NRD Editor’s Note: This column originally appeared at The Hill.
By Rick Manning — Tax fairness is the campaign theme for the State of the Union political theater, yet what is being proposed doesn’t seem very fair.
According to the Census Bureau, 48.6 percent of all Americans live in a household that receives some sort of taxpayer assistance, and USA Today reports that only 54 percent of the people who file tax returns end up paying any taxes at all.
It seems to me that those of us who don’t receive government handouts, and are foolish enough to pay income tax, have been handed a pretty raw deal.
Those of us who pay taxes get to work our butts off, take risks, create jobs for others, make sacrifices that take us away from our families and spend 50, 60, 70 or even 100 hours some weeks trying to make our living.
Yet the president thinks it is unfair that he can’t spend even more of our money to create even more government beneficiaries.
Of course, there are those who invest in companies and provide the capital to spur job creation. Surely the president can appreciate how difficult it is to pick winners and losers in the private sector given his administration’s dismal record in the world of venture socialism.
After giving billions of taxpayer dollars to bankrupt losers like Solyndra, Evergreen Solar, Beacon Power, SpectraWatt and Eastern Energy, President Obama must realize why the returns on risk capital are taxed at a lower rate than regular income.
If he doesn’t understand this, perhaps it is because he became a millionaire after he became an elected official and never had to actually risk his own money on someone else’s dream.
Perhaps if he had, he would understand that raising taxes on capital investment in the name of fairness is both a job killer and horrifically bad for the middle-class worker who depends upon this investment for his or her job.
But in a world where you believe that government is the source of all wealth, it is not surprising that this president would attack private investment while defending his own failed public investment record.
In the alternative universe that is ObamaWorld, successful private investing is the ultimate sin and must be taxed at a higher rate even if it drives investment overseas and ultimately hurts American workers.
After all, it is about giving everyone a “fair chance” by redistributing wealth from those who earn it to those who have the political power to take it.
Rick Manning is the communications director of Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Rick on Twitter at @RManning957.
