Obama Weekly Address: Tax the Rich

Obama tripled the deficit his first year with the failed Obama-Pelosi stimulus plan.
In Obama’s second year the deficit topped a trillion dollars again.
It was unprecedented.

The Obama deficit this year may reach $1.29 trillion. (The Captain’s Comments)

Barack Obama and Democrats also added over One Trillion Dollars to the Federal Budget in the last 4 years.

That’s at least a 30% increase in federal spending in just 3 years.

In his weekly address today Obama demanded new tax hikes to pay down the debt.
From the White House Website:

…The truth is, you can’t solve our deficit without cutting spending. But you also can’t solve it without asking the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share – or without taking on loopholes that give special interests and big corporations tax breaks that middle-class Americans don’t get.

It’s pretty simple. I don’t think oil companies should keep getting special tax breaks when they’re making tens of billions in profits. I don’t think hedge fund managers should pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries. I don’t think it’s fair to ask nothing of someone like me when the average family has seen their income decline over the past decade – and when many of you are just trying to stretch every dollar as far it it’ll go.

We shouldn’t put the burden of deficit reduction on the backs of folks who’ve already borne the brunt of the recession. It’s not reasonable and it’s not right. If we’re going to ask seniors, or students, or middle-class Americans to sacrifice, then we have to ask corporations and the wealthiest Americans to share in that sacrifice. We have to ask everyone to play their part. Because we are all part of the same country. We are all in this together.

So I’ve put things on the table that are important to me and to Democrats, and I expect Republican leaders to do the same. After all, we’ve worked together like that before. Ronald Reagan worked with Tip O’Neill and Democrats to cut spending, raise revenues, and reform Social Security. Bill Clinton worked with Newt Gingrich and Republicans to balance the budget and create surpluses. Nobody ever got everything they wanted. But they worked together. And they moved this country forward.

That kind of cooperation should be the least you expect from us – not the most you expect from us. You work hard, you do what’s right, and you expect leaders who do the same. You sent us to Washington to do the tough things. The right things. Not just for some of us, but for all of us. Not just what’s enough to get through the next election – but what’s right for the next generation.

You expect us to get this right. To put America back on firm economic ground. To forge a healthy, growing economy. To create new jobs and rebuild the lives of the middle class. And that’s what I’m committed to doing.

Thank you.

Despite the rhetoric, Obama still has not offered a plan.

#1 July 16, 2011 at 9:01 am
Larkin commented:

Here’s the problem…

Republican pols treat obama as if he were a serious president, rather than a prevaricating, socialist plant being propped up by the media.

Unfortunately for this country, Republicans really, really suck at politics.
#2 July 16, 2011 at 9:03 am
#1AMERICAN commented:

repubs have no balls to come out strong and speak the truth about the marxist….
#3 July 16, 2011 at 9:04 am
sclemens commented:

As I understand it, oil companies earn, on average, 7% profit margins. The size of their profits shrinks significantly when viewed from that prospective. A 7% profit margin in a speculative business is not excessive.
#4 July 16, 2011 at 9:08 am
big L commented:

Gop do NOT agree with any debt deal. Tell Obama to put his plan in writing. AND to tell REid or pelosi or whoever creates a serious budget for 2010 and 2o11, to get going. Lay yr cards on the table, Obama…Call us when you are done.
There is separation between the branches. The Legiuslative should not be “summoned” to a whipping. STOP meeting behind closed doors, too. Tell Obama you’ll see him on the floor of the house if he has somthing to say and reveal.
#5 July 16, 2011 at 9:10 am
bg commented:

++

HOPE & CHANGE

Tax the Rich

yawn..

==
#6 July 16, 2011 at 9:18 am
SeniorD commented:

This is getting tiring. Our Manchurian Candidate Puppet President (MCPP) is getting bad marching orders from his masters. All they want to do is destroy our freedoms so they, in their benighted minds, can set this country on a true Socialist path.

Even if all the rich people (except of course MCPP’s masters) are taxed, the country still runs out of money. What happens when the rich put their wealth out of reach? Who gets it next?
#7 July 16, 2011 at 9:22 am
cal rifkin commented:

Facts don’t matter to the media!…they want to do whatever it takes to prop up their boy wonder, affirmative action, he doesn’t really want to cut anything prez….Refuse to go along with taking this great nation on down the road to ruin. NO on raising the debt ceiling!!
#8 July 16, 2011 at 9:23 am
Opus#6@AmericanPerspective commented:

Obama is a one-trick marxist pony.
#9 July 16, 2011 at 9:25 am
Multitude commented:

Having built several companies over the past decades as a former technology & communications startup entrepreneur, I’ve developed a bit of perspective on the political distribution of upper-income wealth. As you might expect, a startup can be hungry for cash and unlike the naive rubes on the progressive left who think the government hands this money out, you have to work with what are called “angel investors” — wealthy, “sophisticated investors” (meeting a very specific income and net worth test to ensure you’re not stealing money from grandmas, but rather from rich people who can afford to be stupid with their wealth – ensuring of course that the rich can again get first dibs on all entrepreneurial effort).

