The Obama System

By David Weber

During the presidential debate in Nashville, Tennessee on October 7, 2008, the Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain, missed a golden opportunity to underscore a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans to some 50 Million Americans. Referring to proposed tax cuts, and in particular, the so-called Bush tax cuts, candidate Obama asserted lower taxes to be "money out of the system." This statement exposed a fundamental difference between the left and the right, which is that Mr. Obama views a more perfect nation as a system of big government control, as opposed to a system of a free people or a free market system.

Candidate Obama had previously revealed his view on taxation during the Democratic presidential debate in Philadelphia on April 16, 2008. When Host Charles Gibson asked candidate Obama why he would want to raise the capital gains tax when history had shown that the lower rates actually produced more revenue due to increase investment activity, and that over 100 million Americans would be adversely affected, Mr. Obama indicated that it was more a matter of fairness. That is, it is more important that certain Americans pay a higher tax rate even if it did not result in additional revenue.

In essence, President Obama and the Democratic Party in general are fundamentally interested in penalizing the successful, and are irremovably attached to an ideology of government control over the people. To the left, this is "the system."

We have seen this play out in the current debate over the extension of the Bush tax cuts. For years now we have heard the Democrats howl against the "Bush tax cuts for the rich." However, we now see that even the Democrats are in support of nearly 80% of the Bush Tax cuts ($3 trillion over 10 years) as they are cuts "for the middle class." The current debate is over the remaining 19% of these cuts ($700 billion over 10 years) "for the rich." So the Democrats now prove that they were previously misleading the public in that Bush-era tax cuts predominantly applied (80%) to the middle class and not "the Rich" as they previously indicated to their constituents.

We are now told by this political party that the Republicans want to "give money to the rich." But only in Washington (and perhaps in dark alleys) is not taking more money from you, considered to be giving you money. On the other hand, the Democrats do want to give money away -- other people's money -- in the form of an extension to unemployment compensation by paying people not to work for up to 3 years now.

The fact of the matter is that the top 1% of American earners already pay a disproportional 40% of all federal income taxes, The top 10% pay nearly 70% of all federal income taxes, and the bottom 50% pay virtually no federal income taxes. Much of the tax cuts currently being debated are not cuts at all, but rather additional government outlays, tax credits, which go well beyond the amount these lower income Americans are paying in federal income taxes.

The Democratic Party is bound to the idea of creating a society wherein the majority of citizens are dependent on the government. Thereby, this majority will continue to vote for Democrats so that the government outlays on which they depend will be sustained. We are currently at this tipping point with nearly half the country not paying federal income tax, and relying on the other half to support them.

Candidate Obama told us that he wanted to fundamentally transform America. But, the type of society the Left is attempting to create -- a system of government control -- has proven time and time again to fail, producing nothing but malfunction and misery. Examples of the perpetual failure of this leftist ideology continue: from a once golden state and any of America's inner cities, to the current condition of Western Europe or to the failure of the Soviet Union.