Yesterday I wrote a post on the number of ways President Obama’s proposed “Buffet tax” — which is based on the faulty and context-lacking premise that Warren Buffet’s secretary suffers a higher tax bracket than Mr. Buffet — was nothing more than a bait-and-switch gambit designed to invoke class warfare at a time when his approval rating is at an all-time low.

Well, as more time passes we find evidence that some of his typical defenders, fellow Democrats and mainstream media outlets, are also calling him out on the ridiculous notion. Ridiculous because while one can contend there may be extreme examples where this scenario occurs, it is hardly evidence upon which to base a tax code change.

[WSJ] Even New York’s Chuck Schumer, of all unlikely partisans, has objections—notably to Mr. Obama’s plan to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on taxpayers earning more than $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples): “$250,000 makes you really rich in Mississippi, but it doesn’t make you rich at all in New York, and there ought to be some kind of scale based on the cost of living on how much you pay.”

Mr. Schumer didn’t mention that one reason for the cost-of-living differential is the Empire State’s own sky-high taxes, but the important political point is that the Democratic Party’s chief Wall Street fund-raiser is tacitly acknowledging that raising taxes on the not-so-rich isn’t popular.

Other Senate Democrats don’t like the President’s basic priorities. “Tax increases have to come second to cutting [spending],” said Ben Nelson of Nebraska, perhaps the most vulnerable Democrat up for re-election next year. “I was just home over the weekend and that’s what [my constituents] were all talking about.”

… Not all of the objecting Democrats are concerned about their own re-election. Virginia’s Jim Webb, who is retiring, called the President’s tax proposals “terrible,” adding: “We shouldn’t increase taxes on ordinary income. . . . There are other ways to get there.”

It gets worse for Mr. Obama, as the Associated Press details in their video above. After all, President Obama has with rare exception always been able to count on it and other mainstream media outlets to defend his positions, deflect criticism and counter arguments with tried and true non-sequiturs.

The 10% of households with the highest incomes pay more than half of all federal taxes. They pay more than 70% of federal income taxes, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. But that’s less than 1% of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

This year, households making more than $1 million will pay an average 29.1% of their income in federal taxes, including income taxes, payroll taxes and other taxes, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington think tank. Households making between $50,000 and $75,000 will pay an average of 15% of their income in federal taxes. Lower-income households will pay less. For example, households making between $40,000 and $50,000 will pay an average of 12.5% of their income in federal taxes. Households making between $20,000 and $30,000 will pay 5.7%.

So, because there are 1,400 filers who earn income solely from means other than income-taxed salary, the Obama Democrats think we should craft a whole new tax bracket for people “making more than $1 million”? That’s asinine. The Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was supposed to do just that, but in 40 years has expanded thanks to inflation to affecting at least 4 million people earning far less than $1 million annually.

And going back to prove the point that this is indeed class warfare, it needs to be reiterated that the amount of money the Treasury stands to gain from such a “millionaire tax” is miniscule, in part because the number of millionaires is drastically shrinking. The more Obama’s economic policy saps the country, the less wealthy there are to tax!

[WSJ] In 2007, 390,000 tax filers reported adjusted gross income of $1 million or more and paid $309 billion in taxes. In 2009, there were only 237,000 such filers, a decline of 39%. Almost four of 10 millionaires vanished in two years, and the total taxes they paid in 2009 declined to $178 billion, a drop of 42%.

As I’ve argued many a time on this webpage, liberal Democrats love to demonize the rich, citing examples of Warren Buffet or George Soros, but while their words paint a picture of the elite wealthy, in reality their tax code aims far, far lower — at the Middle Class.

Consider when Democrats use the term’s top X percent:

Of the top 1 percent of income earners, only 23 percent are millionaires. A household income above $380,000 puts you in the top 1 percent of income earners. Of the top 10 percent of income earners, only 2 percent are millionaires.

A household income above $114,000 puts you in the top 10 percent of income earners. That means that a cop making $60K married to a teacher making $60K make it into the top 10 percent.

That’s most of us, not Misters Buffet or Soros.

I’ve long said that the liberal super-rich elites like George Soros and Warren Buffet are disingenuous phonies. (Go ahead and add Barack Obama to that list).

Both supremely successful businessmen and investment bankers, they made his bones with the tax code we have, but now seek to further stifle other entrepreneurs who would seek to do the same.

