It is nonsense that only CEOs need fear Obama's tax assault

Investor's Business Daily
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 12 May 2008

Taxes: Welcome to Obama Wonderland, where Democrats hike taxes only on evil corporate executives and fulfill pledges of tax cuts for the "middle class." It's the same baloney Bill Clinton promised in 1992. Interviewed Thursday by CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sen. Barack Obama, the Democrats' likely nominee for president, provided a disturbing preview of the kind of economic incompetence we can expect if he is elected president and has a Democratic Congress to do his bidding.

Asked about his plans on taxes, Obama made his intentions clear: "I want to eliminate the Bush tax cuts. And what I have said is, I will institute a middle-class tax cut." Asked by Blitzer to "define middle class," the much-admired orator conceded that "the definitions are always a little bit rough," mentioned a possible $100,000 threshold, but also threw out numbers from $50,000 to $75,000 to $200,000 and $250,000. So who should worry about having their taxes hiked by a President Obama? "I will raise CEO taxes. There is no doubt about it," the senator told CNN. We have heard all this before. Debating his fellow Democratic presidential hopefuls in early 1992, Bill Clinton said:

I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a long-term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.

At a presidential debate less than a month before the election that fall, Clinton said:

Now, I can tell you this: I will not raise taxes on the middle class to pay for these programs.

But as former Atlantic Monthly and New Yorker correspondent Elizabeth Drew recounted in her 1994 book On the Edge: the Clinton Presidency, a key purpose of Clinton's February 1993 TV address less than a month after taking office was

to get out of the way of the news . . . that not only would there be no tax cut for the middle class, but there would be an energy tax (the Btu tax) that would hit the middle class as well as the wealthy.

Obama's spending agenda — exceeding $307 billion a year — dwarfs that of Bill Clinton a decade and a half ago. And he would be sure to run into the same immovable mathematical obstacle faced by the last Democratic president. Taxing the handful of CEOs and other fat cats won't be enough. The big money Obama wants will have to come from the many millions of middle-class taxpayers.