When he first unveiled the tax-hike plan he dubbed the Buffett Rule, President Obama claimed it would “raise enough money” to “stabilize our debt and deficits.”
“This is not politics,” he insisted,“it’s math.”
Well, it looks like Obama finally double-checked the arithmetic.
Because the White House now disingenuously claims that the proposed 30 percent minimum tax rate on high-earners “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control.”
Instead, says the president, it’s all about “fairness” and making sure that “all Americans play by the same rules.”
Which sure sounds like politics to us.
And it’s also nonsense.
Because the Buffett Rule has nothing to do with debt reduction — nor, especially, tax fairness.
As the Heritage Foundation notes, the top 1 percent of US taxpayers — those earning more than $380,000 a year — earn 20 percent of all income, but pay 38 percent of all income taxes. And those in the top 10 percent ($114,000-plus) earn 45 percent of the income and pay 70 percent of all taxes.
Meanwhile, the bottom 50 percent — those earning less than $33,000 — pay less than 3 percent of federal taxes while earning 13 percent of the income.
Indeed, nearly half of all US households pay absolutely no federal income tax at all.
Want more “math”? More “fairness”?
According to the IRS, the richest 0.1 percent of American wage-earners ($1 million and up) already pay an average 26 percent in taxes — or just a tad under the Buffett Rule’s target minimum.
Actually, what Obama really wants is a dramatic increase in the capital-gains tax — which primarily hits business owners and investors.
The very people, that is, who create the jobs that America — beset by chronic high unemployment — desperately needs.
Which likely explains why a new poll by the centrist Democratic group Third Way shows that among independents, only 15 percent say they’d support a candidate who stresses “tax equality.”
On the other hand, 80 percent prefer a candidate focused on job creation.
Simply put, the respondents appear to be yearning for an anti-Obama.
The president, meanwhile, wrapped three — count ’em, three! — top-dollar fund-raisers around his tax-hike speeches.
For sure, there’s nothing fair about that.
Can anyone spell hypocrisy?