Bush: No Use Taxing the Rich
This is Bush’s rationale on why taxing the rich won’t work:
Most Americans feel overtaxed and I promise you the Democrat party is going to field a candidate who says I’m going to raise your tax.If they’re going to say, oh, we’re only going to tax the rich people, but most people in America understand that the rich people hire good accountants and figure out how not to necessarily pay all the taxes and the middle class gets stuck.
We’ve had — we’ve been through this drill before. We’re only going to tax the rich and all you have to do is look at the history of that kind of language and see who gets stuck with the bill.
It is obvious: if you raise taxes on rich people, rich people get stuck with the bill. That’s why they fight tax cuts like crazy.
Bush’s theory is that if you tax only the rich, somehow that tax will only affect people who the tax is not applied to. Huh? So if we make a law that raises the Alternative Minimum Tax for people making over $200,000, exempt everyone below that line, do not allow for special exemptions above that line, and anchor the tax to inflation, somehow rich people will not pay a penny more but people making under $100,000 a year will end up paying these taxes? Wow! Rich people must be magical!
Of course, it’s all a sham. The AMT was created to make sure rich people paid more taxes, and while I’m no expert, it appears to have worked. Not perfectly, of course; it needs to be tagged to inflation, some more loopholes closed, and it needs to be applied more to the super-rich, but overall, it prevented exactly the kind of thing Bush was talking about.
It is also hard to understand why Bush, on multiple occasions, either cut or tried like hell to cut, again and again, in way after way, taxes for rich people. He sees rich people as dishonest deadbeats, elite bastards who hire accountants to evade paying their fair share–so he rewards them by making it easier for them to avoid paying taxes? Interesting.
Really, what Bush is trying to say here is the same simple right-wing message: don’t tax the rich, and Democrats who say they want to tax the rich just want to raise your taxes. Boogah! Boogah boogah!
The tactic is simple. Use lies and scare tactics to get the middle class to vote against their own best interests, and support a massive welfare system for the rich.
Side note: have you noticed how Bush never uses the proper adjectival form “Democratic” to describe the Democratic Party? It’s way beyond an occasional misspeaking–he uses the conservative-created pejorative term “Democrat Party” virtually every time he names the party. He did so three times in the Wallace interview quoted above.
When Bush gave his State of the Union speech in 2007, he used the term–which was seen as the depth of political partisanship, to use that kind of a partisan slam in such a formal occasion. Soon after, he tried to blame it on “poor diction.” (His diction affects written scripts?) However, he only “misspeaks” when referring to the party. He uses the term “Democrat” liberally, and when he uses the word in adjectival form, he uses it correctly to refer to “Democratic leadership,” or “Democratic Senator,” and so on. But when speaking of the party, it is virtually always the “Democrat Party.”
Either this is from him simply being so immersed in a crowd who are so politically biased and entrenched in spiteful partisan politics that he never hears a different term, or it is a conscious decision by Bush to attempt to control the language to malign the opposition party.
The facts are, since 1980, the top 10%’s income has gone up 225% (approximately) while median family income has remained relatively flat, when adjusted for inflation. And since 2000, the top .01% has gone up 500%, while median family income has gone down 4%.
Think about that last one. Those people started with a really high high multiplier.
That kind of thing doesn’t happen by accident. Krugman wrote an entire book on it: “The Conscience of a Liberal.”
The man is perhaps the most diabolical transparent liar on hind legs.
Ohhhhhhhhh, that just burns me! Let’s not tax the rich, tax the “not rich” and prevent them from getting rich. This is a good article for http://www.hypocrisy.com. You really pulled out a lot of hypocrisy in this article, good job!
Rena: wha? “Tax the not rich and prevent them from getting rich”? Where’d you get that?I just love it when conservatives drop in, read their fantasy-liberals-are-evil scenarios into what has been written, then attack the straw men they construct. Gives fascinating insight into the conservative thought process.Luis, she’s your “straw man”, not someone attacking the straw man. Scarily enough, she’s not being sarcastic when she says “good job” – this is how she actually thinks. Gives fascinating insight into how misguided many liberals are. Hey, now we know where Clinton gets votes…
Yikes! Sometimes I read stuff and it comes across as genuine conservative… I thought it was a wingnut being sarcastic. Sorry for the misread, Rena.
Honestly, that’s what makes it difficult to respond to posts… if you don’t read carefully, it’s hard to tell where a reader is coming from sometimes.
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Hey, we all make mistakes, don’t sweat it. The trick is to never, ever assume there’s depths the average user won’t descend to in terms of stupidity. Just look at Youtube comments.
I just have one question…how many of you crybabies work for poor folks…If it were not for people with money…you would not have a job!!!! Get a grip on reality folks.
Is that the conservative mindset? Because someone employs us, they should be able to earn huge amounts of money tax-free? That’s quite some logic there, sport. Employers don’t employ people as a charity, they do it because that’s how they make their money, by getting other people to do work for them. They don’t hire people to do work unless they figure they can make more money from the worker than the worker is paid.
What you are essentially saying is that people who work hard for themselves should pay taxes, but those who let others do their work while they take in the profits, they should get all the tax breaks–and we working schmoes should be grateful for being allowed to make their money for them.
Sounds completely fair to me.