But you might think they’d require an introductory course in logic, because Dwayne Lester shows how invalid fallacies are the only arguments made in favor of Obama’s “Buffett Rule” requiring tax increases on the rich.
Category: Budget
‘Pay Their Fair Share’
How many times did President Obama say that phrase during yesterday during his Rose Garden speech?
- . . . for us to solve this problem, everybody, including the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations, have to pay their fair share.
- If we’re going to make spending cuts — many of which we wouldn’t make if we weren’t facing such large budget deficits — then it’s only right that we ask everyone to pay their fair share.
- . . . a larger plan that’s balanced –- a plan that asks the most fortunate among us to pay their fair share, just like everybody else.
- Either we ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share in taxes, or we’re going to have to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare.
- And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans or biggest corporations to pay their fair share.
If all you knew what what Obama said, you might believe that the “the wealthiest Americans” aren’t currently paying their fair share. Heritage Foundation researcher Emily Goff explains what’s wrong with that argument:
Taxing those who Obama calls the wealthiest of Americans won’t solve our deficit problem – and it certainly won’t solve our spending problem. The top 10 percent of earners in America already pay about 70 percent of federal income taxes. And adopting the flawed deficit reduction proposal of taxing the wealthiest Americans would require mathematically unfeasible tax rates.
“Fairness” is not a valid economic argument. It’s a political argument. And the Laffer Curve suggests that Obama’s politically motivated plan to make the rich “pay their fair share” would actually result in less tax revenue, not more. The rich will engage in tax-avoidance strategies, or the drag on investment will slow the economy, or quite possibly both.
As Heritage senior fellow Patrick Louis Knudsen says, Obama’s plan “merely perpetuates a misunderstanding of the fundamental problem: deficits and debt are symptoms; the underlying illness is excessive and uncontrolled spending.”
Obama Explains That When He Says ‘Creating Jobs’ He Means ‘Raising Taxes’
That’s the upshot of the presidential speech this morning, during which Obama promised to veto any deficit-reduction legislation that does not include tax increase on the rich:
“I will not support any plan that puts all the burden for closing our deficit on ordinary Americans,” he said. “And I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.
I’ll update later with the transcript, etc. Meanwhile, Andrew Malcolm of the Los Angeles Times notices the remarkable elasticity of “right now” in terms of Obama’s urgent insistence Sept. 8 that Congress should “pass this bill right now.” Obama’s $447 billion plan has not actually been written as legislation, and the Democratic Senate won’t even be ready to “move forward” on the yet-to-be-written bill until next month.
UPDATE: Perhaps I did not make sufficiently clear the logical contradiction:
- On the one hand, Obama says the need for job-creation is such an urgent crisis that the federal government must engage in $447 billion in new deficit spending.
- On the other hand, Obama insists that balancing the budget must require new taxes on “millionaires and billionaires,” siphoning off investment capital that might otherwise be used to . . . create jobs.
We suppose Paul Krugman will explain this to us. Because according to Paul Krugman, any damned Keynesian foolishness makes perfect sense.
UPDATE II: Video of today’s speech:
UPDATE III: Perhaps we should hear from someone with actual experience in job creation. His name is Herman Cain:
Today, the Obama Administration’s assault on the private sector continued. In yet another speech, he called for America’s job creators to shoulder an even heavier burden than they must already. President Obama promised that his efforts were not “class warfare,” but instead “math.”
Perhaps he could learn a lesson or two on math from me. I have a degree in mathematics and spent the earlier days of my career as a supervisory mathematician for the Department of the Navy. Then, I worked for 40 years as an executive in the private sector where I balanced budgets, saved failing companies and created jobs. Both obviously demanded a command of advanced mathematics.
Here’s what I can tell him about math: raising taxes on anyone, no matter their income level, will do nothing to stimulate our economy, create jobs or balance our federal budget. Increasing taxes on the private sector will destroy jobs, further damaging our economy and sending even less revenue to the federal government.
