So, President Barack Obama wants to cut some taxes. A lot of taxes! And the tax-cut compromise he's floated into the legislative morass, for all its faults, would do just that: cut taxes for (nearly) everybody, especially very rich people.
I'm pretty sure that none of this is subject to much serious dispute, so I'm a bit taken aback by this Armstrong Williams rant in The Hill, today. As near as I can tell, Williams is a big fan of cutting taxes, presumably on very rich people to boot. And yet he's all a-flush with pissiness, for unfathomable reasons. He titles his piece "The truth shall set you free," and commences some sort of attack on "the duplicity of Democrats," but then proceeds to mislead his readers and get basic facts wrong. A mess!
Let's be honest, Obama and Democrats have never really liked tax relief. It's against who they are as liberals.
And yet, Obama made tax relief a central part of his campaign. As in, over and over again. It seems to me that he really, really liked the idea of a net tax cut.
Spending is the cure-all for what ails us as Americans, the argument goes; not leaving money in the hands of workers.
Which doesn't really explain why the president raced to create his own deficit commission, after Senate Republicans scuttled the creation of one.
It's a fundamental belief, and Democrats who subscribe to that notion should not pretend to be anything else.
Well, okay! Can we get the GOP to stop pretending to be in favor of cutting the deficit, then?
Why else would the left claim that letting Americans not send their money to Washington actually COSTS Washington money?
Uhm...Because the government still has obligations that COST MONEY and if it cuts taxes it has to BORROW. (Williams might want to have a chat with Eric Cantor, to get clued in on how this stuff works.)
Yesterday morning, after agreeing with the GOP to trade tax relief for another year of unemployment benefits, the administration suddenly finds religion. Specifically, Vice President Biden's office releases a set of talking points for the White House's allies touting the benefits of the compromise. Here's how the first bullet of the talking points read: "Working families will not lose their tax cut. A typical working family faced a tax increase of over $3,000 on January 1st. That's avoided under this framework agreement, and working families won't see their tax cuts go away next year."
You see, I'm pretty sure that Biden is actually saying stuff that he said during the 2008 campaign. Let's just see... gonna Google "Vice Presidential debate transcript"... okay, let me do a quick search... and, OKAY, HERE YOU GO:
BIDEN: The middle class needs relief, tax relief. They need it now. They need help now. The focus will change with Barack Obama.
And also:
BIDEN: The middle class is struggling. The middle class under John McCain's tax proposal, 100 million families, middle class families, households to be precise, they got not a single change, they got not a single break in taxes. No one making less than $250,000 under Barack Obama's plan will see one single penny of their tax raised whether it's their capital gains tax, their income tax, investment tax, any tax.
Additionally:
BIDEN: Number two fact, 95 percent of the small businesses in America, their owners make less than $250,000 a year. They would not get one single solitary penny increase in taxes, those small businesses.
So, if you're going to be mad, here, you have room to be mad about the fact that the White House has reversed its position on tax relief for the highest income earners. But those "talking points" do not represent suddenly "finding religion." It comes straight from the campaign liturgy.
So why, before this deal was struck, would the Obama administration downplay the importance of tax relief all these months?
Uhm... what?
I sure heard a lot about not wanting to give tax relief to those making over $250K per year, but did anyone hear about what kind of tax hikes those under $250K would face if Democrats did nothing? I can't recall seeing that on major news outlets.
There are these shows that come on every Sunday morning in America, called "Meet The Press" and "This Week" and "Fox News Sunday" and "Face The Nation" and CNN's "State Of The Union". Now, I do not blame Williams for not tuning in, because they are awful, but I watch them with regularity, and I can tell you, authoritatively, that this has all been fulsomely discussed. Typically, what happens is the Democrats that are booked will argue that extending the tax cuts for people earning under $250,000 is a bad thing to do in the economic downturn. The Republicans on these shows will counter that you have to extend the Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthy because they are the "job creators" and they will not be able to actualize any of their job creation ideas unless they get an additional $103,835 a year from the government.
Various Democrats, during this time, have floated compromise ideas to help bridge the gap, such as the one Chuck Schumer floated, that was widely reported. (He originally announced his compromise idea on that "Face The Nation" show I was talking about.)
At any rate, the entire reason that we are here today, with a tax cut compromise that extends the Bush-era tax cuts for everyone is because the White House and their key Democratic allies again and again and again told reporters that people earning under $250,000 would face tax hikes that they were determined to keep from happening. This is pretty basic stuff.
It was only after they were forced to cede the point that tax hikes at this precarious time in our recession would be a terrible policy that Democrats owned up to the fact that perhaps raising taxes on anyone is not so smart.
They haven't owned up to anything of the sort. Rather, Obama said in his speeches on the matter that he opposes extending the tax cuts on the wealthy, but it was a bitter pill he have going to have to swallow in the short-term to keep taxes from going up on anyone else. They have always felt that rolling taxes back to Clinton-era levels for the wealthy was great policy. They maintain it to this day. They simply no longer have the stomach to fight a battle over it.
And just as an aside, if the "average working family" was due to see this much of an increase, just imagine what all of those small-business owners would be facing, since they file under personal income taxes, and not corporate.
Yes. Just as an aside, that is why the Obama administration wanted to cut taxes for 95% of small businesses, on top of the many tax breaks he's already extended to them.
In short, Armstrong Williams is in favor of cutting taxes. He's in favor of cutting taxes on the rich! He's just mad because Democrats are doing it, because Williams is a cartoon tribalist. If Obama gave a speech today recommending that people brush their teeth twice daily, Armstrong Williams would call dental hygiene a socialist plot.
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