Brad O’Leary
On Monday, The Wall Street Journal confirmed the accuracy of the figures detailed in my book, The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values, (released earlier this year) that show how Barack Obama’s tax cuts and deductions would increase the number of those who pay no federal income taxes from 30 percent to 44 percent. This critically important, yet long overlooked, information is finally making its way to center stage as the debate over the economy heats up. It can no longer be dismissed as political fiction. It must be seriously taken as brutal reality.
If Barack Obama is allowed to set the nation’s economic policies and priorities, he will throw a wrench into the gears of our economic machine and America will face a new war. Call it Obama’s “War on Success.”
Currently, 30 percent of all Americans who file a tax return pay no federal income tax but receive credits, handouts and deductions. With a $100 billion price tag, Obama’s plan provides senior citizen tax credits, college credits, childcare credits, home buyer credits and $1000 per family credits. The percentage of tax filers who do not pay any income tax under Obama would rise from 30 percent to roughly 44 percent. Riding for free, nearly half of America will consume a majority of government handouts and services, while the other half foots the entire bill and covers the entire cost of government.
Taxes are a fact of life, but all Americans should do their part and contribute an equal share, based on income, to support our country and pay for services. Not so for Obama’s vision of “change” in America. He seeks to punish our most enterprising and successful citizens – those who create companies, hire workers and pay benefits – by making them pay for everything else too, while 44 percent of Americans use the government’s benefits and services for free.
Demanding the rich must pay their “fair share,” Obama invokes class warfare, which plays well with certain voters, but this demand is as dishonest as it is misguided. In fact, the wealthiest 1 percent of our population generates 19 percent of our country’s total income, but they pay 39 percent of all income taxes. The top 10 percent pay 68 percent of the tab. By contrast, the bottom half of wage earners bring in 13 percent of total income, but pay only 3 percent of all income taxes. It is this last group that Obama thinks pays too much and deserves a bigger break.
In a questionnaire for the Independent Voters of Illinois/Independent Precinct Organization (IVI/IPO), Obama answered, “I strongly favor a graduated income tax for both individuals and corporations that would shift an increasing burden on corporations and individuals most able to pay.” In addition to giving welfare handouts to those who do not pay taxes, Obama’s tax plan seeks to punish success.
The specific tax changes Obama has laid out are:
- Increase the top individual tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent.
- Raise the capital gains tax rate from 15 percent to 28 percent.
- Increase the stock dividends (tax?) rate from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.
- Impose a 20-percent surtax on all incomes above $250,000 per year.
- Raise the death tax rate to 55 percent for any income past the first $1million exemption.
- Raise social security taxes by 4 percent for individuals, businesses or anyone who makes at least $250,000 per year.
- Increase the top rate from 37.9 percent to 54.9 percent for self-employed tax payers (who already pay ordinary income taxes as well as self-employment taxes).
- Increase the tax rate on Subchapter S corporations (small businesses) by up to 15.3 percent (from a top rate of 35 percent to 50.3 percent).
Obama’s plan is not only confiscatory and authoritarian, but regressive. In addition to all of these new taxes, he would roll back the tax cuts passed by Congress during the Bush Administration. Further, his plan would cost Americans far more in taxes than they paid during the Clinton Administration.
Obama has complained that tax cuts have led to fewer taxes for the wealthy. In fact his rhetoric even vilifies those in our highest tax bracket, treating “wealth” like a dirty word. This view is not only contemptuous and divisive, it is destructive and misleading. The truth is that those Americans earning the most money have steadily paid more – not less – income tax through recent years.
For example, the non-partisan Tax Foundation examined Internal Revenue Service tax data. According to their study “The top 10 percent of households – with incomes roughly $100,000 or greater – pay roughly 70 percent of all federal income taxes. That share is up from just below 50 percent in 1980.”
According to an analysis by the Heritage Foundation, when Obama allows the Bush tax cuts to expire, he “will discourage investment and slow economic growth.” Specifically, the Foundation estimates the higher taxes on capital gains and dividends will lead to a net job loss of 270,000 jobs in 2011 and another 413,000 jobs in 2018. According to the Foundation, “Similar job losses continue for the next seven years of our model’s forecast horizon of 2008 through 2018.”
Similarly, economic output as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) after inflation would fall by $44 billion in 2011 and $50 billion in 2012, from the levels that the economy would attain without this policy change. According to Heritage, “These economic effects would be vividly evident in take-home pay. Personal income after taxes would decline by $113 billion after inflation in 2011 and $133 billion after inflation in 2012 when compared, again, to levels that would likely prevail without tax rates going back up.”
Often compared to John F. Kennedy, Barack Obama, like millions of Americans, makes no secret of his admiration for the enormously popular Democratic President. But Obama would do well to recall the following from President Kennedy’s State of the Union Address of January 14, 1963:
“[I]t is increasingly clear – to those in government, business and labor who are responsible for our economy’s success – that our obsolete tax system exerts too heavy of a drag on private purchasing power, profits and employment…It discourages extra effort and risk. It distorts the use of resources. It invites recurrent recessions, depresses our federal revenues, and causes chronic budget deficits.”
Despite his elegant oratory style, Barack Obama is no Jack Kennedy. Obama has never run a business, but spent most of his adult life politicking and pandering to far-left constituencies. Obama is in fact more like Herbert Hoover. Obama will raise taxes, redistribute wealth, and discourage both investment and achievement. In Obama’s America, “change” is not something we want to believe in.
Brad O’Leary is author of The Audacity of Deceit: Barack Obama’s War on American Values. To learn more about Obama’s positions on the issues, go to [url=http://www.barackobamatest.com]http://www.barackobamatest.com[/url].
Brad O’Leary serves as President of ATI-News, Chairman of the Board of PM Direct and is the former President of the American Association of Political Consultants. From 1993 to 1997, Brad hosted a talk show program on NBC Westwood One that boasted two million listeners a day. He was also a cover story and feature writer for USA Today Weekend Magazine with 100 million weekly readers. O’Leary is also the executive producer or producer of 11 television series and 27 television specials, including award-winning shows on President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II. O’Leary is the author of 11 books, including Presidential Follies, Are You a Conservative or a Liberal?, Triangle of Death and now, The Audacity of Deceit. Please take the Barack Obama Test here: [url=http://www.barackobamatest.com]http://www.barackobamatest.com[/url]. To interview Brad, call Peyton Knight at 703-272-1504 or email him at
peytonknight@pm-direct.com.
