President Obama: Every [Other] Dollar is Important

    In view of the president's continued yet veiled intentions to allow the payroll tax holiday to expire at the end of 2012, the latest blog post at BarackObama.com is especially audacious.  The looming expiration of this same tax cut last year brought about the What $40 Means campaign from the White House, wringing stories of the destitution and desperation the loss of $40 per paycheck ($1,000/year for the average middle class taxpayer) would bring.  But this year, the Bush tax cuts have taken center stage, and the president appears ready to allow payroll taxes to increase back to the original level while the audience's attention is focused elsewhere.  Even so, it takes a special kind of nerve to frame the middle class tax issue as the president's team has here:

Middle class taxes: “Every dollar is important”Supporters across the country are joining President Obama in urging Congress to keep taxes low for middle-class families. Here's what $2,000 a year would mean to just a few of the folks who have shared their stories.

    Apparently "every dollar" doesn't include those extra payroll tax dollars that will hit every wage earner effective January 1st.  So, let's revise some of the examples the president has elicited from citizens so far at the White House website on what $2,000 means (revisions in italics):

Stephen, Florida - It could be the difference in sustaining our small family business from one month to the next.  Of course, with the payroll tax holiday expiring, that will make our survival that much more difficult.Sheri, Arizona - $2,000 is the January mortgage payment, February mortgage payment, March car payment.  But since my payroll taxes will be going up $1,000, I guess I'll be late on the February mortgage payment.  Hmmm... but what about the car payment...@swellgalmary on Twitter - #My2K goes to prescriptions, mortgage, and other necessities. It's not discretionary income for me. I need it to keep on keeping on.  But if the president thinks I can do without half of that $2,000, maybe I can just take my meds every other day.

    Although I am making light of the situation, for some of these people January's first paycheck is going to bring a nasty shock.

Spending Cuts Guaranteed or Your (Tax) Money Back

    While kibitzing on Twitter this week, another tweeter and I got into a discussion about the GOP's tax strategy and the fiscal cliff.  We continued the discussion via email and after some further thought, I'd like to propose what I believe is a novel approach to the taxes versus spending cuts approach that has bedeviled budget and deficit negotiations for decades.

    One of the infamous examples of a "deal" that ultimately failed is the 1982 TEFRA legislation that Ronald Reagan negotiated with the Democrats in Congress.  As Steven Hayward noted in Commentary Magazine back in 2011:

TEFRA was designed to bring about $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in new revenue, which meant that, on paper, it advanced Reagan’s goal of shrinking the federal government. In practice, the results of TEFRA were almost exactly the opposite. While the tax increases were real, Congress never delivered on the spending cuts. By one calculation, the 1982 budget deal actually resulted in $1.14 of new spending for each extra tax dollar. Obama and today’s liberals have responded with incredulity to the Republicans’ refusal to take a 3-for-1 cuts-to-taxes deal (or a 10-to-1 deal, as was posed hypothetically to the GOP presidential field in an Iowa debate). Some of us have seen this movie before, and we know how it ends.

    I believe that experience more than any other single example has defined conservative, and to a lesser extent, Republican attitudes towards deal-making ever since.  Two of the most iconic presidential quotes on taxes can trace their roots to the TEFRA experience.  Hayward notes the first:

[E]arly in 1985, Reagan invoked Clint Eastwood’s brand-new sound bite when he declared that members of Congress “seem to be in full-scale retreat from spending cuts and are talking about raising people’s taxes again. Well, let them be forewarned: I have my veto pen drawn and ready for any tax increase that Congress might even think of sending up. And I have only one thing to say to the tax increasers: ‘Go ahead, make my day.’”

    The second, also drawn from a movie, was George H.W. Bush's 1988 pledge, "Read my lips.  No new taxes."  But while Reagan held firm and even pushed through the landmark Tax Reform Act of 1986 simplifying the tax code dramatically, Bush famously broke his pledge and was abandoned by voters in droves in 1992 ushering in the era of Bill Clinton.  But 1992 also saw the emergence of the controversial Tax Pledge championed by Grover Norquist.  For two decades, this pledge has been taken by scores of Republican lawmakers and has largely been adhered to.

    However, unlike Bill Clinton after the Democrats 1994 election drubbing, Barack Obama has shown no inclination to work with the Republicans.  And without a majority in the Senate, House Republicans are limited in their ability to influence the debate and force the president to acquiesce to their demands to hold the line against all tax increases.  What then are their alternatives?

