Obama’s rhetoric on taxes is misleading

And that base is made up largely of those who live off government largess — government employees and those who depend on the many kinds of welfare being doled out.

Obama has himself never had to depend on the private sector for his employment. His history is one of government dependence. He doesn’t know what it’s like to make a payroll or deal with government regulations.

But that’s no excuse for the president of the United States to try and divide the nation by claiming the “rich” don’t pay enough taxes.

The reality is, somewhere between 40 percent and 50 percent of all Americans pay no federal income taxes. None. Zilch. Nada.

Those people are being subsidized by the rest of us. They don’t contribute to the nation’s military. They don’t have to pay for government debacles, such as the $535 million Solyndra failure.

Obama would have you believe otherwise. In his worldview, the “rich” should pay more taxes to fund those giveaway programs the rest of society enjoys.

But here’s the truth: The top 10 percent of federal taxpayers pay over 70 percent of all federal income taxes.

So who’s not paying their fair share? Taken in reverse, the above figure means this: 90 percent of all taxpayers only pay 30 percent of the taxes.

Unfortunately, Obama’s rhetoric sounds good to those who don’t know what’s really happening. There’s a large number of people today who don’t have a clue about how taxes work. They just want somebody else to pay their share.

One of the most cynical aspects of Obama’s rhetoric is the idea that secretaries pay less in taxes than CEOs. Liberal billionaire Warren Buffet started that idea by saying his secretary paid more taxes than he did.

Of course, that was not the case. Because most of Buffet’s income came from investments and not salary, he did pay a lower tax rate on that investment income. Earned income, such as his secretary has, is taxed at a higher percentage rate, but Buffet paid a lot more taxes than she did.

The reason we tax investment income at a lower rate in this country is to keep those dollars here for capital expansions. If you tax investment income at a too-high rate, those dollars will disappear into overseas investments rather than domestic investments.

In any event, the data just doesn’t support Obama’s claim. In 2009, the average federal tax rate for all Americans was 11 percent; the average for the top one percent was 24 percent. The average for the bottom 50 percent of federal taxpayers was just 1.8 percent.

So how is it unfair when the top taxpayers pay 24 percent and the bottom taxpayers pay virtually nothing?

Nobody would argue that we shouldn’t take care of those people truly in need in the country. We do have poverty and mental illness and people who are disabled who need our common support.

But a huge number of the underclass in America are “poor” because of the choices they’ve made; drug abuse, criminal activity, lack of education, out of wedlock births and other social problems that were man-made.

That nearly half of all Americans pay no federal income taxes is a huge distortion of the reality. Just about everyone should have to pay some taxes. What’s not fair is that only a small percentage of Americans pay such a huge share of the taxes.

The Obama rhetoric is nothing more than an attempt to divide the nation by pitting the “poor” against the “rich.” His political base is the underclass, most of whom don’t pay any taxes. It’s an easy target for him to portray those who work and produce in this country as not being fair.

But it isn’t the reality. Obama has taken on the propaganda rhetoric so common in third world countries — play one group of citizens against another; portray those at the top as evil and unfair; create a common “enemy” to rally a political base among the underclass.

America isn’t some third-world backwater. This nation is better than Obama’s misleading rhetoric.

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapes. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.