After Senate Democrats voted to raise taxes on American families making more than $250,000 a year this Wednesday, President Obama issued the following statement:
With the Senate’s vote, the House Republicans are now the only people left in Washington holding hostage the middle-class tax cuts for 98% of Americans and nearly every small business owner. The last thing a typical middle class family can afford is a $2,200 tax hike at the beginning of next year. It’s time for House Republicans to drop their demand for another $1 trillion giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and give our families and small businesses the financial security and certainty that they need. Our economy isn’t built from the top-down, it’s built from a strong and growing middle class, and that’s who we should be fighting for.
The following day, ABC News White House correspondent Jake Tapper questioned Obama spokesman Jay Carney about the use of the word giveaway:
You used the word “giveaway”, and President Obama, in his statement yesterday, used the word “giveaway,” referring to the extension of the lower Bush tax cut rates for I guess the top 1 or 2 percent of the country — people making over $200,000 a year, or couples making $250,000. What do you say to a small business owner who says, that’s not a giveaway, that’s my money, and by the way, I’m going to need some of that money in order to help pay the health care of individuals that I’m now mandated to do? It’s not giving anything away, it’s allowing me to keep my money.
Click over to the White House transcript for the rest of the exchange between Tapper and Carney. It really is a masterpiece of White House dissembling.
Bottom line though, Obama used the word “giveaway” in his tax hike press release for the same reason he told supporters in Roanoke, Virginia that, “If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” It’s what he believes.
If you believe that the federal government is largely responsible for the success of every business, then why shouldn’t it be entitled to take more of what you earn? If the federal government is entitled to what you earn, then of course, letting you keep more of it is a giveaway. How generous of them.
Really we should all just be thanking Obama for letting us keep what property the government doesn’t need right now. Until, of course, it does need that property to build a super-train to nowhere or something…