    Some have called for another attempt to strike a commitment-for-spending-cuts-for-tax-increases deal.  Obviously, this is problematic on at least two fronts.  First, such deals in the past, as noted above, rarely achieve true spending cuts.  These deals have the ring (this reference may now be archaic) of Wimpy's famous line from Popeye, "I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."  Nobody really believes it's going to happen.  Second, any agreement to a tax increase could put many Republicans who have agreed to Norquist's Tax Pledge in the same leaky boat George H.W. Bush found himself piloting in 1992 on the way to electoral defeat.  Is there any way to overcome these sizable stumbling blocks that lie near the edge of the fiscal cliff (see what I did there?)

    I'd like to suggest a strategy that could give the Republicans a leg up in the fiscal cliff negotiations.  Rather than agree to a "commitment" to cut spending, write the deal directly into the tax legislation.  Any tax increase would be contingent upon actual reductions in spending, not projected cuts (such as the mythical "$400 million in Medicare cuts" the Obama team has been touting.)  There would be several ways to implement this idea.

    One would be to simply postpone any tax increase until the real figures on government spending are available for a specified period of time, for example, the first six months of 2013.  To the extent cuts are achieved and spending actually dropped, the desired tax increases could go into effect in proportion to the real spending reduction that took place.  Additional benchmarks could be scheduled out into the future and tax increases could even be reversed if spending begins to rise again.

    An alternative would be to implement the tax increases immediately, but after 2013 ends, any failure to reduce spending to targeted levels would trigger a tax credit that those hit with 2012 tax increases could claim, again in proportion to the shortfall in spending reduction goals.  If spending reduction goals were achieved, the credit would be zero.  If spending was not reduced, or it increased, the credit would be for the full amount of the taxpayers' 2012 tax increases.

    Surely there are a variety of other ways to hold government accountable for its actual spending with this money-back guarantee approach, but the Tax Pledge stumbling block still remains.  How could the Republicans justify going along with this increase?  I would suggest a two-pronged approach.

    First, conservatives and Republicans have been warning for years that under the current debt trajectory, effective rates will eventually reach confiscatory and unsustainable levels.  A September Wall Street Journal article by George P. Shultz, Michael J. Boskin, John F. Cogan, Allan H. Meltzer and John B. Taylor (yes, five authors, so it must be true):

What does this spending and debt mean in the long run if it is not controlled? One result will be ever-higher income and payroll taxes on all taxpayers that will reach over 80% at the top and 70% for many middle-income working couples.

     If this money-back guarantee plan actually works, a 10% increase in the top rate for the top 2% of income tax filers will be a small price to pay for real spending reform which is the only way to eventually get everyone's taxes reduced.  Some might say that "a small price" is easy for me to say because I am not in the top 2%, but as the quote above indicates, middle-income earners will soon be in the sights of the tax increasers - the "rich" only have so much money and if spending continues to rise, no one will be safe.  The consolation prize of this plan is that if spending cuts don't occur, no one's taxes go up.  This will be a fiscal disaster for the country, but at least the Republicans can claim credit for protecting taxpayers from paying (at least in the short term) for irresponsible government spending.

    The second prong involves the upcoming expiration of the payroll tax holiday.  As I have written recently, the Republicans have mostly ignored this tax increase, even though it represents a technical violation of the Norquist Tax Pledge.  (This increase will be automatic without legislation to extend it just like the Bush Tax Cuts, so to say one violates the pledge and the other doesn't is disingenuous.)  The Democrats and President Obama have engaged in active misdirection about the payroll tax holiday by claiming the president's plan will prevent 98% of taxpayers from seeing their taxes go up "a single dime."

    The answer is to preserve the payroll tax cut, but shift it away from being a Social Security tax cut to an income tax credit.  The payroll tax holiday was a dumb idea to begin with, the Republicans have a chance now to turn this to their advantage.  Not only can they expose the president's plan to allow this payroll tax increase to take place, by shifting the cut from a Social Security tax to income tax, they can show that the Republicans are the ones preserving the intended revenue stream for Social Security and yet at the same time are the party preventing the middle class and poor from being hit with a tax increase on January 1st (about $1,000 for the average middle class family), a tax increase that President Obama is trying to slip under the radar.

    The mechanics of this tax credit (let's call it the Sustaining Working Americans tax credit) would involve a refundable credit of a flat 2% on Social Security wages (on wages up to the current Social Security tax wage ceiling of $110,100. )  This SWA credit would be available on Form 1040 along with the child tax credit and other such credits applied to gross income tax.  The credit would be refundable to make it available to filers whose tax liability is at or below zero since they too would be hit with the increase from the ending of the payroll tax holiday.

