I love Joe Biden. He's great for the campaign and McCain :)
"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto has a great analysis:
Joe Biden opened his mouth yesterday, and something foolish came out. We know, dog bites man. But everyone's talking about what he said, so we thought we'd weigh in too. From the Associated Press:
Biden said Thursday that paying more in taxes is the patriotic thing to do for wealthier Americans. . . .
"We want to take money and put it back in the pocket of middle-class people," Biden said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Noting that wealthier Americans would indeed pay more, Biden said: "It's time to be patriotic . . . time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help get America out of the rut."
Since Biden is resting his case on patriotism rather than economic efficacy, let's analyze his statement in those terms.
If paying high taxes is patriotic, then Biden and Barack Obama, in putting forward a plan they claim will result in lower taxes for 95% of Americans, seem to be trying to undermine American patriotism.
In order to avoid this problem, the AP infers that Biden has a double standard in which paying higher taxes is patriotic only for "wealthier" Americans. But it seems odd to say that patriotism demands something of one class of people, while making no such demand on everyone else. You guys, if you want to be patriotic, salute the flag. You guys over there, go ahead and burn it, we don't care.
What is more, Obama and Biden are not proposing higher taxes in order to serve some common purpose such as national defense. Rather, what they want, as Biden makes clear, is outright redistribution: take money from a minority and give it to "middle-class people." As Forbes's Susan Lee notes, many of the Obama-Biden "tax cuts" are actually credits, often "refundable" credits--which is to say, subsidies.
The Obama-Biden tax plan consists in asking a select group of Americans to sacrifice while effective telling everyone else to go shopping.
Where have we heard this before? And can we really afford four more years of the same?
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