Obama's Pre-Election Lie On Taxing The Rich

Before the election, Obama said that all he wanted to do is to return to the Clinton-era tax rates for the rich; arguing that they wouldn't miss the extra money and that the economy actually did well when those higher taxes were in place.

Well, now that the election is over, guess what?  The President has doubled-down on taxes for the rich.  No longer is he just calling for a return to the Clinton-era taxes for those making more than $200,000, individually, and families making $250,000 and up; resulting in a supposed $850 billion dollar increase in tax revenues, he now has added an additional $750 billion in new taxes on the rich by capping deductions and imposing a minimum 30% tax for those making more than a million dollars a year; referring to the later as the Buffet rule.

Further, he argues that the new taxes should be imposed immediately and that we can look at spending cuts and tax law revisions later.  Obama calls this a balanced approach. But, I'll bet money that he will never agree to any significant cuts; unless, of course, they are in defense.  This is the same kind of crap that the Democrats pulled on George H. W. Bush.  The Congressional Democrats got Bush to raise taxes, first, by promising to address spending cuts later.  But, no cuts were ever legislated on.  Thus, Bush lost reelection by violating  his promise of "Read my lips.  No new taxes!" 

--- CNN Money: Obama's opening bid: $1.6 trillion in taxes: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obamas-opening-bid-1-6-175700494.html

The Buffett Rule Is All Politics

This week's reelection campaign agenda for Barack Obama is to push the Buffett Rule.  In another we-versus-them, socialist offensive, Obama hopes to convince Americans that, by increasing  taxes on the rich, America will be a better place and, the 99% of us who aren't rich will all benefit.  In reality, Obama's pushing of the Buffett Rule is like someone digging around in the sofa for some loose change in a futile attempt to retire $10,000 in credit card debt.  In a report released days ago, the U.S. Treasury Department stated that the Buffett Rule will only increase tax revenues by $5 billion per year.  While that may sound like a lot of money, that $5 billion would only cover 4 days of interest payments on our federal debt.

The Buffett Rule is a sham. Barack Obama is using it to rev up his liberal, political base.  A base that hates the rich and who believes that the there can be no limit to the amount of taxes the they should pay.  That hate is founded in the irrational, socialist belief that the rich only got rich off the backs of the poor.  This is why Obama always frames the "Rule" in the context of "social justice" and "fairness".  At the same time, Obama is using it to avoid the real issues of spending and debt that are killing this country.

The reality is that the Buffett Rule won't make anyone, except liberals, feel more "fairly" or "justly" treated. It will hardly reduce the debt or deficits. In fact, Obama will probably use that increase in taxes as an excuse to spend  and waste even more money.  For sure, no one is going to see their taxes go down because of it.  That is especially true for Buffett's s well-paid secretary. This, the very person that Warren Buffett used as an excuse to create the tax plan that now bears his name.

Maybe the Buffett Rule should be that Warren Buffett coughs up the billion dollars in back taxes that he owes this country; something the rest of us could never get away with.  Or, that rich, environmentalist liberals who buy $41,000 Chevy Volts "shouldn't" get a $7500 tax break.  Or, that there should be consequences for a President and his Energy Secretary blowing away billions of taxpayer dollars on  green technology companies who were obviously doomed to fail; like Solyndra.  Obviously, there's a lot of unfairness and social injustice around that's being ignored by this President.

Obama's Wish For A State Of Disunion Address

Once again, Obama launched another divisive, class warfare speech in what was supposed to be the annual State of the Union address. He talked about fairness being higher taxes on the wealthy. He talked about teamwork. Yet, is it fair and is it teamwork when almost half of all Americans pay no taxes? Is it fair that almost half of the country's high school students fail to graduate and, as a consequence, are unable to find good paying jobs. Are those people team players, Mr. Obama?

We want wealthy people in this country. We want them to use their wealth as capital to create jobs in America. We don't want to them to hand their wealth over to Washington, D.C. so that money can be squandered away in political cronyism like Solyndra.

But, this President only wants to berate the wealthy and cripple them through higher and higher taxes. What happens when those wealthy just give up and leave America? Who, then, pays for all our debt? Let's not forget that, in just 3 years, Obama is responsible for 1/3 for all the debt that this nation has accumulated in its 235 year history. Now, he thinks the wealthy -- those making more than $250,000 -- should fix the massive debt problem that he and the Democrats have created. Where's the team play when he and the Democrats put their radical priorities ahead of the health of this country. Once again, Obama's community organizing principals of disunion were quite apparent in last night's speech.

Obama's Buffett Rule Denounced By Buffett

In his tax-the-rich/debt-reduction speech a couple of weeks ago, President Obama introduced what he called the "Buffett Rule" whereby the rich could no longer avoid paying high tax rates. In Obama's own words, he said the rich would have to pay "their fair share." Then, once again, he defined the rich as being those singles making $200,000 a year and any couples making more than $250,000.

In outlining the Buffett Rule, he implied that Warren Buffett, himself, actually authored that rule. But as I had previously indicated in my blog entry titled Obama's Rich and Warren Buffett's Rich Are Two Different Animals, Warren Buffett was only talking about the super rich who were being "coddled" by certain aspects of our tax codes. Yet, Obama continues to invoke Buffett's name in his socialist-minded justification for taxing people who aren't even millionaires or billionaires.

Yesterday morning, in a CNBC interview, Warren Buffett put the so-called Buffett Rule into its proper context. Instead of calling for increasing taxes on all of Obama's supposed rich, he explained that he only wants taxes increased on those 50,000, or so, super rich who pay less taxes than they should. He adamantly included himself in that category. In fact, he specifically said that a ballplayer making $50 million dollars "should not" have their taxes increased. That hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement for raising taxes on a person only making $200,000 or a family with income above $250,000. (Click here to See the Buffett Interview)

Once again, we find another serious "distortion of the facts" by Barack Obama. I just wish that, in that same interview, Buffett would have directly denounced the $200,000/$250,000 tax increase. Instead, he just danced around and avoided answering that direct question. Of course, that was to be expected since Buffett is an ideological supporter of Obama. But, I think, what he did say and how he said it and what he avoided saying was damaging enough.