A few weeks ago George Soros sat before Congress and urged higher regulations on the investment world. Shortly after that, however, Soros announced that his group was taking advantage of a Congressional loophole — or what he called in a letter to investors, “exception” — by restructuring his firm as a “family office” and return outside investors’ money in order to avoid the pain that comes with complying with new Frank-Dodd regulations.

But even worse is Warren Buffet — his influence is so great he attempts to craft tax policy with Obama Democrats.

Never mind that even as Buffet argues for paying more taxes he could cut a check to the U.S. Treasury to pay whatever extra he sees fit as “fair.” And never mind that, like Soros, Mr. Buffet lobbies for and takes advantage of tax breaks that benefit he and his fellow Berkshire Hathaway shareholders, such as was done in Berkshire’s recent investment in Bank of America.

The real charade involves a clever bait-and-switch upon those ignorant of tax policy. Consider that only one of the following statements is true:

1. Warren Buffet pays a lower capital gains tax rate than his secretary’s income tax rate.
2. Warren Buffet pays a lower tax rate than his secretary’s tax rate.
3. Warren Buffet pays a total tax amount that is less than his secretary’s total tax amount.

Statement 1 is the only truth. But it is only true because Mr. Buffet doesn’t earn his fortune from a salary, and hence isn’t taxed with an income tax (a max rate of 35%), such as his secretary. Rather, Buffet earns his fortune off of the buying and selling of stocks, which is taxed under capital gains (a max rate of 15%). It’s comparing apples to oranges. (Oh, and while we’re at it, since Mr. Buffet and his secretary get to craft tax policy de facto, shouldn’t the American public be privy to their tax records?)

Even if somehow Buffet paid a total tax pecentage (all taxes) less than his secretary, it’s just not the rule for the vast majority of high-income earners. Adds a WSJ analysis:

[According to IRS data] But nearly all millionaires still paid a rate that is more than twice the 8.9% average rate paid by those earning between $50,000 and $100,000, and more than three times the 7.2% average rate paid by those earning less than $50,000. The larger point is that the claim that CEOs are routinely paying lower tax rates than their secretaries is Omaha hokum.

What makes it all particularly slimy is how Mr. Buffet, like most expert liars, drapes himself in half-truths, in this case to take advantage of the public and to portray himself as the champion of the middle class. But even comparing his capital gain tax rate to his secretary’s income tax rate, it doesn’t hold water. It’s simply untrue:

What he doesn’t say is that much of his income was already taxed once as corporate income, which is assessed at a 35% rate (less deductions). The 15% levy on capital gains and dividends to individuals is thus a double tax that takes the overall tax rate on that corporate income closer to 45%.

Notice that Warren Buffet never said to raise his “capital gains tax rate” to be more than that of his secretary’s “income tax rate.” Nor did President Obama propose the same. Instead, the president defines his new “Buffet tax” to raise taxes on th0se “making more than $1 million a year.”

That could mean a great many things of course, but one suspects the president has no intention to touch capital gains so much as raise income taxes. He’s already detailed his plan to end the Bush tax cuts for those families make more than $250,000 — or as Obama calls them: “millionaires and billionaires.”

But it’s not class warfare, Mr. Obama promises. Yet if it’s not class warfare why bother at all?

Were the federal government to tax everyone making $1 million or more at 100%, they would only net $400 billion in revenue, which is 2.7% of the national debt, or just 11% of Obama’s 2011 budget, or enough to fund the government for a few months.

Meanwhile, the top 1% of wage earners already pay 38% of all federal income taxes while the bottom 50% paid only 3%. At what percent would Obama Democrats consider the top 1% taxed as “fair”?

And if it’s not class warfare then how is it that the gains won’t make a dent in the national debt or federal deficit?

According to the New York Times, the president’s plan to abolish the Bush tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 is expected to bring in merely $0.7 trillion over the next decade, or about 0.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product per year. As a comparison, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the deficit over the same period is going to be $13 trillion, more than 6 percent of GDP per year.

While not many details are yet know, any tax on “making more than a million” could crush small businesses, because unlike investment bankers most small businesses are organized as such that they pay a personal income tax rate (this includes sole proprietorships, partnerships, s-type corporations and limited-liability companies [llc]).

In other words, Obama isn’t going to raise Warren Buffet’s taxes at all, rather he’s going to raise taxes on business.

And let’s say Obama does plan to raise the capital gains tax (which is the opposite of what President Clinton did to spur the economy) there’s every reason to believe that the rich will simply do what Soros and Buffet did above to reduce their tax bill, while those less savvy investors (i.e. the middle-class investors) would suffer.

