Posted on 03/18/2009 8:52:55 PM PDT by Lorianne
President Obama told Californians during a campaign-style town hall meeting on Wednesday that rich people can afford to pay higher taxes in selling his budget plan as an investment in the nation's future.
Mr. Obama pushed back on people who say he is overtaxing the nation, saying his tax increases on families earning $250,000 or more a year are reverting to the tax system under former President Bill Clinton. The president added he will pay higher taxes himself as a result.
"These folks can afford it. They were rich back in the '90s," he said. "It's not like suddenly they're going to have to go to the poorhouse. But what that does is it allows us to pay for health care reform for a lot of people."
Going after a line of attack Republicans have used against him, Mr. Obama insisted, "I don't think that's unreasonable. I don't think that's socialism.
"If the middle class is working well, if working people are doing well, then everybody does well," he said. "That's the philosophy that we are pursuing in this budget; that's why I need your support."
On Thursday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to join Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger - a Republican who supported the stimulus plan - for a second town hall meeting after a tour of an electric-vehicle plant in Pomona.
The president highlighted California's high unemployment and foreclosure rates but noted, thanks to the stimulus plan, a new hospital will be built at Camp Pendleton.
Mr. Obama portrayed himself as someone who understands hard work, sympathizing with an ex-convict who was laid off from his Toyota job and telling the crowd he knows they don't have the luxury of ignoring their own economic problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
yep. me too.
Accusing a democrat of being immoral is a compliment to them.....
I go onto Democratic Underground on a very regular basis because I like seeing what they say. And I like stirring the pudding.
The subject was taxes and I was coming on the against side, saying that high taxes will cause people that own businesses will not want to expand their businesses and hire as much (I was laid off from my job in November, so this subject is very close to my heart).
Anyway, some guy actually said that if you move because of high taxes, you are an asshole.
I never attacked anyone on a personal level (though I so wanted to), but I just said that it was in everyone’s best interest for the government to not spend as much and to keep taxes and waste as low as possible. I tried to paint it as an idea that they should be able to get behind (keep waste low and you can help more people). We had a pretty fiery discussion going for a while, then it died. I love doing that kind of stuff.
Ya’ll want to welcome the n00bie?
*Um-HMMMmmmmmmm*
A telling comment. Many of them were not "rich back in the '90s" - this country still has the highest income mobility of any country, something that Marxists like Obama like to ignore.
I know, I know, he's a GD Marxist.
Assisted suicide will be the only option left open.
And by taxing the rich B.O. can continue to push class warfare.
You forgot the sarcasm tag.
I hope.
This idiot won’t be happy until he destroys every small business in the country and then they’ll wonder why we’re having a chronic unemployment problem involving most of the MIDDLE class.
Don’t tell me that you’re an Obamanite.
Obama can’t tax the real “rich,” so he taxes the most successful of the working class as though they were rich. - That keeps them from getting rich, which pleases Obama’s greedy, lazy Class Envy club immensely, even though it means less for them too.
I’m not getting you.
You can’t tax corporations - the customers pay the taxes, not the corp.
The “rich” pay the taxes to extent that top 1% pays like 20-30% of all income taxes.
So who are these “real” rich?
The people that have more than 90% of the accumulated wealth pay less than 1% on the passive earnings of that wealth. Their holdings are mostly untaxable under the laws of any nation, and they are able to keep it that way because they do have the power.
The result is that everyone else is taxed, and class envy is used to get the people to accept a tax structure that forever prevents them from accumulating any significant wealth, or benefitting from what little they can earn.
You don’t have to pay taxes on wealth you have already accumulated, only on income. That would be immoral, to put it mildly. Why should you have pay “rent” on money or property you have already earned?
In a saner world you’d pay taxes on what you spent, but that seems unlikely.
That’s like saying “Because you are rich, you need to pay four times the price of the car you want.” What happens when the rich run out of money? Who will he go after next? Wanta guess?
comprehend - I’m living it. At some point it is no longer worth it to be “successful”
“You don’t have to pay taxes on wealth you have already accumulated”
Really? - I paid more than $10,000 in taxes on what I’ve acumulated last year.
You also said that they “can’t” tax corporations, yet corporations get hit with 39% fed, and 11% state taxes here.
The rich aren’t paying those taxes, the working class is.
You want to know what the worst part is; he’s doing this just so he can throw it down the black hole of US debt by spending it on “get vote” projects.
A reel good righter.
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