Fox News Can’t Stop Lying About Tax Cuts For The Middle Class

The announcement today that President Obama is committed to preserving the current tax rates for middle class Americans has been met by Fox News choosing to frame the issue in a more negative and dishonest manner.

Fox News

On the Fox News web site the story was featured with a headline reading, “Obama ‘100% Committed’ To Tax Hike.” Later, on Fox News as the President was speaking, the network displayed a caption reading, “Pres Urges Congress To Pass Tax Increase On Households Earning More Than $250,000.”

Both of those statements are false. The President is neither committed to, nor urging, a tax increase. The tax increasing was passed and signed into law by Republican president George W. Bush. The legislation implementing the Bush-era tax cuts included a sunset provision for when the cuts would expire. That was Bush’s doing, not Obama’s. What Obama is trying to do is to preserve the tax cuts for the vast majority of Americans who actually need them and will spend them to help the economy grow. It is flat out dishonest to say that, because Obama supports allowing the cuts to expire for a few people at the top of the economic scale, that he is proposing a tax increase as characterized by Fox News.

Deficit FactorsMost independent economists agree that lower taxes for the middle class is more likely to fuel economic growth because the middle class spends more of their money on cars, clothes, food, appliances, electronics, travel, etc. The rich, on the other hand, disperses more of their income to savings or retirement accounts that do nothing to stimulate the economy. And studies have proven that the Bush-era tax cuts are one of the biggest contributors to the deficit.

The President is making a rational proposal that Congress come together and agree to pass the middle class relief that both sides insist is necessary to spur growth. There is simply no reason not to do so. The question of whether to cut taxes further for the rich can be debated separately and need not put everyone else at risk. If Republicans refuse to do this because the wealthy are being left out, then they are effectively holding the majority of Americans hostage on behalf of helping millionaires become even richer. But then, that’s the mission of the GOP (Greedy One Percent).

These facts are available for everyone to see and factor into their appraisal of the current economic debate. Everyone except for Fox News viewers, that is. They will continue to be misinformed and subject to opinions that are contrary to reality and harmful to their own interests.

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12 thoughts on “Fox News Can’t Stop Lying About Tax Cuts For The Middle Class

  1. The austerity method championed by the Tea Party and the Neo Cons has been in force in much of Europe. The end result has been that the middle class, after paying their essential monthly bills have little to no money to spend, and thus have nothing to put back to stimulate the economy. It’s not working there, and it won’t work here.

    You will, of course, hear arguments that the taxes these European middle classes pay is why they don’t have enough money to spend, but these taxes are the same or lower as they were when the economy was good and these people supported economic growth through spending.

    • Well, smart guy, what do you do when you can no longer borrow at an affordable interest rate to fund your bloated government??? You cut, cut, cut – not rocket science. Eventually it all comes back to living within your means. When the people of a country come to depend on the government for all they have, this is what you get – isn’t that where you want us to go leftist?

      • Shut the fuck up you boot licking fucking troll. You don’t know what the fuck you are talking about you mental toddler. Read a book that wasn’t written by some oligarchy enabling right wing bitch.

      • Government is like a household argument rears its wrong head again. “I’m fine what’s your problem?” tone noted as well.

      • Steve, you’re arguing economic theory, yet not addressing the actual facts of the austerity plan as it has played out in Europe. Would you like to explain how you boost the economy without a spending class?

        Furthermore, you state the governments of these Social Democracies provides “all they have”. Would you care to provide documentation for this assertion? It’s one thing to blame the deficit of a country on taxes to provide for the common good, quite another to actually survey the impact of two wars, an unregulated banking sector that collapses on itself and an economic theory that doesn’t trickle down in the least, leading to the decimation of the middle class and a global economic calamity.

        Finally you can call me a “leftist”. I am politically to the left, and given the total failure of Republican economic theory in the last 39 years I am content to distance myself as far from the right as possible.

      • That’s a fine point.

        But it’s also a fiction.

        We’re not talking about borrowing when times are good. Households do borrow to invest in school, home, moving, to cover those months while out of work or on vacation. They borrow quite frequently, and have way more debt than their income for many years on end via college loans and mortgages.

        Did you even read the nice little graphic? You don’t complain about paying back loans by saying you won’t work a 40-hour week to do it! But that’s what Republicans want to do.

  2. The republicans who control the congress with a majority in the house and a flibuster in the senate will never go along with this. Now the american people can make a choice. What Obama is proposing is reasonable and necessary, however the electorate will not get to make the choice they want(Obama) because of voter suppression in swing states.

    In a piece on Raw Story, Ari Berman a reporter for the Nation and Rolling Stone said, “It could throw the election,” he told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. “As you mentioned earlier in your introduction, the states that have passed restrictive voting laws account for 214 electoral votes, nearly 80 percent of what is needed. We’re talking about very, very significant swing votes—swing states, like Pennsylvania, like Florida, like Wisconsin.” If this election is lost due to these anti-democratic republicans passing these ridiculous laws to gain power it will be a huge blow to our democracy.

  3. The current sunset was put in place by a democrat congress in December 2010. there was a democrat house and a democrat senate and a democrat president who passed it. Bush’s taxes ended January 1, 2011. the tax cuts a wholly democrat congress and white passed to replace them will sunset on January 1, 2013.

    • Nope. The sunset was in Bush’s original legislation. What Congress did in 2010 was to extend the sunset provision. It was a stopgap measure that amended Bush’s bill.

  4. also that chart is dubious at best. there are 3 trillion dollars of other things that are ‘driving’ debt. just because you put the things on the top that you think should be cut doesn’t mean they are the sole driver of deficit.

    • You forgot to use the word “democrat” as an adjective in that comment.

      • They also forgot to find the three trillion dollars of ‘other things’. What do you suppose they are?

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