Or, take Obama’s plan to eliminate taxation loopholes. While most would be all for this if it meant a truly fair tax policy (for example a flat tax, or elimination of the income tax in favor of a national sales tax) eliminating tax loopholes would not harm the George Soroses and Warren Buffets of the world — but it would definitely hurt the middle class:

[Washington Post] As President Obama and congressional Republicans argue over how to rewrite the U.S. tax code, the debate has revolved around “loopholes” for corporate jets and ending “carve-outs” for well-heeled special interests. But if the goal is debt reduction, that’s not where the money is.

Broad tax breaks granted to millions of families at all income levels dwarf the corporate giveaways. Over the past two years, largely because of these popular benefits in the federal income tax code, the government has reached a rare milestone in tax collection — it has given away nearly as much as it takes in.

The number of tax breaks has nearly doubled since the last major tax overhaul 25 years ago, with lawmakers adding new benefits for children, college tuition, retirement savings and investment. At the same time, some long-standing breaks have exploded in value, such as the deduction for mortgage interest and the tax-free treatment of health-insurance premiums paid by employers.

All told, federal taxpayers last year received $1.08 trillion in credits, deductions and other perks while paying $1.09 trillion in income taxes, according to government estimates.

Only about 8 percent of those benefits went to corporations. (The write-off for corporate jets equals about .03 percent of the total.) The bulk went to private households, primarily upper-middle-class families that Obama has vowed to protect from new taxes.

Finally, there’s every reason to believe that a “millionaire” tax today will simply hit the middle class many years from now, as has already happened with the 1960′s Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), which while constructed for just 155 people, now affects 4.5 million American filers, and would affect another 20 million were it not for an annually passed Congressional bill to exclude them.

Any way you cut this, it’s tax warfare — tried and true for a president who spent $3,820,000,000,000 in 2011 alone, and is about to run for re-election with near 10% unemployment.

I found this analysis interesting particularly because it runs contrary of everything we’re told:

What fraction of U.S. consumer spending goes for goods labeled “Made in China” and what fraction is spent on goods “Made in the USA”?

• The vast majority of goods and services sold in the United States are produced here. In 2010, imports were about 16 percent of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP); imports from China amounted to 2.5 percent of GDP.
• A total of 88.5 percent of U.S. consumer spending is on items made in the United States.
• Chinese goods account for 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditure — about one-quarter of the 11.5 percent foreign share.

One last post on the London riots a couple of weeks ago, in this case an observation from Jonah Goldberg.

If you begin a sentence saying that nothing excuses wanton mob violence and theft, but refuse to come to a full-stop with a period or, better yet, an exclamation point, you know that there’s a “but” coming that will invalidate all of the platitudes that came before it. When someone says, “There’s no excuse for violence, but . . . ,” that “but” is a Pandora’s box of leftist banshees that have left human wreckage in their wake for millennia.

Ultimately, the Left’s weakness for riots stems, I believe, from two things: statist paternalism and power-worship. It’s an amazingly reactionary sentiment when you think about it. The lower classes are savages who need the benign power of the state to keep them from acting on their savage instincts. When the state doesn’t nurture and civilize them, the urban masses revert to their animal natures. The Left doesn’t condone the violence, of course, they just say the violence is to be expected when conservatives cut social spending. Or as I put it in my column, “In other words, the cuts don’t justify the violence, but the threat of violence justifies avoiding cuts.” On a cynical level, when the lower classes rise up and wreak havoc, the self-appointed spokesmen for society’s “victims” see an opportunity to press their advantage. They hold up the mob like a Medusa’s Head, to petrify the bourgeoisie into making ever more concessions.

As for power worship, there’s always been something about the power of crowds that seduces the leftist mind (see Liberal Fascism). There’s also something about the “authenticity” of street thugs that’s intoxicating to liberals and way too many young people generally, particularly if there’s a racial component thrown in. (If the Black Panthers were white, everyone would instantly recognize them as indistinguishable from neo-Nazis.) How else to explain how so many middle class and even upper class criminals got caught up in this authentic expression of lumpenproletarian rage?

Here’s the best retort and thought of the week on what I call the entitlement-hooligan riots in the U.K.

Presumably, London-type riots would not last long in either Texas, or Arizona. — Adam Baldwin on twitter.

