Myth Vs. Fact: The Obama Infomercial Lies To Taxpayers About Obama Tax Hike

And the hits just keep on coming! Americans For Tax Reform have found a few "easter eggs" in the 30 minute Barack Obama Infomercial too. Let's see what they have to say:

Myth: “As president, here’s what I’ll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the US over the next two years, and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.” Fact: According to IRS data, 33% of families don’t even have an income tax liability, so it’s impossible to cut their income taxes. Also, Obama’s summary conveniently leaves out the fact that he would bring the small business tax rate to over 50 percent and would hike the capital gains and dividends tax at a time of market turmoil. His plan is a massive tax hike.

And somewhere in there, Obama and his followers have somehow convinced themselves that taking even more money out of the American economy is going to lead to some sort of prosperity. It won't. It will lead to an even worse economic downturn, just as Jimmy Carter's misguided economic policies did from 1977 onward.

Myth: (OH Gov. Ted Strickland speaking): “Think of this. Barack Obama is going to be a Democrat in the presidency who actually cuts taxes. But he’s gonna cut taxes for the people who really need a tax cut. He’s gonna cut taxes for the struggling families. And he’s gonna do that while holding accountable those companies that take advantage of tax breaks in order to send jobs offshore and to other countries.” Fact: Obama will raise taxes by over $1 trillion by hiking the small business tax rates, the Social Security tax rate, and the nest egg tax rates on capital gains and dividends. Also, the reason companies move overseas is because our taxes are already too high. How does raising their taxes do anything but make this problem worse?

Many workers (myself included) already lost money in our 401k accounts because of the recent crisis on Wall Street. Taxing our retirement accounts is only going to make that problem worse and devalue our 401k's even further. It will certainly encourage me to move my money off-shore where the socialists won't be able to get to it.

Myth: (VA Gov. Tim Kaine) “Barack has looked at the small business side of the American economy and says ‘Look, that’s where most innovation and entrepreneurship is. Let’s give them the rocket fuel to really accelerate rather than giving tax cuts to the ExxonMobils or the big oil companies that need not one ounce of help from the government to be very successful.’” Fact: Under Obama’s tax hike, the tax rate on two-thirds of small business profits will exceed 50 percent for the first time since Jimmy Carter. If that’s rocket fuel, the U.S. economy won’t ever get off the launch pad. Also, raising taxes on energy companies won’t do anything except make energy more expensive for consumers.

Here is another economic fact that simply isn't registering with the Democrats. Taxes get passed on to consumer in the form of a higher price for the product or service. Higher taxes mean even higher prices. So, if the socialists raise taxes on companies that produce energy, the price we consumers pay is also going to go up.

Myth: “I’ve offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost” Fact: We can’t say it any better than the AP: “Obama's assertion that "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by ‘eliminating programs that don't work’ masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are—beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.”

And that's true. Apart from cuts in defense spending, I can't think of anything Obama has promised to cut. Certainly not any bottomless pit social programs.

Myth: “So I’m not worried about CEO’s, I’m not worried about corporate lobbyists, I’m not worried about the drug companies or the oil companies or the insurance companies--they’ll be fine, they’re going to look out for themselves. I’m worried about the couple that’s trying to figure out how they’re going to retire. I’m worried about the family that’s trying to figure out how they can save for their child’s college education. I’m worried about the single mom that doesn’t have health insurance. I’m worried about the guy who has worked in a plant for 20 years and suddenly sees his job shipped overseas. That’s who I’m worried about. That’s who I’m going to be fighting for and thinking about every single day that I’m in the White House.” Fact: If he’s worried about the couple about to retire, Obama should be asking himself why he wants to tank their 401(k) nest egg by raising capital gains and dividends taxes. If he’s worried about the parents saving for college or struggling to afford health insurance, he should ask himself if raising their small business employer’s tax rate to over 50 percent is a good idea. If he’s worried about the longtime employee’s job getting shipped overseas, he should ask if the fact that America has the second-highest corporate income tax rate in the world has anything to do with that.

Anyone who has a retirement savings account should be concerned at this point. Money that you worked for, that you put away so that in your autumn years you could live comfortably, is going to be confiscated for Barack Obama's efforts at "redistributing the wealth" a la European socialist style.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Myth vs. Fact: The Obama Infomercial Lies to Taxpayers About Obama Tax Hike
Americans For Tax Reform
October 30, 2008

Reality Check From CBS: Obama's Infomercial Didn't Discuss The True Cost Of His Presidency

First the Associated Press and now CBS is finding fault with Obama's claims from last night's 30-minute ad. In a nutshell, Wyatt Andrews shows us that it will not be possible for Obama to keep his campaign promises (just like Bill Clinton was unable to keep his) when it came to budgets, new spending and taxes.