I found a significant pattern in the “rich” prospective angels I’ve encountered, lumping them loosely into two categories:
1) New Money: Upwardly mobile professionals, two income, families, showing many of the signs of wealth openly (top-of-line BMWs and 6000 sq ft homes), C-title people who’ve worked hard, invested wisely and are now worth tens of millions of dollars. They pay extreme amounts of income and property tax and are almost exclusively Republican or conservative tax-wise (e.g. libertarian).
2) Gentry Old Money: Descendents from generations of extreme wealth. Trust-funds. Family homes around the world. Extreme toys – large yachts, jets, an assortment of businesses. The multi-hundred million dollar people Jamie Johnson targets in his film The One Percent. They pay nearly no taxes, according to several personal financial statements I had encountered when several of these were investing in my ventures. Between tax-free muni portfolios, tax hedged portfolios, trusts, foundations and other ventures that retain control over family wealth but keep it away from taxation. These people fiercely and proudly declared them as Democrats — seeing a bit of Kennedy in themselves usually, being “progressive” and above the unsophisticated rubes below, and openly embracing Obama to show that while their country club kept blacks out, they could throw away a vote for an utterly unqualified, charismatic black performer (which is mostly all Obama does for them and their circle of friends).

I grew incredibly tired of listening to the latter brag about how they avoided most taxes in one conversation, and then waxing at length on how under-taxed CEOs and other “upper earners” (just not of their extreme wealth category) made. Of course, it became quickly evident that these old money not only don’t want the competition from new, up-and-comers creating their wealth, but they feared people actually capable of creating it, rather than being a mere parasite sucking off the product of prior generations, sucking off of their investments and exploiting the tax code to suck off of society.

As such, you can probably understand why the stage performer “Boy Obama” (to those progressive elites) is so determined to get a deal on the debt that raises the cap to keep trillions of transfer payments to these gentry elites, keep the interest payments on munis flowing and jack up taxes on the new, working rich. Not a single aspect of that doesn’t aggressively pursue their interests.
#10 July 16, 2011 at 9:27 am
Major Kong commented:

In the quest to realize a Workers’ Paradise, eventually the peasants found themselves to be Kulaks under Stalin. Same thing will happen here with the current administration.
#11 July 16, 2011 at 9:31 am
exceller commented:

He can start by phoning his friend Immelt and tell him that GE’s corporate welfare is over, and that they no longer will be able to pay zero taxes.

I’m all for removing loopholes and broadening the tax base, but keeping it revenue neutral by simultaneously cutting rates.

New tax revenue for the federal government is off the table. He is the one who recklessly spent money hand over fist. take a hike mr. President
#12 July 16, 2011 at 9:31 am
Joe College commented:

Obama’s Rasmussen polls have gone up since the debt battle, and that has rattled the Republicans, but they may have peaked. Maybe his poll gains are from firing up his shrinking base rather than bringing anyone new to his side.

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/obama_approval_index_history

If all his windbagging and flogging do not move the polls, the GOP should be encouraged to not give him more money.

No matter how much money they give him he will keep brutishly thugging them for more.
#13 July 16, 2011 at 9:32 am
Mama Grizzly commented:

It’s CRITICAL to remember that Socialism benefits only a few elites. This is a grand money move. Always follow the money. Obama is a transnational corporatist type and is acting to benefit his sponsors. There are only about 1100 billionaires in the world. A handful in the US. Obama is a business man in a “president” costume. He will play on people’s emotions about fairness and fear and pity in order to take most of the American market out. This move benefits some here (like Soros), and others, more, elsewhere. By first creating the crisis, he now us trying to orchestrate the”solution”–which is to create a giant underclass which is, essentially, powerless both economically and politically. Every dictatorship works this way and in countries where a dictatorship cannot be installed, these men work to get it as close to that as they can IN ORDER TO MAKE MONEY. It’s a grand con and the public are the dupes. Now you know.
#14 July 16, 2011 at 9:34 am
olm commented:

