Obama's spread the wealth message

Linda Chavez:

"When you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody," Barack Obama explained to Joe Wurzelbacher in Ohio earlier this week. But Joe the Plumber, as he has become known thanks to Wednesday night's presidential debate where his name was invoked no fewer than a half dozen times by both candidates, isn't buying it. And Wurzelbacher is right to be skeptical.

In an interview with CBS' Katie Couric after the debate, Wurzelbacher said he was worried that Obama would be the one deciding who was wealthy and, therefore, should be taxed more. Obama says only those earning more than $250,000 will see their taxes go up. But Wurzelbacher worries, "When's he going to decide that $100,000 is too much, you know? I mean, you're on a slippery slope here."

Wurzelbacher's fears are well founded. Obama was unable to name a single significant program that he would scale back when asked by debate moderate Bob Schieffer to do so. Obama will have to come up with the money to pay for some trillion dollars in new spending in his first term -- including what he calls a "tax cut" but which will really be a check from those who do pay taxes to low-income Americans who already don't pay any federal income taxes.

The wealthy already pay a hugely disproportionate share of all federal income taxes. According to an analysis by the non-partisan Tax Foundation using the latest IRS figures (for 2006), taxpayers with an adjusted gross income (AGI) of $153,542 and above made up the nation's top 5 percent of earners. But this top 5 percent paid nearly 60 percent of all the income taxes collected in 2006, while earning about 37 percent of AGI. For all the talk of middle-income earners paying most of the taxes, the facts suggest otherwise. Those in the 26-50 percentiles of AGI pay about 11 percent of taxes and earn 19 percent of income.

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It is unfortunate that at no debate and in no interview has Obama been asked what percent of the taxes the top five percent should pay. I think the answer would be revealing.

One reason this plumber is being pummeled by the media and the left is that he has exposed Obama and at the same time demonstrated that Democrats do not have a lock on the blue collar vote. He has also demonstrated how they would kill the American Dream of owning your won business and becoming wealthy.