Latest Rightwing Complaint: Taxes Are Too Low

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Thursday April 08, 2010 · 2:23 PM PDT

2010/04/08 · 14:23

No, that's not a typo. In their endless quest to put a negative spin on anything Obama does, the rightwing noise machine is now bitching about the following AP story, entitled Nearly half of U.S. households escape federal income tax:

About 47% will pay no federal income taxes for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability.

Now, normal people would look at that and say, "The only obviously bad part of this is that the recession is partly responsible, and many people simply don't make enough money to pay taxes." That's what normal people think. But it's not what the right thinks...

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly looked around for rightwing reaction to America's lowered tax burden, and look what he found:

Drudge is telling readers today, "Rob Thy Neighbor: Half of Households Pay No Fed Income Tax." Fox Nation's headline reads, "Fair? Half the Country Doesn't Pay Income Tax."

Yes, lowering taxes is a bad thing when it's done by a Democratic administration. Because when a Democrat does it, it's just welfare.

Benen goes on to note that it's rapidly becoming the rightwing meme de jour:

Rick Santorum told Fox News viewers last night, "[W]hen you reach the point where people feel like they don't have to pay anything and they're getting money out of the Treasury for nothing, then there's no end to the amount of government that people want." Glenn Beck is also outraged that more Americans aren't paying more in federal taxes.

I just want to interject here for a moment, and reiterate that this is not a snark diary. Yes, the right really is deeply offended that half of America's households will be paying no federal taxes this year.

Media Matters asks a couple of questions:

From a purely philosophical perspective, wouldn't a study claiming that nearly half of U.S. households escape paying a federal income tax be good news for a political movement --as well as its chief media enabler--that rallies for lower taxes? Am I missing something here, or is Fox News' hypocrisy slip just showing again?

I think Media Matters is missing the point here. Obama could abolish all taxation starting tomorrow, and the Tea Partiers and their media enablers would still be against it. It is bad because a Democrat did it. It is really bad because Obama did it. End of explanation.

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