I was browsing through RealClearPolitics yesterday and came across an American Spectator hit piece on the Huffington Post. I gave it a glance just for giggles, expecting nothing those asshats could say about the Huffington Post would be able to get me angry. But I was wrong. Preliminary potshots about Huffington talking points on James Inhofe and global warming were all right-wing boilerplate that I've apparently become desensitized to. But then in the article's second half, they began regurgitating dormant Republican lies about income tax burden...and it got personal.
Here's the article for those brave enough to think they can stomach it...http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13421
Particularly galling to me was the following paragraph, and specifically the second sentence. Forgive me, but I don't know how to do block quotes...
"These Bush tax cuts left the following result of Republican tax policies going back to Reagan. The bottom 40% of all income earners now pay no income taxes at all. In fact, they get net payments from the income tax system due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and the child tax credit. The middle 20% in income, the true middle class, pays less than 5% of the income tax. The Reagan Republican supply-side tax cuts for the rich actually all but abolished income taxes for the middle class and lower income taxpayers. The top 1%, by contrast, pays a whopping 37% of all income taxes, while earning only about half as much as a share of national income. Looks like they are paying more than their fair share, actually. The top 10% of income earners pay 71% of all income taxes. Some tax cuts for the rich."
The entire subset of numbers is completely suspect because the second sentence is patently false (not even accounting for the fact that the argument neglects to mention the regressive tax burden footed by low-income taxpayers due to sales, payroll, property, and excise taxes). Virtually everybody pays federal income tax. I worked at a small-town newspaper in southwestern Minnesota in 2003 and made less than $20,000, yet paid $1,400 in federal income tax. For whatever reason, I was on the hook for more exemptions on my tax form than I had coming that year, so I had to pay in more than $400 in federal income tax after filing. And at $20,000 in St. James, Minnesota, I would have easily been in the top third of income earners in the city....meaning that Republicans would have us believe that myself and somewhere in the neighborhood of 80% of St. James residents contribute not one penny to federal income taxes. It's a lie....and it breeds an even deeper level of ignorance among everyone who reads the lie and passes it on as truth in middle-class and upper-class America.
Two years later in 2005, I worked only three months of the year and was on unemployment for the next six months, earning less than $12,000 for the entire year. Even after receiving my refund at year's end, I was still on the hook for nearly $500 in federal income taxes in 2005. And that year, I did qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit....barely. Had I made an even $12,000 per year as a single filer, I would not have qualified. My cash bounty from the EITC.....was a whopping $48. I STILL paid federal income taxes on $11K per year in earnings...in the hundreds of dollars. Perhaps the rules change for households of more than one that qualify for the EITC, but I'm skeptical even of that.
Bottom line: there is NO WAY that 40% of Americans are paying no federal income taxes. It's a right-wing lie. And it feeds into a narrative that we should not only accept an increasingly lopsided distribution of income in America, but that the losers in the equation are really the winners. For years now, Republicans seem to be reclassifying the working poor, and even the lower middle class, as the modern-day "welfare mamas". With the rolls of "welfare mamas" dwindled down to statistical insignifance, inspiring rage amongst the country club set (you know, like Barack Obama with his martini) have had to move the goalposts on "freeloaders" to convince the haves how the have-nots are picking their pockets. But it seems like a risky strategy. The prototypical Republican voter is now the Wal-Mart clerk in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who robotically pulls the GOP lever every two years because "abortion is murder!" This woman is struggling to survive week-to-week and is likely to be very surprised to see Fox News interviewing Jonah Goldberg breathlessly refer to she and her co-workers as the "lucky duckies" who pay NO income taxes and are thus really causing a hardship on people with yachts.
This disconnect strikes me as the reason why Democrats are now suddenly winning Congressional races in Tupelo, Mississippi. Maddening as it may be, it's also kinda nice to observe the tin ear of the American Spectator making sure the sweating classes are acutely aware of how little concern the Republican Party has for their struggles.