August 19th, 2008

For Obama, tax policy is about social policy, not revenue

Posted in  Politics  Tax 
Author: Tom Giovanetti || Location: Aspen, Colorado, USA

IPI's Peter Ferrara has a compelling op/ed in the Wall Street Journal today which explodes the fact that Obama's tax policy outline is misleading, and is focused on promoting welfare, not economic growth.

We'll have much more to say about Peter's op/ed and subsequent media appearances shortly.

Reinforcing Peter's point is another piece in the WSJ today by William McGurn, which points out that Obama is fully aware that raising the capital gains tax rate will lower the amount of money that comes into the federal government--that raising the tax RATE results in reducing the tax REVENUE. In other words, a tax rate hike on taxpayers is actually a tax revenue cut to the federal government.

But that doesn't trouble Obama, because for Obama, taxes aren't about revenue--they are purely social policy.

From McGurn's column:

And he [Obama] stuck to it on capital gains, even after ABC's Charlie Gibson noted that the record shows increased taxes on capital gains--which would affect 100 million Americans--would likely lead to a decrease in government revenues: "Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness."

Translated into ordinary English, what that means is that it doesn't really matter whether a tax increase actually brings in more revenue. It's not about robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Robbing from the rich will do, especially if its done in the name of fairness.

This is truly frightening. I don't believe in my lifetime a presidential candidate has viewed the tax code solely as a means of redistribution of income.

In this way the Obama campaign is truly about "change", but it's truly a stupendously bad change.