Indeed. Thank God for the Second Amendment. I say thank God rather than “Thank Jefferson” because even Jefferson would have understood that such a right is natural, bestowed by The Creator, or if you’re not religious at very least by virtue of having been born a human being. Contrast that with the grand Ponzi scheme, house-of-cards, and castle built on sand known as the Entitlement State, which you better believe is bestowed by consent of the government, rather than by the governed. Things legislated as exceptions and fractions have grown into behemoths as rule and whole. Even so, fully expect that as our 80-million-checks a month government grows amok such riots will no doubt begin here once those government dole checks end. That’s the trap of Socialism-lite — rather difficult to replug that genie once it’s out.

To combat the former Soviet Union, Ronald Reagan took the Sixties and Seventies notion of détente and turned it on it’s head into a policy of rollback. At the time it was called extremist, fantasy or dangerous. But this rollback was incremental, and certainly did not defeat the Soviet Union in a day, or even a week or in an election cycle.

The Tea Parties across the country, along with leadership from some Republicans like Paul Ryan, did just that with our own little cold war — began executing a policy of rollback. As in Reagan’s day, Democrats seek to equate those persons as fanatical (or even, as Vice President Joe Biden shamefully did today, as “terrorists,” or Dem Rep. Luis Gutierrez calling Republicans “arsonists” even as he votes in favor of the “arson” bill.)

On one side we have fiscal liberals seeking to ever expand the tax, spend and government growth policies of Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ. On the other we have a group of limited-government advocates who take the traditional view of Constitutional powers that our founders intended. (And yes, “war” is an allegory or metaphor, not meant as literal and it’s a cryin’ shame I need to add that caveat).

And yet this debt-ceiling battle is just one of many to come in this cold war.

Taken for what it is — a way to keep the conversation and debate rolling, a way to force the liberal intelligentsia to argue (and I think a weak and defeated argument at that) why Keynesian economics is best or even effective — years from now at the end of the long war conservatives may look back at this debt-ceiling deal and conclude it was the first battle in a victorious movement.

As The Weekly Standard noted, “Only 10 of the 87 GOP freshmen, the Tea Party core in Congress, voted “no” [to John Boehner’s original bill]. Credit the Tea Party, however, with creating the climate for cutting spending and the idea of using the debt limit as a vehicle for doing it. No Tea Party, no cuts, and a happy Obama.”

However, conversely, the debt deal is most certainly a short-term loss — if passed as amended by the Senate, it will be the largest debt-ceiling hike in history ($2,400,000,000,000, oh, and the previous record was also held by Obama); a major hit to defense spending; filled with illusionary “cuts” of “spending levels” rather than actual cuts to spending — that is, where because you spend less than you originally intended you call it a “cut” even though you actually spent; and any true spending cuts are ridiculously small — for example, the $900,000,000,000 in cuts occurs unevenly per year over 10 years, whereas the new spending of $900,000,000,000 is added to the budget all at once (only in the Beltway can you call this even Stephen). Put it this way, the $7,000,000,000 cut in fiscal 2011-2011 is what our federal government borrows every 37 hours.

In that light, this deal is crap.

But look at it this way — the objective is limited government and limited spending, and the only way to achieve that — and I mean only way — is to have the right fiscal conservatives win elections, especially this coming one. People are ticked off about the spending. Any opportunity to have a conversation on spending front-and-center in the media spotlight for as long as this one has lasted is a good thing. With Boehner’s bill, we get to have this same debt-ceiling fight again in six months. Combine that with almost 10 percent unemployment and stagnant GDP change and the Tea Party is literally controlling the atmosphere and subject matter of national politics.

I think Charles Krauthammer put it the best:

Look, I think if you’re a Republican, you have to look at the long game and the long view. This has been a tremendous success. The president in January gives a State of the Union address in which he talks about more spending on innovation, energy, all the pet stuff he believes in. Here we are nine months later — that sounds like it’s out of the Jurassic era. We are now in the debt era.

The whole idea of the Tea Party originally was to bring up – it was created by the stimulus and Obamacare in opposition to this huge expansion of government and debt. And what we’re talking about today — monopolizing all discussion is debt. That in and of itself is a victory. We are now in the debt era. It will be central to all political debates.

They’ve gotten quite a lot, a trillion dollars of cuts today. I’m also unhappy about the defense cuts. But you cannot govern out of one House.

If, given the terrible economic numbers that came out on Friday, the president has to defend this economy next year, he loses. The Republicans would have to run the worst campaign in history not to win. And then with control of the White House and the Senate and the House, you can make the changes you want.

I don’t know if the amended debt-ceiling limit deal will become law or not. I do know that right now those who believe in limited government and separation of powers have all the momentum. Don’t mess that up.

Well, pros and cons if you’re fiscally conservative that is.