His eagerness to punish the private sector indicates he doesn’t understand the most important truth of basic economics: the private sector creates jobs. These are the jobs that pay for the food for our families, the roofs over our heads, the heat for our homes, the clothes on our backs, the schools for our kids and the plans for our retirement.
Perhaps his ignorance of basic economics is due to the fact that both he and more than 90 percent of his Administration have no private sector experience at all. Thus, they are all too willing to continually punish America’s job creators, all in the name of “fairness.”
President Obama’s once said, “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig.” I agree. It doesn’t matter that he calls it “paying your fair share.” It’s still class warfare.
Obama’s problem: They don’t teach economics at Harvard Law School.
UPDATE IV: So what was this speech really about? Obama’s attempt to quell dissent from left-wing critics, says Ed Morrissey:
He issued this warning in a sad attempt to impress a few people on the Left with his “leadership,” but issuing empty threats isn’t real leadership. It’s an expression of political impotence.
Denison: Overflow Crowd Hears Herman Cain Slam Obama: ‘That’s Not Leadership!’
DENISON, Iowa
Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain today denounced as “pathetic” the response of President Obama and other Democrats to the recent downgrade of U.S. credit.
“Today, the president, Senator [John] Kerry and other Democrats now want to blame somebody for the credit downgrade – other than themselves,” Cain told a standing-room only crowd at Crunk’s Café here. “They control the Senate. They control the White House. Obama’s Treasury secretary [Tim Geithner] is in charge of the Treasury. Now they are trying to blame the Tea Party movement for the downgrade. How pathetic is that? That’s not leadership, folks – that’s not leadership.“
Cain’s campaign team was pleased with the strong attendance for the event here on the second stop of the Atlanta businessman’s “Common Sense Solutions” tour of Iowa leading up to the Aug. 13 Ames Straw Poll. After filling up the banquet room where Cain spoke, attendees sat outside the door of the room in the main dining area of Crunk’s, a local landmark here in Denison. Cain’s Iowa campaign director, Larry Tuel, credited Crawford County coordinator Gwen Eckland for the overflow crowd.
A longtime restaurant executive and former CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Cain’s remarks at Denison echoed criticisms of the Obama administration he made in his latest column:
Immediately following the debt ceiling debacle, the White House announced that the president will take a three-day bus tour through the Midwest to hear people’s concerns about the economy, and talk about measures to boost economic growth and job creation.
Is President Obama that out of touch? . . .
After the president’s tour, we will get another speech. He will once again promise his laser-like focus on economic growth and job creation. We have heard this speech many times before only to get the same results. More talk, talk, talk.
I have been traveling the country and listening to people for the last year, and I can tell you their concerns and fears. Namely, the economy is stuck in neutral and the president’s policies of spend, spend, spend are not working. Since the president has not put forth any new ideas to boost economic growth and job creation, people also know that nothing is going to change simply because he is going to do another tour and give some more speeches.
Mr. President, speeches do not fuel the economic engine of this economy, which is the business sector. And speeches are not going to reduce the latest unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, nor will they ease the pain of the nearly 15 million people who can’t find jobs because your administration wants to raise taxes and continue your regulatory onslaught on American businesses. . . .
Cain will speak this evening during a rally at Bayliss Park in Council Bluffs. The complete schedule for his “Common Sense Solutions” bus tour is here.
Liberals Spinning S&P Credit Downgrade: BLAME IT ON THE REPUBLICANS!
Nothing is more amazing than the ability of liberals — both politicians and “journalists” — to synchronize their lies. In the wake of Standard & Poors downgrading of the U.S. credit rating Friday, the Democrat-Media Complex has now forged a consensus that this had nothing to do with massive two-year binge of deficit spending embarked on by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. No, it’s because Republicans and their Tea Party supporters are against tax increases:
- Axelrod: This was a ‘tea party downgrade’ (The Hill)
- The worst thing the GOP has ever done? (Steve Benen)
- Mainstream Media Ignores S&P Attack On Republicans (Thom Hartmann)
Hartmann’s column, especially, illustrates how these left-wing agitprop campaigns work: The “Mainstream Media” ignore a million and one things that conservatives wish they’d pay attention to, but when liberals accuse reporters of ignoring something, the reporters — who are, of course, nearly all liberal — will jump to correct the perceived omission and will, in fact, often harp on this “unreported” angle to the exclusion of everything else.
