The Fortnightly Rant for Friday, September 23, 2011, from The New Hampshire Gazette, Volume 255, No. 26, posted on Monday, October 17, 2011.
Time and time again the President has tried to solve the nation’s budgetary problems and get the economy moving again by using his signature strategy, pre-emptive compromise. He seems to think that starting negotiations by giving the Republicans some major concessions they would eventually demand anyway, means they would eventually grant him some minor concessions to solve a couple of the intractable problems that the GOP saddled him with in the first place. And each time the GOP rejected his proposals out of hand.
On September 8th, President Obama appeared before a joint session of Congress and tried something new: introducing the American Jobs Act that would, if enacted, put a million people to work fixing roads, bridges, and public schools across the country, and — mirabile dictu — would be paid for “by reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.”
The nation’s political debate had been stuck on stupid for so long that it was hard to get a grip on what had just happened. One out of five Americans — the sixty-five million who are under 45 — had never heard a President even suggest that those who get the most benefit from our economic system might have some small moral — nay, patriotic — obligation to help maintain it.
The sudden injection of even that small an amount of common sense caught many by surprise.
More than a few Democrats suddenly recalled why they had voted for the President.
Republicans in Congress were really caught off guard. Speaker of the House John Boehner said “[t]he proposals the President outlined tonight merit consideration.” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said, “There are areas we can agree on.”
Ten days after that the GOP had collected its wits … or its collective wit … no, that’s no good either. Let’s try again ….
Ten days after that the GOP was back in its usual form, recoiling in well-rehearsed horror and chanting in unison that old GOP theme song, “Class Warfare.”
Among the featured soloists was South Carolina’s Sen. Lindsay Graham, who gave a masterful performance on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Host Candy Crowley asked the Senator what he thought of Obama’s proposed Buffett Rule, which would attempt to make those with incomes over $1 million a year actually shell out some of it.
Graham began with a broad bit of disinformational sleight-of-hand. “The truth of the matter is,” he said, “if you raise taxes on billionaires and millionaires it adds a de minimis amount of money to the Treasury to pay off the debt….”
He’s either wrong or lying. This country has created so many billionaires and millionaires over the past thirty years, and their [unfair] share of the nation’s income has grown so high, that a reasonable increase in their tax rate would add significantly to federal revenues.
Graham then unleashed a quick barrage of statistics that may be factually true but which paint a picture that is quite misleading: “one percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of the taxes, the top ten percent pay 70 percent, and 47 percent don’t pay any federal income taxes.”
In 2008, the most recent year available, the top one percent paid 38 percent of income taxes, not 40. And they also took in 20 percent of the income, which ought to console them a bit.
The top ten percent did pay 70 percent of income taxes — after taking in 45 percent of the income. That factoid might elicit more sympathy had not Forbes, the “How To” magazine for savvy plutocrats, published an article just before April 15th this year headlined, “How To Take A 100% Tax Write-Off For A New Porsche, BMW or Cadillac.”
Finally we have that forty-seven percent of whom Graham complains, seemingly paradoxically, that they pay no taxes. It is almost true that they pay no income taxes. They do pay 2.7 percent of all federal income taxes collected — and they probably feel it, too.
They also have payroll taxes deducted from their paychecks before they can even cash them. And their payroll tax is calculated on the full amount of their earnings, unlike those beleaguered millionaires about whom Graham is so concerned, whose income above the first $106,800 is exempt from payroll tax.
Bring It On
All this week Wall Street has been occupied by a small but happy band of class warriors who would no doubt support adding a fistful of zeros to that Social Security tax cap.
If it’s offered to them, the Republicans would be wise to agree to such a deal, and with a smile. As one demonstrator’s sign read, “One day the poor will have nothing to eat but the rich.”