First it was selfishness to not want to pay higher taxes, now Obama calls it chump change for the wealthy.

From ABC News’ Jake Tapper.

In an interview with MTV’s Sway,
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., was asked by a viewer—Matt from Iowa—“Mr. Obama, if your desire is to spread the wealth around, what
incentive is there for me to try to work hard? If I am only going to
get more taken away from me, the more money I make, why wouldn’t I just
slide into a life of relaxation and let rich people take care of me?”

Said Sway, “You know, a lot of people are asking similar questions,
and I kinda want you to specify. What does this mean exactly?”

“What is amazing to me is this whole notion that somehow that
everybody is just looking out for themselves,” Obama said. “I mean, the
fact is, we just talked about student loans. Well, when young people
who have the drive and the skill to go to college can’t afford to go to
college, how do you think we pay for scholarships or loan programs?
That money doesn’t grow on trees. It’s got to come from somewhere, and
the attitude that I have is that, if we want to grow our economy, the
way it grows is from the bottom up. You don’t just give tax breaks to
millionaires and billionaires. What you do is make sure that the tax
code is fair.”

He continued: “I want to give a tax cut to 95 percent of working
Americans, but in order to pay for that, I’m going to take the tax
rates back to what they were in the 1990s for people who are making
more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. People who are making
more than a quarter of a million dollars a year, if they are paying 2
or 3 percent higher in taxes, the notion that they’re somehow going to
stop working, or this young man is going to not want to be successful,
that just doesn’t make any sense. Back in the 1990s, we created more
millionaires, more billionaires, because the economy was growing,
everything was strong, you had at every income bracket, people were
doing well. So this idea, that somehow everybody is just on their own
and shouldn’t be concerned about other people who are coming up behind
them, that’s the kind of attitude that I want to end when I am
president.”

Said Sway, “Just out of curiosity, for those that are being taxed
that are making over $250,000 a year, how much difference would it be
from how they are being taxed today?”

“Right now, they are getting taxed at 36 percent. Under Bill Clinton
in the 1990s, they were being taxed at 39.6 percent. You’re talking
about a 3.6 percent difference, and, you know, for, you know, the
average person who is making half a million, a million dollars—people like you Sway—that’s chump change, that’s nothing. But it
could make a big difference for that young person who is trying to
figure out whether they can go to college or not, if we could give them
more of a break or give them more scholarships or grants to go to
college.”

Matt did not care for that answer.

“You say that the difference between 36% and 39.6% percent is ‘chump
change,’” he responded. “But I think even people that are in that
income tax bracket would disagree.” Matt said that Obama claims to want
to make the tax system “fair,” but he said it’s “unfair” to punish
people who work hard.

Incidentally, how much is this “chump change”?

The Tax Policy Center says a person or family making $500,000 a year would pay $3,363 in additional income tax under the Obama plan.

A person or family making $1,000,000 a year would see their tax burden increase by $28,301 under the Obama plan.

Chump change? You be the judge.

Anyone supporting this plan is a real chump.

Share This

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

About the author

1 Comment for To Obama Higher Taxes Are ‘Chump Change’