Let us stipulate that (a) U.S. fiscal health wasn’t exactly robust when Obama became president, and (b) in a time of fiscal crisis, a steadfast opposition to tax increases doesn’t soothe the worries of the bond market, yet still the fact remains that the immediate cause of the current crisis was the incredible two-year Obama/Pelosi/Reid deficit spending binge. And Obama’s response to the debt-ceiling impasse — tax the rich! millionaires and billionaires! corporate jets! Republicans are coming to steal Granny’s Social Security check! — was immature, selfish and harmful.
Democrats don’t want to fix the problem, they want to score political points against Republicans. And they expect their liberal friends in the media to help them do it — a perfectly realistic expectation, given the fact that Barack Obama could only have become president with the willing assistance of his liberal friends in the media, who more or less anoninted him as the Democratic nominee the day he beat Hillary in the Iowa caucuses.
I’d imagine even some liberal reporters are now experiencing buyer’s remorse and — despite their profound instinctive loathing of Republicans — are sick and tired of watching Obama scapegoat others for his own incompetence.
Liberals hate Republicans and most reporters don’t know jack shit about economics, but they know failure when they see it, and Obama has proven to be an outright failure as president. One of these days, and the day might come very soon, reporters will start ignoring the White House spin machine and start reporting the truth. And then liberals will bitch, bitch, bitch about the “right-wing bias” of the media.
I … See … Crazy People
One of the amazing things about the whole debt-ceiling episode is how it has caused liberals to say stuff even crazier than the crazy stuff they usually say. Michael Lind at Salon:
The debt ceiling crisis is the latest case in which the radical right in the South has held America hostage until its demands are met. Presidents Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln refused to appease the Southern fanatics. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress chose not to follow their example and instead gave in. In doing so, they have encouraged the neo-Confederate minority in Congress to find yet another opportunity in the near future to extort concessions from America’s majority by sabotaging America’s government.
That’s some 180-proof crazy. But when it comes to pure high-octane crazy, nobody beats Amanda Marcotte:
Now it’s time to reflect on how our country has gone so far off track that we can’t even handle the basic responsibility of keeping the country from plunging into a manufactured crisis that nearly led to economic collapse. There are multiple causes, but one that hasn’t been discussed much is abortion.
Yes, abortion. Or, more specifically, the sustained sex panic that has been going on in this country since the sixties and seventies, when the sexual revolution occurred and women secured their reproductive rights. . . . [I]t’s sex panic that helped create the modern right-wing populist, and it’s the modern right-wing populist that created the current crisis. . . .
The genius of conservative leadership was that they were able to take all this anger about sexual freedom and desegregation and put the blame on two enemies: Democrats and the federal government.
So it’s neo-Confederates and/or “sex panic” that cause people to, uh . . . . Wait, what are we talking about? The federal debt.
The only way to exempt yourself from these bizarre accusations is to support infinite deficit spending. Otherwise, you’re like a giant inkblot in a Rorshach test, onto which Michael Lind and Amanda Marcotte will project their paranoid fears. You can’t simply debate fiscal policy with people like Lind and Marcotte, because they are endowed with the Magical Mind-Reading Power of Liberalism, which enables them to discern that you’re really a sex-panicked neo-Confederate upset about desegregation and “reproductive rights.”
It’s like having Charles Manson call you a psychotic.
UPDATE: Here’s a classic. On Sunday morning, Marcotte proclaimed to the world that “sex panic” explained the debt-ceiling dispute. But Tuesday, once she’d seen Lind’s neo-Confederate theory, she suddenly decided his theory was exactly right:
Southern whites have disproportionately tried to fuck up everything great about this country, all because of their racial resentments and backasswards views on gender . . .