I was starting a round up of opinions on Speaker John Boehner’s debt-ceiling deal, but I’ll instead avoid the common solution of the very political class we’re discussing by not attempting to foolishly reinvent the wheel — others, such as this round up by Guy Benson, have already done it for us.

Organizations in favor: US Chamber of Commerce, Americans for Tax Reform

Organizations opposed: Club for Growth, FreedomWorks, Heritage Action

Politicians in favor: Allen West, Paul Ryan, Eric Cantor, James Lankford

Politicians opposed: Rand Paul, Jim Jordan, Jason Chaffetz, Jim DeMint, Lindsey Graham (Also, Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, et al).

Now, that is an interesting list of strange bedfellows, is it not? It’s also quite noteworthy to see how the Obama Democrats are clearly opposing the Boehner plan. More of that, and whether or not to take it at face value, momentarily.

A few other noteworthy points and statements come from former Sen. Fred Thompson, Rep. Paul Ryan, and the editors of the WSJ. Each of them sees it as a critical first step, a way to keep momentum into the 2012 elections, and executes tangible spending cuts all without raising a single tax.

The downside is obvious — at the end of the day, no matter which plan we’re taking into account the trillion dollar savings are enacted over 10 years, which really means only hundred-billion dollar savings every year, all the while deficit spending is nonetheless occurring. In other words, as has been noted earlier this month, no matter which plan you back we’re really only talking about reducing the level of spending, not actually reducing spending. To steal another’s analogy, were you broke and bought a Toyota instead of a Mercedes, you’d still be $20-grand in the hole while Congress was congratulating you on saving $60-grand for not buying the Mercedes. It’s faux savings.

However, that doesn’t mean the better option is to go all in, here now, when controlling just one house of one branch of government, and pray when the chips fall the public blames Obama instead of the Republicans. (Fred Thompson writes a lot about the odds of that in his piece).

The alternative — failure to pass Boehner’s plan — could mean Sen. Harry Reid’s plan, which while likewise does not raise taxes, doesn’t really have tangible spending cuts — rather they’re all hypothetical lip service with vague corrections for “waste, fraud and abuse” and with undefined promises of future spending cuts combined with the natural savings via troop reductions that were already scheduled in Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh, yeah, and the gamble that the public will blame Obama instead of Republicans might detonate in the faces of the Republicans. It could work, but maybe not. Thompson strongly advises:

“Is this the best deal we could have obtained?” you might ask. I suggest that you don’t run the risk of finding out.

Having said that, I was completely leaning towards those who suggest we take Boehner plan and declare victory until I read this insight quoted in Guy Benson’s commentary. It will give you pause:

Another interesting anti-Boehner plan argument I’ve heard is that if the credit agencies are going to downgrade us anyway, any plan that passes will be blamed for its failure.  If it happens to be the Boehner plan (and its admittedly paltry cuts), President Obama can come out and pound the desk and insist that because of GOP stubbornness on “revenues,” the political system was stuck supporting a bill that didn’t solve the problem (unlike, he’ll say, his non-existent plan). [note, Benson also cites the CBO rescoring Boehner's plan as far less spending level cuts as advertised, but I would wager that they'll rewrite this and fix it by the time of vote].

Well, they don’t call it poker for nothing. It’s almost impossible to predict how this thing will go (and those who claim to know are either arrogant or lying), but even with that final strategic prediction above, I still leaning pro-Boehner because I think the odds of Republicans shooting themselves in the foot by becoming too cute by half with “what ifs” and “supposes” is greater than taking the smaller but significant victory of spending level cuts without tax increases.

Then again by morning I might change my mind…

Obama’s rhetorical floundering is the sound of a bewildered politician trying to be heard over the long, withdrawing roar of ebbing faith in a failing model of governance. From Greece to California, with manifestations in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Illinois and elsewhere, this model is collapsing. Entangled economic and demographic forces are refuting the practice of ever-bigger government financed by an ever-smaller tax base and by imposing huge costs on voiceless future generations.

Richard Miniter, a Forbes columnist, is right: “Obama is not the new FDR, but the new Gorbachev.” Beneath the tattered, fading banner of reactionary liberalism, Obama struggles to sustain a doomed system. Democrats’ dependency agenda — swelling the ranks of government employees, multiplying government-subsidized industries, enveloping ever-more individuals in the entitlement culture — is buckling under an intractable contradiction: It is incompatible with economic growth sufficient to create enough wealth to feed the multiplying tax eaters.

– George Will.

