BRETT: Oh, infrastructure has become quite the hot potato coming out of Washington, D.C. I noted with a great deal of laughter last night as we saw Senator Kirsten Gillibrand come out and redefine what infrastructure is. She got a lot of pushback. They described it as child care (and child care and child care) and a number of other things, right?
We saw all these redefinitions of infrastructure, and it’s happening because of the way the bill as proposed is beginning to be rolled out, right? We’re told that the internet is infrastructure. People are infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. If it can be harnessed or utilized, you could just call it “infrastructure,” and it’s an interesting battle that’s forming here.
Because you have a situation where Joe Biden is desperate to spend as much money as he can. He’s going full Keynesian, as they say, to prime that pump, get that economy roaring with federal dollars, and he’s starting to get a little bit of a bipartisan backlash. The Washington Times is talking about a piece in which “Biden caves on steep tax increase for businesses after bipartisan backlash.”
We know that Biden is going to try to renew the infrastructure pitch after unveiling the plan to raise corporation corporate taxes. He’s having to kind of pare this back, figure out what he really wants to do, what he really needs to do. And it’s a frustrating reality that’s out there. Politico with a quote: “Damn it. I’m sick and tired…” Pardon my words, but it’s a quote.
“Damn it. I’m sick and tired of ordinary people being fleeced.” That’s Biden defending the corporate tax hike. You’ve got his secretary of the treasury, Janet Yellen, working with G20 countries attempting to establish an international minimum global tax, a minimum corporate tax. Here’s is cut number 17, Mister Broadcast Engineer. Biden on infrastructure.
BIDEN: To automatically say that the only thing that’s infrastructure is a highway, a bridge or whatever, that’s just not rational. It really isn’t. I think the vast majority of Americans think everything from the sewer pipes to the — to the, uh — the, uh, uh, the sewer facilities to the water pipes, I think they’re infrastructure. Anyway.
BRETT: Okay, sewer lines, sewer pipes. You can make a case. That’s a reasonable case that you can make for that. But child care? How is child care infrastructure? That’s what Kirsten Gillibrand was lobbying for. Way back when Barack Obama was proposing a corporate tax cut — that was back in 2012 — remember that? Way back then, Rush told you exactly what it was: A tax increase.
RUSH: If you want less of an activity, tax it, and after you tax it, if you want less again, you raise taxes on it. If you want more of an activity, you lower taxes on it. But look what government does. If there’s a shortage of riders on the New York subway, what do they do? They raise fares. And this is what bureaucrats do, a shortage of revenue in Great Britain, so, raise taxes. Plus, they wanted to go out there and punish the rich.
Remember, Obama a couple of years ago talking about the capital gains rate, and people told him, “No, no, Mr. President, if we lower the capital gains rate we’ll have more revenues.” (imitating Obama) “No, no, I don’t care about that. I don’t care about the revenue. I want fairness.” And fairness to him meant raising the rate on capital gains. It’s the same thing here as in Great Britain.
They wanted to punish their achievers, and they wanted to score points with the middle class and the lower class by making them think the rich are gonna be punished, but look what happens! The rich always find a way around it. “The Treasury,” we’ll do the conversion into dollars, ’cause they use pounds in the story.
“The Treasury received $16.2 billion in income tax payments from those paying by self-assessment last month, a drop of $798 million compared with January 2011.” The amount of income tax paid fell sharply last month by almost a billion dollars, by raising the tax rate. And they’re shocked.
The story is all about how leaders are shocked, they can’t believe that this happened. And they talk about how these evil rich guys found ways around this. Well, of course they’ll find ways around it, because there is no such thing as a static economy. Everything is dynamic. Obama, by the way, has announced what he’s claiming to be is a “corporate tax cut.”
His corporate tax cut will actually raise taxes on businesses by $250 billion. He’s cutting the rate to 28% but he’s making other changes that will actually result in businesses paying more money. Here’s the Wall Street Journal version: “President Obama’s 2013 budget is the gift that keeps on giving — to government. One buried surprise is his proposal to triple the tax rate on corporate dividends, which believe it or not is higher than in his previous budgets.
“Mr. Obama is proposing to raise the dividend tax rate to the higher personal income tax rate of 39.6% that will kick in next year. Add in the planned phase-out of deductions and exemptions, and the rate hits 41%. Then add the 3.8% investment tax surcharge in Obamacare, and the new dividend tax rate in 2013 would be 44.8%.”
You know what it is today? Fifteen. The current dividend tax rate is 15%. Next year, if Obama’s budget were adopted and coupled with what happens with Obamacare, the dividend tax rate will jump to almost 45%. But he’s out there saying, “I’m cutting corporate taxes. I’m gonna cut that rate down to 28%.” But this more than makes up for it.
At a time where the economy is puttering along, Gallup says that unemployment is slated to rise according to their data. Jim Pethokoukis at AEI posted a story about this and his original headline was: “Geithner Should Resign Over Obama’s Corporate Tax Increase Plan.” And shortly after that post went up the headline changed to: “Why Obama’s Corporate Tax Plan’s a Total Bust.” This is an absolute disaster.
This is absolutely purposeful. I’ll make you a prediction. The media will describe this corporate tax proposal as a massive tax cut and a friendly reach across the aisle to achieve fairness, you watch. In fact, they already are. All day long they’ve been talking about Obama’s massive “corporate tax cut,” when it is exactly the opposite.
BRETT: We’ve talked the different words that are getting used in these discussions, in these debates, in these arguments for changing the way we work. You use words that don’t really represent the words you know are going to happen, right? So they talk about “tax fairness,” as Rush was talking about at the beginning of that clip. Tax fairness. What is “tax fairness”? What is “tax fairness”?
If everybody paid 5% or everybody paid 10% or everybody paid 15% — some set number that everybody paid — you’d have to argue that would be fair, ’cause you’re taking 10 % or 15% out of everybody’s bottom line and that’s it. We’re all paying taxes now. Or you say we’re gonna do a sales tax, right? We’ll do a consumption tax. Everybody’s paying the consumption tax. If you buy Ferraris and jet planes, you’re gonna pay a higher tax rate.
You gotta pay taxes on that. Your John Kerry-style yacht, you gotta pay taxes on that. But it’s not about fairness. As he said it’s about getting even with the people who are working — and it’s not the wealthy, ’cause the wealthy, they may not have income. They have structures by which they protect the money they have, and the poor are gonna be protected by the Democratic Party.
Who is it that gets punished? It’s the people in the middle, what they call “the strivers.” Those people climbing up that ladder, building that business, trying to be successful, trying to leave something for their families. They’re at the tippy-top. You’ve got the government alongside the Wall Street types that write checks to the people in the government, and they’re pushing that ladder.
Here you are, you’re three-quarters of the way up that ladder, and they’re just pushing that ladder over, saying, “See ya later, striver! You’re gonna pay more in taxes.” Money will always go to the place where it’s respected. It’s why people are fleeing New York state and California for greener pastures.