Obama and his tax hypocrisy

I trust you survived tax season.  For many it’s a grueling time.  CNSNews recently figured up how long the tax code is.  If every page of the tax code were put on a standard 8.5x11-inch sheet of paper and laid end to end it would stretch nearly 13 miles.  Imagine that, thirteen miles of tax code.

Most of us spend our time trying to reduce our tax liability.  Can we write this off?  Can we take that deduction?  It’s mind-numbing, tedious and downright frustrating.  If you’ve ever had to fill out even a mortgage deduction worksheet you know what I’m talking about.

President Obama worked a deal with Congress to raise the top marginal tax rate from 35 percent to 39.6 percent effective the 2013 tax year.  That means when you file your taxes for next year if you’re making over $400,000 as an individual or $450,000 as a couple your taxes are going up.  The president said it was time for people like him to start paying their fair share.

The problem is when it came time for the president and first lady to pay their fair share this year they decided not to.

The First Family had a gross income of $665,074 which certainly places them in that evil one percent.  They took deductions to get their taxable income down to $335,000, essentially cutting their tax liability in half.  Instead of paying at the 35 percent top marginal tax rate they had an effective tax rate of 18.4 percent.

Now, I’m not suggesting they did anything illegal.  What I am suggesting is that they did something grossly immoral given their adamant stance that people like them should be paying their fair share.  When faced with the choice of not taking the deductions and paying their fair share they chose to get out of paying as much in taxes as was possible under the law.  This is the height of hypocrisy.

In the last election Obama derided Mitt Romney for paying a 14 percent effective tax rate.  Romney was taking all the deductions he was entitled to and most of his income came from long-term investments.  Somehow, according to Obama, he wasn’t paying his fair share and Obama was determined to do something about it.

His latest proposal caps deductions at 28 percent and he didn’t even adhere to that principle when he filed his own taxes.

The left continue to demonize the rich yet there are so many rich among them who do the very same thing the Obamas do.  They bellyache about how the tax system favors the rich yet they hire legions of tax experts to help them avoid paying taxes.

To me, it’s a lot like the environmental issue.  Many self-proclaimed greenies preach to the rest of us about lowering our carbon footprint (as if carbon dioxide is somehow bad) yet when it comes to adjusting their own lifestyle they take absolutely no action.  They still own multiple homes, and large ones at that.  They still fly all over the world, oftentimes in private jets.  They still drive large luxury automobiles.  If you really feel that strongly that carbon dioxide is the problem then you don’t wait for laws to force the people into a more austere lifestyle.  You lead by example.

Same goes for getting control of our country’s economic problems.  The problem is the government takes too much of our money and wastes it on frivolous expenditures.  What we should be doing is lowering taxes and stimulating more through the private sector.

At least the Obamas seem to have that part down pat.

Disabled by our stupidity

National Public Radio recently produced a feature called Unfit for Work.  It was about the startling rise in people on disability.  CNSNews.com and others have been calling attention to the disturbing rise in disability benefits for some time.  What was new in the NPR piece was the fact that states have been making a concerted effort in this direction for some time.

They told the story of PCG, Public Consulting Group.  This is a private company that states having been paying to sift through their welfare rolls and shift as many people as possible from welfare to disability.  Why?  Well, it’s always about the money, now isn’t it?  States have to pay a certain percentage for each person on welfare.  If that same person moves to disability, instead, then it’s the federal government that picks up the entire tab.

Of course, we the taxpayers are getting screwed either way but there has been an astounding shift from welfare to disability over the last 20 years.  Bill Clinton vetoed the Republicans’ welfare reform twice before finally signing it in 1996.  What’s interesting is what happened after that.  The number of families on welfare began to drop dramatically.  What no one was paying attention to was the number of new disability claims.  If you overlay the welfare chart on the disability chart you see the number of people on public assistance remained essentially the same.  They just started collecting disability.

What’s also interesting is what they’re claiming disability for.  In 1961 the number of disabled workers claiming back troubles was 8.3 percent.  That number today is 33.8 percent.  Have we had an epidemic of back trouble over the last 50 years?  I don’t think so.

I did my own research on a hunch.  I took the top 10 states for disability claims and ran a comparison to the top 10 states for obesity.  Guess what?  Six of the top 10 states for obesity were also in the top 10 for disability.  Imagine that.

So, what am I saying?  I’m saying that obviously there are states that don’t have an obesity problem and there are states that do.  I don’t think it’s the climate so it must have something to do with personal choices.  That should be considered when we dole out tax dollars.  Are you doing everything you can possibly do to remedy your situation?  If not, you don’t get a dime.

The number of people on disability also obscures the true number of unemployed.  Those people, although they’re of working age, don’t show up in that highly-touted unemployment number from the Labor Department.  The more people who go on disability the better that number looks.  The percentage of workforce age people on disability in 1985 was 2.2 percent.  In 2005 it was 4.1 percent.  By 2011 it was 5.4 percent of the workforce. 

In typical NPR fashion, they managed to find an excuse for the explosion of disability claims rather than the glaringly obvious reason of too many lazy people.  “There are now millions of Americans who do not have the skills or education to make it in this country,” they stated.  Wait a minute.  A guy with a second-grade education can sneak across the border from Mexico and find a skilled job laying bricks and you’re telling me too many Americans don’t have the skills or education to make it in this country?

There are truly those who are too disabled to work but certainly not triple what it was in the ‘80s.  In the process we’ve robbed millions of their dignity and that’s something they may never get back.