Exactly, it is obvious to all of us poor folk what is going on. The Democrats clearly are not talking about taxing themselves. Pelosi is not going to advocate herself paying more in taxes.
So, clearly there can not be that many new rich to solve Obama’s over the top addiction to spending. Hell his 50th is coming up soon. He has to close this side show and move on.
I am starting to think the empty suit not only has no plan, he just needs the debt ceiling raised so he can keep spending.
I have to wonder at his mental health. Does he really think he can just live on the credit card for 8 years? That is what it looks like from here.
#15 July 16, 2011 at 9:41 am
exceller commented:

He keeps talking like he actually has a plan, he talks about what he has put on the table. Does anyone know what he put on the table? I haven’t seen any plan and whenever someone asks him about it in his numerous press conferences he says that he’s not going to get into specifics.
#16 July 16, 2011 at 9:53 am
retire05 commented:

How many of us heard Obama say that the government let him keep hundreds of thousands of dollars that he did not need? Therein lies the Marxist philosophy; that all wealth belongs to the government, not the individual, and it is up to the government to determine how much of that wealth you will be allowed to keep.

We live in a nation that no longer believes in property rights and ownership. Even if your home is paid for, the state still maintains an ownership interest in that property with the ability to charge you fees, via taxation, every year to keep that home.

All the “tax breaks for the rich” that Democrats talk about one thing they will not tell you is that those tax breaks were granted by Democrats who legislated for their friends. Most of the tax breaks for the “rich” began under FDR to offset the 90% income tax bracket. Tax breaks for corporate jets? Had Obama bothered to read the Stimulus Bill, he would have known that his own party put that tax break into the Stimulus Bill. Ooooops.

The richest members of Congress are almost all Democrats who support higher taxation. How many of them have said “Well, I have a few million bucks I really don’t need, so I am going to write a check to the IRS and help pay down the national debt”? NOT ONE. Instead, we read stories of how Democrats, like Timothy Geithner, John Kerry and Clair McCaskill do everything they can to avoid their legitimate tax bills.

Remember, the biggest caucus in Congress is the Congressional Progressive Caucus started by socialist, Bernie Sanders. See, socialism is never for the socialist, it is only for the “little” people.
#17 July 16, 2011 at 9:54 am
bg commented:

++

re: Obama still has not offered a plan.

and albeit i disagree,

no plan may very well be “the plan”..

==
#18 July 16, 2011 at 10:03 am
Ella commented:

Democraps are blood and moneysucking vampires. It’s never, ever enough. They want to look noble and so caring, using other people’s money. They get orgasms from trying to look noble and caring using money that is not theirs.

The trick with taxing the rich is first that it won’t make a dent in this horrible debt, and second how long do you think before the rich will wake up, if they haven’t already, and will leave this country? Why work hard so that Traitorbama can just take it, and then give it away to people he deems helpful in buying their votes for even more destructive government?

It’s not about caring for the poor. It’s all about pure and unadulterated power.
#19 July 16, 2011 at 10:09 am
exceller commented:

oh that’s right, they have offered to save money by cutting spending in the tax code.
#20 July 16, 2011 at 10:09 am
BuddyG commented:

The top 1% pay 38% of Federal income taxes
The top 5% pay 58% of Federal income taxes
The top 10% pay 70% of Federal income taxes
The top 50% pay 97% of Federal income taxes
The bottom 50% pay 3% of Federal income taxes

http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
#21 July 16, 2011 at 10:33 am
Guy in Ohio commented:

Obowma and his lapdogs in the media keep failing to mention three things….

First, even if we taxed the people who DO PAY taxes at 100%, there still wouldn’t be enough money to support what he’s trying to spend.

Secondly, those additional dollars taken from the “rich” become lost jobs and higher prices for the society as a whole, reducing tax revenues even further.

Third, every working American has an investment in those “rich evil corporations” in one way or another, either through our retirement plans, through direct investments, or through the prices of the products we consume. Higher taxes will simply increase their cost of doing business. If their prices don’t go up, their profits will go down, and that will cost anyone who buys their products or has a stake in their company dearly.

It’s basic economics. Obowma’s plan does not create any additional wealth. It just moves it around. Only a reduction in the size and scope of government, and a serious decrease in discretionary spending can balance our budget.

Obowma is counting on the media to keep us ignorant of these facts, and he’s also counting on them to faithfully dangle the promise of “free money” and endless entitlements under the noses of the roughly 50% of our population who pay no taxes. He hopes to use our tax dollars to secure their loyalty, and build a huge, perpetual block of Democratic voters, simply by keeping them ignorant, and making them as dependent on government as possible.

