We focused on Mr. Obama’s cynical canard that taxing the rich will somehow improve things – as if the federal government and the national economy were the same thing. They’re not.
But there’s also the federal folderol, which much of the country seems to have swallowed, that we can fix what’s wrong by just taxing the “other guy.”
Today comes a hopeful sign that the awakening may have begun.
Columnist Joseph Curl noted Monday in the Washington Times that even some Democrats and Obama voters are waking up – angry – to the reality that their taxes, too, are going up.
They’re starting to realize that the partial holiday on Social Security taxes is ending, and that more money will be withheld from paychecks beginning this month.
And not the paychecks of the wealthiest 1 percent. As Curl notes, the Tax Policy Center estimates more than 77 percent of Americans will pay higher taxes – and another source predicts “80 percent of households with incomes between $50,000 and $200,000 would pay higher taxes.”
“I know to expect between $93 and $94 less in my paycheck on the 15th,” Curl quoted one liberal-website commenter as lamenting. The commenter, ironically enough, named himself “RomneyLies.”
The anonymous commenter might be even angrier if he knew what the increased withholding will do for him, which is nothing. It’s supposed to be for his retirement – but Congress long ago ate through Americans’ retirement seed corn, “borrowing” our retirement monies to fund ongoing operations of the federal government.
If a private company similarly converted your retirement savings to its own uses, the CEO and anyone who helped him with the scheme would be in prison.
Other taxes, fees and insurance premiums will be surprising Americans from the pages of the federal health care reform act.
The “mainstream” media haven’t really laid all this out for you, so it’s going to come as a shock to many.
For them, rhetoric meets reality with the next paycheck.
