total: 2,922,691
1981 (times -2,941,536
—————————–
Net 8-year loss -18,845
Corporate Income Taxes (millions)
Year Current Constant (87 dollars)
——————————————-
1981 $61,137 $78,623
1982 49,207 58,991
1983 37,022 42,544
1984 56,893 62,623
1985 61,331 65,024
1986 63,143 65,015
1987 83,926 83,926
1988 94,508 91,224
1989 103,291 98,092
——————————
82-89 total: 567,439
1981 (times -628,984
——————————
Net 8-year loss -69,545Combined individual and corporate income tax loss: $88 billion.
August 21st, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Chris, any factual links to your thesis or is this an Obama economic advisor?
Because, throughout portions of this site your lengthy math fiction is debunked.
Now, go read “Free to Choose” by Milton and Rose Friedman and burn all your Keynesian “economics” books.