Obowma understands that raising taxes won’t help our economy, but he doesn’t care, because their only goal at this point is to seize control of as much of our economy, and as many of our tax dollars as possible, as fast as possible. Whoever has the power to control and re-distribute the money in a society has the power over the people, and their lust for that power is insatiable. They recognize that the balance of power in America is precariously balanced right now, and they sense that if they can successfully seize control of the majority of this country’s wealth and productivity before the next election, they will have achieved a position of power and influence that will be difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.

It’s time we realize what a danger this situation poses to America, to freedom, to liberty, and to our way of life. If we don’t take action soon, the people on the receiving end of this tax dollar bonanza will outnumber the people paying the taxes, the taxpayers will have no longer have fair representation, and recovery will be virtually impossible. The link between big government, entitlements, and votes must be broken, and ousting Obowma, and as many other Democrats as possible in 2012 is a critical step in that process. If we can regain majorities in both houses, and perhaps pass some legislation making it illegal to vote in any jurisdiction unless you pay taxes in that jurisdiction, it would be a great start toward breaking up this money for votes scheme that the Democrats have saddled us with.
#22 July 16, 2011 at 10:34 am
gus commented:

TAX HIKES ON THE RICH HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FINANCIAL MESS WE ARE IN.

Boehner, stop your crying you pathetic kock sucking sissy and get your cigarette smelling ASS to work. Ok?
#23 July 16, 2011 at 10:43 am
Freddy commented:

The Democrats have no actual budget for 2012 and simply want endless continuing resolutions without discussion of programs or policy.

The Republicans will either force the Democrats to produce, and agree to a budget, or they will fail as a political party.
#24 July 16, 2011 at 10:43 am
Carbon Pootprint commented:

Tax the freakng rich (the ones who fund and support the progressive traitor party) into the dirt already and STFU you pathetic LIAR!!!!
#26 July 16, 2011 at 10:53 am
USMC Thomas commented:

They have to pass it first to see SØBama’s budget plan.
#27 July 16, 2011 at 11:20 am
Nelle commented:

Multitude, that is helpful. Now, how do we Tax the Gentry? How about a tax for the non-working wealthy? Is that on the table?
#29 July 16, 2011 at 12:24 pm
owl commented:

Jim…………….I just watched a Repub up against a Dem on FOX. The Dem hit every single screwed talking point from Bush did it to Repubs run the Congress while it all took place.
The Repub looked and sounded like milktoast and he just about agreed.

Please send this chart to each Repub office in Congress and tell them who you are.

Maybe they do not really understand the impact that graph shows. If they would point out when Dems had Congress and what Obama did with ‘his mess that he inherited’, maybe they could get better talking points to stop this destruction of our country.

This graph does a much better job. If that guy today had this, it could have stopped that Dem in his tracks. Even if he kept on, everyone that looked at that red would get it.

Somebody that has their ear, needs to arm them before they hit tv or news conferences.
#30 July 16, 2011 at 12:25 pm
bg commented:

++

it’s CRY RICH CRISIS time again..

==
#31 July 16, 2011 at 12:34 pm
StrangernFiction commented:

The Republicans ~~will either force the Democrats to produce, and agree to a budget, or they~~will fail as a political party.
#33 July 16, 2011 at 1:46 pm
overthehillbill commented:

#3 Post
From what I have read and understand the Feds make far more on a gallon of fuel due to
Fed tax than the oil companies do and the oil companies bear most of the expense.
#37 July 16, 2011 at 8:03 pm
tommy mc donnell commented:

obama wants to raise taxes on the rich. does that mean he is going to raise taxes on politicans.
#38 July 26, 2011 at 12:12 am
David Mogrovejo-Araque commented:

Obama’s a fool and a tool. So sad that he has no problem with it. I agree with some of Ron Paul’s ideals. I don’t care if he’s an extreme or Pure Libertarian. Its not like he could legalize all drugs, get rid of all the wars abolish the Federal Reserve and IRS and close down all our miltary bases. I know he’s a real wholly functioning human being because he says such outlandish things. His adherence isn’t to the corporate money masters of this world. I’m sure if he were elected he couldn’t accomplish all his goals, but he could do enough to stop inflating the dollar, have our money backed by gold and have the rest of the world start liking us for crying out loud if only for a moment in modern human history!!!
#39 July 28, 2011 at 7:24 am
Eddie commented:

@BuddyG:
Your stats are highly misleading:
You say the top 10% pay 70% of income tax, but they control 73% of the nations net worth.
So they are paying a smaller proportion of their wealth in taxes than the bottom 90%.

Taxes are not the problem. They are at an all time low as a fraction of GDP.
The problem is spending.

The solution is to reduce spending AND raise taxes on those who don’t pay their share. This isn’t some communist plot, it is common sense.