The Republicans are trying to deflect Mitt Romney's 47% remarks by taking a sharp tack back to President Obama and his comments about "redistribution."
Their strategy is to use the negative momentum the 47% created, and pivot off of it, turning the subject back to their focus group tested "Obama is a Socialist."
They're hoping to make lemonade and it may just work.
But we can make redistribution a losing argument for them. Because with one quick and simple sentence our jiu jitsu can send it back in their faces.
"At least Barack Obama is honest about his idea of redistribution."
If you think it's pretty outrageous that Obama would want to "redistribute" wealth away from people who have obscenely large amounts of it, towards people who have so little of it they have trouble surviving, then you ought to be
doubly pissed about any plan
that takes money from people who are struggling to survive and redistributes it toward people who are obscenely rich!
3 out of 5 people in that group Romney calls the "47%" actually hold jobs and pay payroll taxes. And on average they pay 15.3% of their income to these taxes, which is higher than Mitt Romney's tax rate.
As the first chart on this page shows, the government has been getting an ever growing percentage of its revenue from payroll taxes as the corporate tax rate steadily gets trimmed.
• The government gets an ever increasing amount of its money from payroll taxes, and the people who are so poor that those taxes are the only federal taxes they contribute pay a higher rate than many within the 1%. •
But wait! Under the Ryan tax plan, Mitt Romney would pay a 0.82% tax rate. Why not just make it zero?
30 major US corporations paid no taxes while earning hundreds of billions in profits. Some of these companies didn't just have a zero tax liability - and I can't hardly believe this is true - they had a negative tax liability!! The public subsidized their obscene profits!
• The corporate tax cuts, the ones which supposedly allow new jobs to rain down, get paid for by the workers whose jobs the tax cuts are supposed to create. •
One thing about these payroll taxes is it's money for Social Security and Medicare that is supposedly separate from the rest of the money the government receives and spends. It's also money that the 1% doesn't pay into. Richie Rich who reaps millions in capital gains doesn't contribute to SSI or Medicare. Every time you hear a Republican talk about private Social Security accounts or a "defined benefits" Medicare program, it's because they're looking to pillage a source of money which the fat cats they represent have no vested interest.
• The people who have contributed nothing into these two earned benefits programs want to use that money to make sure they end up paying a near-zero tax rate! •