National Review Online:
President Obama keeps repeating the words “Pass This Bill” like a third-grader who has just mastered a new vocabulary word, but it is worth noting that, at the moment, there is only half a bill: the 155 pages of stimulus spending he calls the American Jobs Act. That second part — the part where this is all “paid for” — has not condensed from the vapor that surrounds the president. It’s just a speech, putting us once again in mind of the Congressional Budget Office’s declaration: “We don’t score speeches.”
So we have a statement of principles and a vague outline of a plan, which is enough to conclude that the principles are poisonous and the plan destructive.
Mr. Obama and his favorite campaign underwriter, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, have tried to bring in a bumper crop of political hay out of the fact that Mr. Buffett alleges that he pays taxes at a lower effective rate than does his secretary. There’s rather less to that than meets the eye: Mr. Buffett, the third-wealthiest man currently walking the earth, pays himself a salary of only $100,000 a year, and says his secretary earns around $60,000. (If his secretary has a spouse similarly employed, the couple may very well earn a combined salary higher than Mr. Buffett’s, as indeed do any number of police detectives and high-school principals.) Mr. Buffett pays no taxes on dividends accruing to the many shares of stock he holds in his company, Berkshire Hathaway, simply because the firm does not pay a dividend, while most of his personal wealth has been put into a trust. Each of those facts — the relatively low salary, the lack of dividend payments on Berkshire Hathaway shares, the trust — is part of a calculated strategy to avoid paying taxes. While we do begrudge Mr. Buffet his ridiculous moral posturing, we do not begrudge him the benefit of such allowances as the tax code affords: Mr. Buffett, after all, did not write the tax laws. And he shouldn’t start writing them now.
In 2012, I hope there are enough real Americans that will remember the suffering we had to endure and kick Obama out of our White House!