From the article:

Let's start with his highly suspect, and widely discredited, claim that he can find federal "spending cuts beyond the costs" of his promises. Very few independent economists believe he has identified the savings needed to offset his remarkable list of tax credits, tax cuts and spending pledges. Fact: Even if you believe Obama intends to fix health care, most independent analysts say the cost is massive - $1.2 trillion over ten years, according to the highly respected Lewin Group. When the new Congress wakes up next year to a $1 trillion deficit, and answers the overwhelming new demands for another stimulus package, will the leadership really bite on a health care reform package that digs the deficit hole so much deeper?

And this:

Fact: The tax cuts he promises, which are mostly refundable tax credits (code for cash back), will cost $60 billion just in year one, according the National Taxpayers Union, though the Obama campaign's own estimates in July put that figure at $130 billion.

But what a great time to be a worker who owes no taxes! You get a check for not paying taxes at all! Wealth redistribution, here we come!

And this:

Fact: His new promise to give businesses a $3,000 tax credit for each new job created will cost $40 billion. But economists say this credit is far more likely to benefit companies already planning to expand and will likely not be enough to help companies create new jobs or forestall layoffs.

Yep. That wealth redistribution check isn't going to mean much to the workers who will lose their jobs because their employers are getting over-taxed.

Fact: Obama's claim he will lower health care premiums by $2,500 is: 1.) guesswork, which is 2.) based on health care savings that might, in a perfect world, happen over 10 years - a fact Obama neatly glosses over.

And we already know what happened in Canada and Great Britain with their versions of socialized medicine.

Most of the time he spends the Iraq savings in the context of the roads he wants to build; sometimes it's for the teachers he wants to hire. Tonight, he riffed rhetorically on the savings, asking how many scholarships could be funded, or how many schools could be built. In the end though, presuming he really saves $90 billion, he can only spend it once. Remember he also mentioned rebuilding the military ($7 billion/yr); his education initiative ($18 billion/yr); and his energy initiative ($15 billion/yr). He did not mention the $188 billion that he would spend on the brand new stimulus package he has proposed. If he closes every loophole as promised, saves every dime from Iraq, raises taxes on the rich and trims the federal budget as he's promised to do "line by line," he still doesn't pay for his list. If he's elected, the first fact hitting his desk will be the figure projecting how much less of a budget he has to work with - thanks to the recession. He gave us a very compelling vision with his ad buy tonight. What he did not give us was any hint of the cold reality he's facing or a sense of how he might prioritize his promises if voters trust him with the White House.

Awesome article!

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Reality Check: The Cost Of Obama's Pledges
Wyatt Andrews
CBS News
October 29, 2008

Obama's Tax Proposals Make A Complex System Worse

We already know a little bit about B. Hussein Obama's proposed economic policies. They are all of a Socialist nature with aims at redistributing wealth by taking money away from those who earned it and giving it to those who did not earn it.

John Lott, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland looks into Obama's proposed policies and shows us how they will a) do even further damage to a weak economy and b) discourage people from working harder to earn a better living. From Fox News:

While Obama would directly increase the marginal income tax rate on families making more than $250,000 per year and raise the rates on capital gains and dividends, he has a whole set of new and expanded tax breaks for the poor, retirees, students, homeowners and new farmers. All these tax breaks phase out with higher incomes, producing high effective marginal tax rates for those with low incomes as well as for people making between $100,000 and $120,000. The effects of these phase-outs are dramatic. Alex Brill and Alan Viard, at the American Enterprise Institute, show that a two-earner couple with two children (one of whom is in college) can face a 34 percent marginal tax rate when they earn $31,000, with the tax rate rising to 39 percent when their family income reaches $45,000. And families making $110,000 to $120,000 may have to think twice about making more money with the federal income tax alone taking almost half of each additional dollar they make.

The more money that is taken away from hard working people, the less those people will want to work. Obama doesn't get it. He also doesn't get the flip side of that coin: If people are being paid by the government not to work, they will have no incentive to work for themselves.

