« A Very Patient Cat | Main | House Approves Democrats (Obama's) $3.45 Trillion Budget Plan »
April 03, 2009
It's Official, Dem Budget To 'redistribute income'
It's official, Dem budget to 'redistribute income'
Tax hikes to hit $250,000 earners, 'maybe even going further down'
The nation needs to face the fact that income will be redistributed and health care rationed under a federal budget plan moving through Congress at the behest of President Obama, according to an official who served under President Clinton.
The plan, according to Lawrence J. Haas, former communications director for Vice President Al Gore, said Obama "wants to make permanent all the tax cuts from those years [2001 and 2003] for people making up to $250,000 a year and frankly to redistribute income a bit in a fair way so he would raise taxes on those above $250,000."
Haas said in recent budgets, the income "has been redistributed … in exactly the other direction," condemning tax cuts for anyone in an upper income bracket, a category that includes many business owners.
Haas said GOP plans for restraint are "radical."
"They would impose … they propose to severely limit spending across the board other than for defense and veterans programs," he said.
He explained the income redistribution plan:
"The tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 provided a disproportionate amount of the benefits for those in the top one, two percent of earners, so in essence what the president is attempting to do is make things a little bit fairer by way of asking those who have done so well in recent years to pay a little bit more … [while continuing] tax relief for people at the bottom, in the middle, in all candor who have struggled in recent years."
He said while the president "has proposed" protecting from tax increases those who make less than $250,000, even that's not assured.
To the extent we need to raise taxes down the road we're going to have to sort of work our way down that income level starting with people making over $250,000," he said, "and maybe even going further down. I hope we don't have to do too much of that."
He said health care costs will play a major role in coming budgets.
"That's going to cause us to make some real decisions as to who gets how much health care and when they get it," he warned.
President Obama famously created an issue during the 2008 campaign by telling a plumber his goal was to spread the wealth.
Obama believes the Constitution is flawed, because it fails to address wealth redistribution, and he says the Supreme Court should have intervened years ago to accomplish that.
Obama told Chicago's public station WBEZ-FM that "redistributive change" is needed, pointing to what he regarded as a failure of the U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren in its rulings on civil rights issues in the 1960s.
The Warren court, he said, failed to "break free from the essential constraints" in the U.S. Constitution and launch a major redistribution of wealth. But Obama, then an Illinois state lawmaker, said the legislative branch of government, rather than the courts, probably was the ideal avenue for accomplishing that goal.
In the 2001 interview, Obama said:
If you look at the victories and failures of the civil rights movement and its litigation strategy in the court, I think where it succeeded was to invest formal rights in previously dispossessed people, so that now I would have the right to vote. I would now be able to sit at the lunch counter and order and as long as I could pay for it I’d be OK.
But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn't that radical. It didn't break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as it's been interpreted, and the Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. Says what the states can't do to you. Says what the federal government can't do to you, but doesn't say what the federal government or state government must do on your behalf.
And that hasn't shifted and one of the, I think, tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court-focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalition of powers through which you bring about redistributive change. In some ways we still suffer from that.
.
Wild Thing's comment........
This whole thing is sickening, especially all the things Obama says. Someone that speaks as Obama does about our Constitution should never be allowed to hold a government office.
This was all reported BEFORE the election and we saw how half of America did not care about any of this and went ahead and voted for him. I hope now that it is being discussed again maybe those idiots will WAKE UP!!
“With our financial house on fire, Obama makes clear both in his speech and his budget that the essence of his presidency will be the transformation of health care, education and energy. Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy — worthy and weighty as they may be — are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact THE MOST RADICAL AGENDA OF SOCIAL TRANSFORMATION seen in our lifetime.” - Charles Krauthammer
....Thank you Mark for sending this to me.
Mark
3rd Mar.Div. 1st Battalion 9th Marine Regiment
1/9 Marines aka The Walking Dead
VN 66-67
Posted by Wild Thing at April 3, 2009 06:47 AM
Comments
Krauthammer nails it as usual.
Obama is not even hiding his Marxist agenda. It is disturbing that so many Americans have no understanding of what is happening. They treated the presidential election as an American Idol episode. They think they are getting a big prize for a few extra bucks or for free. Yeah, the rich are going to pay for it.
National medical care(socialized medicine) gives lower standard medical care at increased price. This national health care plan will help to break America's economic back.
Posted by: TomR at April 3, 2009 10:49 AM
Tom, thank you for your input on this.
I agree, it is like Obama gets stronger
each day and hides it less and less what
his Marxist agenda is for our country.
Posted by: Wild Thing at April 3, 2009 07:20 PM
Spread the wealth, around or redistribute it is a buzz word for Socialists. To the average obama voter, I.Q. that of a house plant, it means nothing and they believe he will take care of them. The same people protesting the G20 in London, spoiled rotten kids who never had to work for anything in their lives.
Obama has become the modern day Robin Hood, or Robin from the 'Hood'. Anyone except the government doing this , redistributing the wealth, would be arrested for robbery. But the government has been allowed to rob the Movers and Shakers of this country, and give it to lifes losers, or the ones who refuse to work and make it look like an act of mercy.
They made a big deal of the bonuses paid by AIG, which the democrats, willingly voted for then made a stink when it became public knowledge. Now we find out Fannie Mae and Freddy are about to pay out their Retention bonuses almost twice that of AIG. So where is the outrage and where is the punitive taxes, the confiscatory taxes the CEOs at AIG got hit with.
This is a buzz word for sure, rather it is a buzz word for loss of Liberty and power to the Elites.
Posted by: Mark at April 3, 2009 07:25 PM