Notice that “backasswards views on gender” now emerge as a uniquely regional trait of the South, as Marcotte evidently hopes to engraft her “sex panic” theory onto Lind’s Dixiefied theory. But either way, it’s the same thing: If you don’t agree with liberals, it can only be because there’s something wrong with you.
Your disagreement therefore licenses liberals to diagnose your disorder, a prerogative to which they are entitled, because they are your intellectual and moral superiors. And I remind you that this habit — diagnosing dissent as pathological — has been a signature trope of liberalism for more than half a century: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Dow Drops 266 Points, Both Sides Race to Claim Defeat in Debt-Deal Compromise
Who didn’t see this coming? For months we were warned that financial catastrophe would ensue unless Congress raised the debt ceiling. So Congress raised the debt ceiling and . . . financial catastrophe:
Stocks plunge as economic concerns grow
Associated Press
NEW YORK — A sell-off is erasing all of the year’s gains in the stock market, which has hit its longest losing streak in two years.
All three major stock indexes fell today as investors reacted to more signs of weakness in the U.S. economy and poor earnings from several big companies.
The S&P 500 fell 33 points to close at 1,254. The Dow lost 266 to end the day at 11,867. The Nasdaq composite fell 75 to close at 2,669. . . .
Meanwhile, in an event unprecedented in the history of spin wars, conservatives and liberals rushed to claim that the other side won.
Emily Miller of The Washington Times proclaims that the GOP caved and gave Obama everything he wanted, but Dave Weigel at Slate calls it “a generational defeat for liberals”:
It ended with scenes straight from a Nora Ephron movie, or one of those weaker West Wing episodes with Kristin Chenoweth as the way-too-competent consultant. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the House to cast her first vote since surviving a bullet to the brain. The House and Senate passed a debt-limit deal that got the votes of Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner, Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell. The crisis concluded with a Rose Garden speech, as if someone had just won a war.
All of that obscured the truth about the debt crisis. The truth: It was completely insane. It was, as Democrats say, largely unprecedented and mostly unnecessary. It was, as Republicans say, fogged up with hype that made the politics and market moves uglier than they needed to be. The inevitable tick-tocks of the deal and the slide shows of winners and losers obscure the fact that Washington just blew two months negotiating a 10-year budget cut right before it was about to knuckle down and … negotiate the 2012 budget. . . .
In the Bush era, Republicans once deemed the debt-limit hike as “passed” in another funding bill. In February 2009, Democrats simply added an $800 billion hike in the debt limit—from $11.3 trillion to $12.1 trillion—to the stimulus bill. There was a consensus: Play with the debt limit and you lose. That was true until July 2011, when Republicans played with the debt limit and won. . . .
So here we have a liberal (and really, Dave, any illusion that you’re not a liberal has long since ended) declaring forthrightly that the GOP won, whereas not a single conservative friend of mine agrees.
It has been said that victory has many fathers, while defeat is an orphan, but this bill looks like an unwanted legislative bastard.
Ace of Spades has relevant thoughts, including a dig at Weigel.
Jonah Goldberg, in Fine Form
Worked up into a long-overdue rant:
Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the Founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair. Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.
Then last night, on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack seven months ago, the vice president of the United States calls the Republican party a bunch of terrorists. . . .
Read the whole thing. You can also read the Joe Nocera New York Times column that helped set off Goldberg’s rant. Scott Whitlock at Newsbusters has video of Chris Matthews, in case you missed this:
“Why did [Obama] let this develop for six months…this drum roll of the Republicans saying, ‘We’ve got the baby. You don’t get the baby back unless you pay us?’ Why do you let the other side have the baby, to use kidnapping terms?”
Meanwhile, the supposed radical Tea Party terrorist plan passed the Senate 74-26. So three-quarters of senators are “hostage takers,” including such fanatics as Barbara Boxer, Dianne Feinstein, Al Franken, John Kerry, Debbie Stabenow . . .