But Obama's lackeys are doing everything they can to sell this Socialism:

The Tax Foundation points out that when Obama’s plans to increase Medicare and Social Security taxes for higher-income individuals are included, one "gets to a nearly 50 percent (federal) tax rate." ... This past Thursday (Austan) Goolsbee and Jason Furman had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal claiming that the top tax rates in Obama’s plan would not exceed "their 1990s levels of 36% and 39.6%" even when "including the exemption and deduction phase-outs," and that all other brackets would remain unchanged. Yet, this is obviously false given that the marginal tax rates of 36 percent and 39.6 percent would be hit even if there were absolutely no phase-outs in the tax code.

Surely, Goolbee and Furman must have known this. Either they are completely ignorant of how the tax system works or they are deliberately spreading false information.

And Lott takes on a very popular argument among leftists about the rich paying their fair share. Read this:

During the primaries Obama often spoke about the inequities in the tax system, with wealthy individuals not paying their fair share. ... Yet, one is hard-pressed to see the wealthy not paying their share of taxes or Bush’s reforms increasing inequality. In 2006, the top 50 percent of taxpayers made seven times the income of the bottom 50 percent, but they paid 32.4 times as much in taxes. Does anyone really believe that those in the top 50 percent got even seven times the benefits from government that those in the bottom 50 percent received?

The distribution changed as well:

When Bush became president in 2001, the top 1 percent of taxpayers paid about 34 percent of all income taxes. By 2006, their share had risen to 40 percent. Meanwhile, the share of income taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent had declined from 4 to 3 percent.

Barack Obama's plans are an economic disaster waiting to happen. We need to educate all Americans about the realities of economics and show exactly how bad a Socailist like B. Hussein Obama can be for us.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obama's Tax Proposals Make A Complex System Worse
John Lott
FoxNews.com
August 18, 2008

Obama Details Raising Taxes On Gains, Dividends And Threatens The U.S. Economy

B. Hussein Obama has let loose a little more of his economic plans for America, and they are not good. Deborah Solomon over at the Wall Street Journal takes a good look into this story:

Sen. Obama outlined a plan Thursday to raise tax rates on capital gains and dividend income from 15% to 20% for individuals and families making more than $200,000 and $250,000, respectively. He also detailed a plan to levy payroll taxes on earnings above $250,000 at a rate between 2% and 4%, though that increase wouldn't occur for at least a decade. Right now, payroll taxes, used to fund retirement benefits, are levied on income up to $102,000. Jason Furman, Sen. Obama's economic-policy director, said the plan would cut taxes to less than 18.2% of gross domestic product. "That's lower than the level of taxes when Ronald Reagan was president," he said.

But it is still a tax increase. And as the U.S. learned in 1932 and 1936, raising anyone's taxes during an economic downturn is the absolute worst thing that government could do. Back in the 1930's it caused the Great Depression to last years longer than it should have. Today, B. Hussein Obama's economic policy could very well trigger a second Great Depression.

More:

"The U.S. economy is in a weak state. We've got a credit crunch, high oil prices...this is not the time to be raising anybody's taxes," said John Taylor, a Stanford University economist who is advising Sen. Obama's rival, Republican Sen. John McCain. "When the investment tax rate is higher it affects behavior because we see a retrenchment of companies paying dividends," said Bruce Josten, executive vice president of government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Dividends and capital gains lure investors to participate in the stock market, and their investment provides capital for companies to use to expand their business. A reduction in that capital could hurt business and the U.S. economy, Mr. Josten said. He said the business community also is concerned that Sen. Obama's broader tax plan would remove more individuals from the income-tax rolls, a situation that could lead to future tax increases on wealthier Americans.

But it goes deeper:

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, a trade group, criticized the proposed investment-income tax increases as dangerous. "The next occupant of the Oval Office is going to face some tough choices on fiscal policy, but raising taxes on capital gains and dividends will only further endanger an already-weakening economy and punish the more than half of all American households that are invested in the stock market," said Travis Larson, a spokesman for the group.

Less investment = less capital. Less capital = fewer jobs. Fewer jobs = lower tax revenues. Lower tax revenues = Dems calling for higher taxes on those who do have incomes. Then we are right back to less investment.

It's a pity the Dems are completely unable to understand this Socialistic economic cycle.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

Obama Details Raising Taxes On Gains, Dividends
Deborah Solomon
The Wall Street Journal
August 15, 2008

Obamanomics Is A Recipe For Recession And John McCain Backs Off His 'No-New-Taxes' Pledge

I understand what Barack Obama wants to do. He is a leftist, a collectivist Marxist if you will, and his plan is to confiscate money from those who earned it and then turn around and give that money to those who did not earn it. His message is very clear on that point. Further, he is pledging a trillion dollars in new spending over the next four years.

