Dartblog

There’s an illuminative article in the Wall Street Journal today outlining Obama’s “tax cuts” for 95% of Americans.

As the article aptly states, “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.’”

In the graph below we see that under Obama’s proposed tax plan, marginal tax rates for most middle class families will be increased. At various levels of income, including families making between $25,000 and about $43,000 as well as those making between $100,000 and about $115,000, Obama’s plan creates serious disincentives to earn additional income. Such tremendous disincentives to earn more money could stifle growth and diminish productivity, thus delivering a catastrophic blow on an already reeling economy.

JOE adds: Even an unapologetic economic statist—which anyway half defines Barack Obama—can endorse “cutting” taxes on a full third of Americans—because one-third has no federal tax obligation whatever. When tax receipts go up, as they always do, one can credibly say that relatively speaking those fiscal freeloaders shouldered a smaller share of the burden than they did the year before, in which they also paid nothing. They did in a sense get even more of a free break.

Some enterprising newsman might one day stop Obama in his tracks after the phrase “95% of Americans” and ask, Senator, why don’t you say that you will reduce taxes on 95% of taxpayers? If the papers were half as interested in the sleight of hand employed in the Obama proposals as they are in the former half cousin of Sarah Palin’s rear guard on her high school basketball team—well, they might make note of such stuff as this. But they’re In The Tank, frothing furiously.