You can bet on it: Obama will raise your taxes
By: Byron York
Chief Political Correspondent
August 4, 2009
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| President Barack Obama waves after speaking at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., Monday, Aug. 3, 2009. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon) |
Each week the Gallup organization publishes an analysis of job approval for President Barack Obama, broken down by all sorts of demographic groups. You want to know the president's approval rating among voters 65 years or older? It's 48 percent. Voters with a high-school diploma or less? Fifty-six percent. Voters who call themselves liberal Democrats? Ninety-one percent.
As far as income is concerned, Gallup reports its results for people who make less than $24,000 a year, those who make between $24,000 and $60,000 a year, those who make between $60,000 and $90,000 a year, and those who make more than $90,000.
Obama is solidly popular (64 percent job approval) with voters making less than $24,000. But after that, his support starts to slide. Among the group making between $24,000 and $60,000, it's 53 percent. In the group between $60,000 and $90,000, it's 52 percent. Among those above $90,000, it's an even 50 percent. (While that last group includes anyone from Bill Gates down to a welder who works a lot of overtime, it's safe to say that most are clustered in the lower end of the scale, sharing many of the same concerns with those in the next-lower category.)
In January, Obama's job approval rating among the two highest income groups was 69 and 67 percent, respectively. Now, more than a quarter of that support has disappeared. Put another way, a large segment of the broad middle class is dropping away from Obama.
What is happening?
"After all this discussion about health care and cap and trade and loss of jobs and the budget and the stimulus, this group is suddenly beginning to feel particularly vulnerable to tax increases," says one Republican pollster. "They don't see how things are going to work out for them in a positive way, and they worry that instead of being in a position to bounce back from the present economic environment, in fact more money may be taken away from them."
Their concerns are entirely rational. Economists left and right have long argued that there is no way Obama can pay for a national health care makeover and a host of other expensive initiatives without breaking his campaign pledge not to raise taxes for anyone making less than $250,000. The wealthy are already paying a grossly disproportionate percentage of federal income taxes, and increasing taxes on them won't raise enough money to meet Obama's needs.
That's why Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner hemmed and hawed Sunday when ABC's George Stephanopoulos pressed him on the prospect of higher taxes. "Well, we're going to have to look at -- we're going to have to do what's necessary," Geithner answered.
During the presidential campaign, candidate Obama was absolutely adamant about taxes. "If you make less than $250,000 a year, you will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime," Obama said at a September 2008 rally. "In fact, I offer three times the tax relief for middle-class families as Senator McCain does, because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class."
Not long after Obama made those remarks, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher, the Toledo, Ohio, man better known as Joe the Plumber, made headlines with a single question to the candidate: "Your new tax plan is going to tax me more, isn't it?"
Looking Wurzelbacher in the eye, Obama carefully explained that he wanted to cut most people's taxes, but that if the plumbing company Wurzelbacher wanted to buy generated more than $250,000, then yes, his taxes would go up. "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Obama said.
Wurzelbacher's skepticism touched a nerve among Republicans and set off a wave of derision among Democrats. But in all the arguing that followed, many observers missed the true meaning of his point.
Republican voters weren't concerned about Obama's tax pledge because they themselves made more than $250,000 a year. The vast majority of them didn't. And they weren't concerned because they believed they would soon make more than $250,000 a year. They were concerned because they simply did not believe Obama's promise. They knew what he was planning, and they knew it couldn't be paid for just by raising taxes on the rich. Sooner or later, they sensed, Obama would be coming after them.
And now, less than a year later, the time has nearly come.
Byron York, The Examiner's chief political correspondent, can be contacted at byork@washingtonexaminer.com. His column appears on Tuesday and Friday, and his stories and blog posts appears on www.ExaminerPolitics.com ExaminerPolitics.com.
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