The Wall Street Journal’s Bill McGurn unpacks Barack Obama’s “tax cut for 95% of the people” hooey. The short version:
Now, if you have been following this so far, you have learned that people who pay no income tax will get an income tax refund. You have also learned that this check will represent relief for the payroll taxes these people do pay. And you have been assured that this rebate check won’t actually come out of payroll taxes, lest we harm Social Security.
You have to admire the audacity. With one touch of the Obama magic, what otherwise would be described as taking money from Peter to pay Paul is now transformed into Paul’s tax relief. Where a tax cut for payroll taxes paid will not in fact come from payroll taxes. And where all these plans come together under the rhetorical umbrella of “Making Work Pay.”
All of this is breathtakingly dishonest. (As Al Gore would say I think we need a lock box.)
Obama must understand this, right? Well, we don’t really know. We don’t because in the dozens of interviews and multiple presidential debates he’s never been asked to explain this. How can this be, that a presidential nominee concocts a Ponzi scheme involving both income and social security taxes and never is called on it?
Welcome to the world of MSM-lapdog-ism. We get no Obama medical records. We get no explanation of his fraudulent tax plan. He is never pinned down on the particulars of his associations with bizarre characters or his state senate voting record on everything from guns to abortion. Virtually all of the reporting on these topics has been done by conservative media.
What we don’t know is whether this is the new standard for all Democratic contenders or whether The One got special dispensation. I suppose we’ll have to wait for the next presumptive Democratic nominee to come around to discover whether the MSM has permanently subcontracted out their reporting on Democrats — at least the investigative part.
In the meantime, if Obama is elected don’t be surprised if the number of people who get tax cuts is a lot smaller and the number who get a tax hike is greater than advertised. And don’t be shocked when the number of people getting checks from the government increases. After all, that crack investigative reporter Joe the Plumber told you so.
