WASHINGTON — It is clear from the way President Barack Obama
has been talking about the federal budget recently, and about
taxation since he came to office, that all the money that Americans
earn belongs to the federal government. The key words in this
conversation are “tax expenditures.” President Obama has lost a lot
in tax expenditures and he wants more of those tax expenditures
back. He can spend that money, he believes, more wisely than the
citizenry—that is to say, you and me.
He has wiggled and wobbled on the nation’s finances over the
years. First he spent money that he did not have. Then he
threatened to raise taxes on the rich to pay for it. Then he spent
again money that he did not have. Now he is getting very serious
about the budget, by which he means the budget deficit which is so
large you do not even want to think about it. So he is back to
taxing the rich again, which eventually means you and me.
So he has announced a strategy to cut the deficit by $4.4
trillion over the next ten years. He is going to get $1.1 trillion
of it back from winding down our war effort. He accounts for
another $1.2 trillion from cuts that have already been enacted—he
thought we would not notice. Then there is $430 billion from lower
interest payments, which he assures us are coming from lower debt
payments that he assures us are coming. Finally, there is the
federal income tax. He will have the rich pay as high a tax rate as
the middle class by raising their taxes $450 billion, using the
“Buffett Rule.” That is the rule that Warren Buffett has proclaimed
that millionaires and billionaires no longer pay taxes at a
lower rate than the middle class.
Unfortunately for the president, the Buffett Rule is like much
else in his administration. It is a hoax. Mr. Buffett was wrong,
and the president did not check Mr. Buffett’s numbers, or, if he
did, he did not think we would check the numbers. Sources as
diverse as the Wall Street Journal and the Associated
Press have demonstrated that millionaires and billionaires pay
taxes—as you would expect—at a higher rate than the middle class.
How could Mr. Obama, the smartest policy wonk of all, get things so
wrong?
“This year,” the AP reports, “households making more than $1
million will pay an average of 29.1 percent of their income in
federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other
taxes….” Households with incomes of $50,000 to $75,000 average 15
percent. Yet if the president and Mr. Buffett have their way, not
for long. Soon we shall all pay higher taxes, because millionaires
and billionaires could have their wealth expropriated by the
government and that would not be enough to slake the federal
government’s thirst for our income. As the Wall Street
Journal observes, “Mr. Obama could tax every billionaire in
America at a 100% rate and still wouldn’t make a dent in the
federal government deficit.”
During the Johnson Administration, LBJ was at an airport and
about to get into the wrong helicopter. An army staff sergeant ran
up and redirected him: “Mr. President, that is your helicopter over
there.” To which the president replied, “Son they are all my
helicopters.” President Obama suffers the same delusion. He
believes all the money the citizenry earns is his money.
His government is now gorging itself on 25 percent of GDP. That
is a peacetime record. Historically in peacetime the figure was
more like 20 percent of GDP and lower. The way to budgetary
solvency is not to raise taxes, and take even more money out of the
productive sector of the economy. It is to cut spending back to the
historic level of 20 percent, freeing the private sector to grow
the economy. President Obama is throwing money at green projects
like Solyndra, now under congressional investigation, and other
farfetched schemes. It appears he cannot spend his “tax
expenditures” more wisely than private investors, who create jobs
that last longer that last even beyond the next fiscal budget.
It is time his opposition remind him of a historic rule for
budgetary formulation: “Twenty percent, si. Twenty-five
percent, no.”
