President Obama today said it was “patriotic” of “well-to-do Americans” to pay higher taxes.
Obama, who spoke at the White House, indicated the money would be used not just for paying down the deficit, but for broad new spending plans, which he termed “investments” in “things like” education:
credit: totalbuzz.ocregister.com
Instead of the middle class paying more, we should ask the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more, a modest amount, so that we can reduce our deficit and still make investments in things like education that help our economy grow . . . And here’s the thing — there are a lot of well-to-do Americans, patriotic Americans, who understand this and are willing to do the right thing, willing to do their part to make this country strong.
Obama made the remarks during a short speech in which he called on Congress not to extend the Bush tax cuts for higher earners. A video of the appearance is below.
Paying more income taxes and having your money spent by the government is not normally associated with patriotism. Actually, Americans managed to show their patriotism without hardly paying income taxes at all until 1894, when the first permanent income tax was enacted.
Some people have another term for individuals who want to pay more taxes to a government that currently is spending at the highest share of GDP since World War II: Suckers.
Award winning journalist Keith Koffler has 16 years of experience covering Washington. As a reporter for CongressDaily, National Journal magazine, and Roll Call, Keith wrote primarily from the White House, covering three presidents and learning as few have the intricacies of the West Wing and the behavior and motivations of its occupants. While mainly stationed at the White House, he also extensively covered Congress and Washington’s lobbyists.
Keith has also written for a variety of other publications, including Politico, The Daily Caller, and The London Observer. He currently writes regular opinion columns for Politico. He blogs at whitehousedossier.com.
Who
is More Charitable, Liberals or Conservatives?
May
24th, 2010 · 12
Comments
I am engaged in a spirited ongoing
debate with tax blogger James Maule about
the relative motivations of conservatives and liberals regarding America’s tax
policy.
Mr. Maule contends that I and those
like me who oppose high taxes and the commensurate and inevitable permanent
increase in the size of the federal government are motivated primarily by a
desire to increase our own wealth while he and others like him who favor high
taxes and bigger government are motivated primarily by a desire to help the
less fortunate.
I found a blog post by conservative Michele Malkin which addresses better than I ever could the
absurdity of these claims (emphasis is Malkin’s):
A few years ago, economist Arthur
Brooks wrote a must-read book on volunteerism in America titled, “Who Really Cares.”
Here’s an excerpt:
The conventional wisdom runs like
this: Liberals are charitable because they advocate government redistribution
of money in the name of social justice; conservatives are uncharitable because
they oppose these policies. But note the sleight of hand: Government spending,
according to this logic, is a form of charity.
Let us be clear: Government spending
is not charity. It is not a voluntary sacrifice by individuals. No matter how
beneficial or humane it might be, no matter how necessary it is for providing
public services, it is still the obligatory redistribution of tax revenues.
Because government spending is not charity, sanctimonious yard signs do not
prove that the bearers are charitable or that their opponents are selfish. (On
the contrary, a public attack on the integrity of those who don’t share my
beliefs might more legitimately constitute evidence that I am the uncharitable
one.)
To evaluate accurately the charity
difference between liberals and conservatives, we must consider private,
voluntary charity. How do liberals and conservatives compare in their private
giving and volunteering? Beyond strident slogans and sarcastic political
caricatures, what, exactly, do the data tell us?
The data tell us that the
conventional wisdom is dead wrong. In most ways, political conservatives are
not personally less charitable than political liberals—they are more so.
…People living in conservative
states volunteer more than people in liberal states. In 2003, the residents of
the top five “Bush states” were 51 percent more likely to volunteer than those
of the bottom five, and they volunteered an average of 12 percent more total
hours each year. Residents of these Republican-leaning states volunteered more
than twice as much for religious organizations, but also far more for secular
causes. For example, they were more than twice as likely to volunteer to help
the poor.
Studies like this one by Mr. Brooks
should have long ago put an end to the left’s charges that conservatives are
heartless bastards. But, alas, they haven’t because there is simply too much
political gain to be had by liberals from the continued demonization of those
who have the temerity to oppose their agenda.¹
President Obama today said it was “patriotic” of “well-to-do Americans” to pay higher taxes.
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