That is what Marxists do and it always ends up in economic disaster. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Michael J. Boskin, a professor of economics at Stanford University, gives some detailed numbers in describing what would happen under Obama's Marxist plans.

From his column:

First, taxes. The table nearby demonstrates what could happen to marginal tax rates in an Obama administration. Mr. Obama would raise the top marginal rates on earnings, dividends and capital gains passed in 2001 and 2003, and phase out itemized deductions for high income taxpayers. He would uncap Social Security taxes, which currently are levied on the first $102,000 of earnings. The result is a remarkable reduction in work incentives for our most economically productive citizens. The top 35% marginal income tax rate rises to 39.6%; adding the state income tax, the Medicare tax, the effect of the deduction phase-out and Mr. Obama's new Social Security tax (of up to 12.4%) increases the total combined marginal tax rate on additional labor earnings (or small business income) from 44.6% to a whopping 62.8%. People respond to what they get to keep after tax, which the Obama plan reduces from 55.4 cents on the dollar to 37.2 cents -- a reduction of one-third in the after-tax wage! Despite the rhetoric, that's not just on "rich" individuals. It's also on a lot of small businesses and two-earner middle-aged middle-class couples in their peak earnings years in high cost-of-living areas. (His large increase in energy taxes, not documented here, would disproportionately harm low-income Americans. And, while he says he will not raise taxes on the middle class, he'll need many more tax hikes to pay for his big increase in spending.) On dividends the story is about as bad, with rates rising from 50.4% to 65.6%, and after-tax returns falling over 30%. Even a small response of work and investment to these lower returns means such tax rates, sooner or later, would seriously damage the economy. On economic policy, the president proposes and Congress disposes, so presidents often wind up getting the favorite policy of powerful senators or congressmen. Thus, while Mr. Obama also proposes an alternative minimum tax (AMT) patch, he could instead wind up with the permanent abolition plan for the AMT proposed by the Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D., N.Y.) -- a 4.6% additional hike in the marginal rate with no deductibility of state income taxes. Marginal tax rates would then approach 70%, levels not seen since the 1970s and among the highest in the world. The after-tax return to work -- the take-home wage for more time or effort -- would be cut by more than 40%.

This isn't some scare tactic. It is legitimate analysis by professional economists and those numbers are accurate for Obama's proposed economic policy.

It should give everyone pause to think: Is this really the "change" we want? Is the prospect of a wrecked economy what sent a tingle up Chris Matthews' leg (i.e. his Obamagasm)? Is this what pushed the Obama Girl to sing "I've got a crush on Barack Obama?"

Mr. Boskin's parting shot is especially noteworthy. It shows why we must study history in order to learn from it and not repeat it:

History teaches us that high taxes and protectionism are not conducive to a thriving economy, the extreme case being the higher taxes and tariffs that deepened the Great Depression. While such a policy mix would be a real change, as philosophers remind us, change is not always progress.

You can access the complete column on-line here:

Obamanomics Is a Recipe for Recession
Michael J. Boskin
Wall Street Journal
July 29, 2008

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But on the Republican side, things are not all bright and cheery, especially with some disturbing comments coming from Senator John McCain. Recently, he made overtures to the idea that his "no new taxes" pledge may not be followed. He told the Club for Growth: "I don't want tax increases. but that doesn't mean that any thing is off the table."

It doesn't? Then why did Mr. McCain tell Sean Hannity that there would be no new taxes and no tax increases?

From Charles Babington at TownHall:

At a July 7 town-hall meeting in Denver, he said voters faced a stark choice between him and Democrat Barack Obama. "Sen. Obama will raise your taxes," McCain said. "I won't." In a March 16 interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity, McCain said he would cut taxes where possible, and not raise them. "Do you mean none?" Hannity asked. "None," McCain replied.

But McCain has backed off of those pledges:

McCain's shift has come in stages, catching some Republicans by surprise. Speaking with reporters on his campaign bus on July 9, he cited a need to shore up Social Security. "I cannot tell you what I would do, except to put everything on the table," he said. He went a step farther Sunday on ABC's "This Week," in response to a question about payroll tax increases. "There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions, and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table," McCain said.

This is one of those times when it becomes very difficult to be a McCain supporter.

You can access the complete article on-line here:

McCain Backs Off His No-New-Tax Pledge
Charles Babington
TownHall.com
July 29, 2008

Update:

Analysis: McCain Tries To Soothe Tax-Hike Fears
David Espo
TownHall.com
July 30, 2008