While the far left has conniptions about the audacity of ABC questioning Obama in Wednesday night's debate, the Wall Street Journal takes him to the woodshed over his economic nescience.
We thought the debate was one of the best yet, precisely because it probed the evasive rhetoric we've heard from both Democratic candidates throughout the campaign. Nowhere was this more apparent than during the exchanges between Mr. Gibson and Mr. Obama over taxes.Neal Boortz cuts to the chase:
Time and again, the rookie Senator has said he would not raise taxes on middle-class earners, whom he describes as people with annual income lower than between $200,000 and $250,000. On Wednesday night, he repeated the vow. "I not only have pledged not to raise their taxes," said the Senator, "I've been the first candidate in this race to specifically say I would cut their taxes."
But Mr. Obama has also said he's open to raising – indeed, nearly doubling to 28% – the current top capital gains tax rate of 15%, which would in fact be a tax hike on some 100 million Americans who own stock, including millions of people who fit Mr. Obama's definition of middle class.
Mr. Gibson dared to point out this inconsistency, which regularly goes unmentioned in Mr. Obama's fawning press coverage. But Mr. Gibson also probed a little deeper, asking the candidate why he wants to increase the capital gains tax when history shows that a higher rate brings in less revenue.
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The facts about capital gains rates and revenues are well known to our readers, but we’ll repeat them as a public service to the Obama campaign… (W)hen the tax rate has risen over the past half century, capital gains realizations have fallen and along with them tax revenue. The most recent such episode was in the early 1990s, when Mr. Obama was old enough to be paying attention. That’s one reason Jack Kennedy proposed cutting the capital gains rate. And it’s one reason Bill Clinton went along with a rate cut to 20% from 28% in 1997.
Either the young Illinois Senator is ignorant of this revenue data, or he doesn’t really care because he’s a true income redistributionist who prefers high tax rates as a matter of ideological dogma regardless of the revenue consequences. Neither one is a recommendation for President.
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By the way, a higher capital gains tax rate isn’t the only middle-class tax increase that Mr. Obama is proposing. He also wants to lift the cap on wages subject to the payroll tax. That cap was $97,500 in 2007 and is $102,000 this year. “Those are a heck of a lot of people between $97,000 and $200,000 and $250,000,” said Mr. Gibson. “If you raise the payroll taxes, that’s going to raise taxes on them.” Ignoring the no-tax pledge he had made five minutes earlier, Mr. Obama explained that such a tax increase was nevertheless necessary.
In other words he dodged the question, as he so often does with impunity. But thanks to Mr. Gibson’s persistence, for 90 minutes Wednesday night Mr. Obama didn’t get away with it. The voters learned a lot about Mr. Obama, who needs to learn a lot more about taxes and revenue. [emphasis added - ed.]
An absolutely incredible exchange during the debate on Wednesday night. This is the type of question that so infuriates left wingers. First Obama was reminded that when capital gains taxes are cut revenues to the government go up. Then he was reminded that when capital gains taxes are increased, tax revenues go down. Then he was asked in light of these statistics why he was promoting an increase in capital gains taxes. His answer? He said that he capital gains taxes should go up out of fairness.
There you have it folks. Barack Obama believes that taxes serve purposes other than raising revenue for the legitimate operations of government. He also thinks that taxes should be used to make things more "fair." In other words .. to take from the people who are making too much money and give to the people who are making too little. Or, as some of Barack's communist heroes might say, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."
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