CSM - "Tax day 101: How is the tax code changing under Obama?"

[TomCADem]

In a sign of just how conservative our media has become, this article makes no mention of the fact that taxes were even more progressive under Reagan's first term with a 50% top marginal tax rate. President Obama is merely allowing taxes for the wealthy to revert to the rates they were under Bill Clinton.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Money/2010/0414/Tax-day-101-How-is-the-tax-code-changing-under-Obama

Obama has showered new tax perks on the poor and middle class while pledging to maintain many of the Bush tax cuts. But his tax code largess stops at wealthy households.

Barack Obama campaigned for president as a tax cutter – and in his first year in office, that's what he has been for the vast majority of Americans.

From the "making work pay" tax credit to incentives for first-time home buyers and for people who invest in energy efficiency at home, Mr. Obama has showered new tax perks on the poor and middle class while pledging to maintain many of the Bush tax cuts.

But where President Bush reduced tax rates for people in all income brackets, Obama set a cutoff line for his tax-code largess: Households earning more than $250,000 need not apply.

Tax hikes on those high-income Americans are a central plank in Obama's planned budget for 2011, which would allow the top-tier tax rates to revert to Clinton-era levels (a top income-tax rate of 39.6 percent). New taxes on those same high earners figure prominently in Obama's recent health-care reform legislation. The goal is to raise revenue to provide health insurance for more Americans.

[FrenchieCat]

1. That's what he campaigned on. That said, he won. The media must have forgotten.

[TomCADem]

2. The Historical Top Tax Rate Shows How The Right Wing Extremists Have Taken Over The Media

Fox News and the rest of the corporate media have managed to whip conservatives into a frenzy over President Obama's proposal to let taxes for the wealthy revert to the rates under Clinton. This is widely being derided as socialism. Even the NY Times published a poll about how Tea Partiers are concerned about the wealthy. The opporessed wealthy for goodness sakes!

Yet, when you ignore the rhetoric, you see that President Obama is merely taken a step towards normalcy following a period of artificially low rates for the wealthy. Yet, just like the Tea Partiers are demonstrating in support of Wall Street against financial regulation of derivatives, they will probably end up opposing any proposal to make our tax system more progressive.

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[Arkana]

3. Oh, too bad so sad.

Rich people have to pay their fair share. However shall the country go on?!