When it comes to Hope ‘n Change and taxes, ‘fairness’ is a verb, not a noun. ‘Fairness’ is what he plans to do to people whose success he apparently considers unseemly.
He plans to ‘fairness’ them.
During the campaign, Hope ‘n Change said that he would raise taxes on ‘rich’ people in the interest of ‘fairness’ – regardless of whether increases actually hurt government tax receipts.
And now the Administration is openly talking about fairnessing ‘rich people’ – the very people who create jobs and build the economy.
Here is Glib Gibbs from the February 23 press briefing, responding to Jake Tapper of ABC:
Q Because — if I could just follow up — to be more precise in my question, isn’t it true that the people who we’re talking about raising their taxes, people who make more than a quarter million dollars a year, whether it’s going from 35 to 39.6, or the hedge fund managers going from 15 to 35 or 39.6, or capital gains taxes going from 15 to 20 — that these are the people who will invest to create the new jobs, and at a time of recession, taking their money and giving it to the government or giving it to other people actually could impede the cause of job growth?
MR. GIBBS: Well, I think the President talked about this extensively on the campaign –
Q But that was before the recession became as big as we now see it.
MR. GIBBS: I think I would posit that the recession was big at the end of the campaign. Again, I think there’s an element first of tax fairness. And I think that — I think this President understands that there have been many benefits for the few at the expense of a few benefits for the many; that through the recovery plan and in the coming years, the President believes it’s important that those that have not seen much in the way of an increase in their paycheck have more money in their pockets. That may require those that shared in great benefits, huge benefits in the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 — again, importantly, for those making more than $250,000 a year, I think the top 1 percent of all wage earners in this country — is fairness that the President believes is important.
Note that even Jake Tapper understands the fundamental economic point: that you’ll hurt the very economy you say you’re trying to revive by ‘fairnessing’ the people who have economic influence.
But here’s Hope ‘n Change during a primary debate on April 18, 2008. Charlie Gibson points out what Art Laffer discovered years ago: that if you reduce top marginal tax rates, tax receipts actually increase. But Hope ‘n Change is having none of it. Tax receipts be damned – we have to ‘fairness’ those rich people.
And let’s not pretend we didn’t see this coming.
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