Once again Ernest Dumas writes a column that need not wait until Wednesday publication date. He explains the Republican lies about President Obama’s tax proposals.
Sen. John Boozman says Obama wants to tax everybody. Actually, it would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 15,000 of the 1.2 MILLION Arkansas tax filers under the Obama plan; a mere 1,100 if Harry Reid’s millionaire surtax were to be the alternative. “All of us” equals a fraction of 1 percent. That’s Republican math at work.
Rep. Tim Griffin’s lie? That deficits have been growing under Obama. As the column illustrates they have not, either in actual dollars or as a percentage of GDP compared with Bush deficits. (Further explanation for those who want to ignore the facts: Deficits trend upward, catastrophically, under Bush. They’ve trended downward, if only slightly, under Obama. The direction is important.)
It’s all part of the big lie:
The task is to convince people that Obama is not just asking the rich to pay their fair share but that he’s going to tax everybody more. Most of the presidential candidates repeat the mantra that Obama is going to raise people’s taxes, nearly always neglecting to say that only the wealthiest 2 percent or fewer of taxpayers would pay any increase and that the higher taxes would kick in starting 2013 while the tax relief for the middle class would be immediate.