The Truth About Federal Taxes

First, commentary by David Gergen (former advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan) on the CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer (Oct. 19, 2008):

GERGEN: I just want to come back. We cannot leave a redistribution argument where it is. It is true.

BLITZER: And just to remind our viewers, what we are talking about was a comment that Senator Obama made to Joe the Plumber when he was out there, when he suggested one thing the government should do is spread the wealth around a little bit.

GERGEN: What has happened? Larry Summers pointed out on a speech this week at the 100th anniversary --

BLITZER: The former treasury secretary.

GERGEN: The former treasury secretary and a Democrat to be fair. But if you go back to the distribution of wealth in 1979, 30 years ago versus today, the people in the bottom 80 percent are losing, compared to back then, $600 billion a year. The top 1 percent of the population is gaining compared to back then. We have had a redistribution of wealth in this country, up.

BLITZER: What the McCain people are suggesting and even Senator McCain yesterday in his radio address, suggested this is almost socialism.

GERGEN: We just had a Republican government that put $150 billion into banks. They have injected the government more fully into the banking system, the financial system than any time in history. And so it's a hollow argument. I mean, I think the Democrats, if they want to join this argument, they can. This is their very strong argument to say you guys are socialism when you just spent $150 billion as a down payment?

CNN Transcript.

The "half of Americans pay no income tax" fraud
by Jay Bookman, Tuesday, October 7, 2008

One of the right-wing’s favorite talking points is the claim that 50 percent of American households don’t pay income taxes. From that claim flow a couple of other points: First, it’s impossible to “cut” taxes for those households because they don’t pay any tax in the first place; second, those households are somehow less deserving of respect or even a voice in politics because they aren’t paying their own way.

That claim is bogus both in its details and its general charge.

Read why at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

And from Nobel-prize-winning Paul Krugman. "The Real Plumbers of Ohio," which concludes:

Maybe there are plumbers out there who earn that much, or who would end up suffering from Mr. Obama’s proposed modest increases in taxes on dividends and capital gains — America is a big country, and there’s probably a high-income plumber with a huge stock market portfolio out there somewhere. But the typical plumber would pay lower, not higher, taxes under an Obama administration, and would have a much better chance of getting health insurance.

I don’t want to suggest that everyone would be better off under the Obama tax plan. Joe the plumber would almost certainly be better off, but Richie the hedge fund manager would take a serious hit.

But that’s the point. Whatever today’s G.O.P. is, it isn’t the party of working Americans