Lately I’ve been bothered over how much conservative pundits seem to surrender ground when fiscal liberals argue to raise taxes or attack the 2003 Bush tax cuts as somehow being the cause of the current debt crisis (a ridiculous notion, as I’ll demonstrate).

The opposition generally misunderstands the economic argument, and confuses the facts. As one brilliant leader — Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan — once coined: you’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.

Thus, the summation:

Let’s say someone makes $50k and the IRS taxes that person 0%. How many dollars in revenue will the IRS take in from that person? $0. Now let’s say that the IRS takes that same person 100%. How many dollars in revenue will the IRS take in from that person? The answer is actually also $0, because nobody would bother working — or at least not bother reporting their earnings as required by law — if another is going to take 100% from them.

What I’ve just demonstrated is that tax rates affect future spending and investment habits.

This also underscores the only two problems with the 2003 Bush tax cuts — first, they were phased in and gradually increased over a period of 10 years, rather than all at once, and second, they were built to sunset after 10 years. This means that businesses were hedging their bets on spending and investment habits because they had no control over who might control politics and taxation years ahead.

And yet despite this hedging and unrealized potential the Bush tax cuts yielded record level tax revenues from the IRS, in part because the tax cuts positively affected spending and investment behavior, the economy grew and the IRS yielded record revenue from that growth (tax revenue from 2003 to 2007 was the biggest four-year increase in U.S. history). This was no surprise to those who had studied the same occurrences — massive tax revenue increases — after tax cuts by Presidents Coolidge, Kennedy and Reagan.

This also demonstrates that there exists a perfect point, albeit difficult to locate, where you can both maximize tax revenue and simultaneously allow individuals and businesses to keep their earnings and flourish (also known as the Laffer Curve).

Thus, liberals who argue that conservative’s only solution is to cut taxes miss the point — you cut or raise taxes only to change behavior and locate that perfect happy medium, not to raise revenue in itself. Revenue is only raised as a result of a growing economy.

Conversely, once your tax rates become too high — and “too high” is relative to the state of the economic — people stop spending and investing, the economy shrinks and your tax revenues are reduced. Worse, about 75% of all businesses in the U.S., including many LLCs and corporations, are taxed under the individual income tax rather than the corporate income tax — which is why the individual income tax rate is so important.

Finally, inflation means that more people (and businesses) creep into those higher tax brackets over time. This is why the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed in 1970 for just 155 people, now affects 4.5 million American filers due to its failure to index for inflation. That is a gross distortion of intent.

Liberals also fail to understand that what we have is not a tax revenue problem but a spending problem.

Indeed, were we to tax those making $250,000 at 100% we would still not put a small dent into our national debt — even if you really did yield 100% from them rather than the 0% you’d yield after they hid all their earnings.

Just yesterday I posted that the Obama cult demonstrates an increasing disconnect from and disregard of economics, but this example of disrespecting the American public takes the cake.

[Associated Press] Secretary Steven Chu came out swinging Friday against a House bill that would repeal a 2007 federal law effectively outlawing older forms of incandescent bulbs—an effort at energy conservation that has inflamed a wide swath of Americans who don’t care for the more expensive alternatives.

In a conference call with reporters, Mr. Chu said the more-efficient bulbs required would save consumers money over the life of the product, even if the up-front price is higher.

“We are taking away a choice that continues to let people waste their own money,” he said.

Talk about the nanny state run amok. Sec. Chu is going to have to point out to us which section of the U.S. Constitution empowers the government to judge what private spending is or is not “wasting” money, and what gives them the power to trump decisions by individual consumers.

Not to mention, I’ve owned my fair share of these mercury-laden “efficient” bulbs and found them lacking – many times the price of typical incandescents yet having lasted not much longer.

A common definition of hubris is when panels of unelected bureaucrats believe they can make better economic decisions than 300 million consumers in the marketplace. But worse, not only are our they not Constitutionally empowered, but their expertise is typically incorrect and filled with unintended consequences.

Finally, I think this retort by Mark Steyn on Team Obama’s hypocrisy is great.

More to the point, I wonder if Secretary Chu has any idea how stupid this argument sounds from an administration that has wasted more of other people’s money than anybody else on the planet. Secretary Chu and his colleagues took a trillion dollars of “stimulus” and, for all the stimulating it did, might as well have given it in large bills to Charlie Sheen to snort coke off his hookers’ bellies with. (In my weekend column, I touch on only the most lurid and outrageous of the government’s many smart investment decisions: its use of stimulus dollars to stimulate the Mexican coffin industry.)

Chu on that come election day.