Friday, March 28, 2008

Obama the tax raiser

Obama has repeatedly said during his stump speeches that he only wants to tax the wealthiest Americans.

The bar for what is "wealthy" in Obama's view seems to be heading down.

"Maria Bartiromo on CNBC's 'Closing Bell' asked, 'Who should pay more and who should pay less?' Predictably, the politician chose to talk about who would benefit from his higher tax plan, not who would get socked the hardest. But from his answers it sounds like the ‘wealthy’ in his mind are those making more than $75,000.

"I would not increase taxes for middle class Americans and in fact I want to.... provide a tax cut for people who are making $75,000 a year or less," he said. "For those folks, I want an offset on the payroll tax that would be worth as much as $1,000 for a family."

Obama wants to increase the capital gains tax--but he won't say by how much.

The LA Times Top of the Ticket blog phrased it best:

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama went after the "We're not paying enough taxes to the government" vote today during a television interview in New York.

Walter Mondale did well with that segment of the electorate in 1984--but with no one else. He won only Washington DC and his home state of Minnesota that year.

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