    The bitter pill in this plan for Republicans remains the tax increase on income above $250,000 that the Obama administration is fixated on.  But by acquiescing to the president's key demand, the Republicans can claim the mantle of reasonable compromise, willing to meet the president halfway.  But the money-back guarantee places the onus on the president to actually follow through on spending cuts that he now is able to blue-sky.  And Republicans will be able to clearly show that if the country indeed goes off the fiscal cliff in January, it was no accident - President Obama pushed it off.

My2K Versus What $40 Means

    Last year, as the payroll tax holiday neared its expiration, the Obama White House invited the American people to let Congress know What $40 Means.  This year, both the president and the GOP Congress agree that the so-called Bush Tax Cuts should be extended for everyone earning $250,000/year or less, but the GOP believes the rates should be extended for all taxpayers.  So this year, the White House has put together a new campaign, My2K, and is urging Americans to "Tell us what $2,000 means to you and your family," to try to bully the Congress into going along with him plan by implying Congress wants to raise taxes on families by $2,000.

    What makes this so remarkable is that the payroll tax holiday is once again expiring, but this time, the Obama administration has no plans to extend it.  So while last year's What $40 Means campaign remains on the White House website even now, the Obama administration has launched a smokescreen My2K campaign to ostensibly protect taxpayers from a $2,000 increase that neither the Democrats or Republicans are planning.  President Obama himself today deceptively declared that with his plan, "That means 98% of Americans and 97% of small businesses wouldn't see their taxes go up by a single dime."  In reality, the passage of the president's plan (or the GOP's plan) would "save" average taxpayers $2,000 by preserving current rates while costing them $1,000 from the payroll tax holiday expiration.  The bottom line is $1,000 less net pay in 2013 for average taxpayers, who will soon discover What $40 Means.

The White House's Latest Tax and Switch

    Today, the National Economic Council and the Council of Economic Advisers weighed in on the Middle Class Tax Cuts with a 14-page campaign pamphlet report complete with color photos, charts and graphs.  As the president himself has done for months now, the report wastes no time in giving a false impression the president's record on taxes and his plan for 2013.  The introduction begins as follows:

President Obama  is committed to  growing our economy from the middle out by ensuring  a strong, secure, and thriving  middle-class.   That’s why his top priority is  promoting jobs and growth while reducing our deficit in a balanced and responsible way.
Since taking office, President Obama has repeatedly cut taxes for middle-class families to make it easier for them to make ends meet.  A typical family making $50,000 a year has received tax cuts totaling $3,600 over the past four years – more if it was putting a child through college.
Now we face a deadline that requires action on jobs, taxes and deficits by the end of the year. If Congress fails to act, every American family’s taxes will automatically go up - including the 98 percent of Americans who make less than $250,000 a year and the 97 percent of small businesses that earn less than $250,000 a year. A typical middle-class family of four would see its taxes rise by $2,200. 

    So if President Obama has saved the average middle class family $3,600 over the past four years, how is that same family facing an increase of $2,200 in 2013?  The answer is that the two amounts are entire unrelated.  The president has repeated cited the $3,600 figure throughout the campaign, sometimes even giving the impression that it was an annual savings.  The details on that $3,600, however, were given rather infrequently.  Interestingly, the clearest explanation I found was in a previous National Economic Council report from July 2012.

A typical family making $50,000 a year has seen their taxes cut by $3,600 over the last four years, $800 in each of 2009 and 2010 due to the Making Work Pay tax credit and $1,000 in each of 2011 and 2012 due to the payroll tax cut.

    The $3,600, therefore, is composed of the Making Work Pay tax credit which expired after 2010, and the payroll tax holiday, set to expire at the end of 2012.  As I have detailed extensively recently, the president has gone out of his way to give the impression that if his plan is passed, middle class families won't see their taxes increase a single dime.  Indeed, the NEC and the CEA in today's report assure us:

President Obama has stood for providing certainty to more than 100 million middle-class families that their taxes will not go up on January 1st.

    But since the payroll tax holiday extension is not currently part of the president's plan, this statement is patently false.  Even if the GOP completely caves and passes the president's plan as presented to preserve the Bush Tax Cuts only for those earning under $250,000, that average middle class family will still see a $1,000 tax increase.

    This hidden tax increase which today's report completely ignores undercuts the entire argument of the report.  The premise of the report is the economic damage that will be caused by a middle class tax increase, and indeed may even be caused by the mere threat of such an increase due to the uncertainty of the "fiscal cliff" negotiations.  But if the threat of a $2,200 tax increase is damaging, certainly a $1,000 payroll tax increase is nothing to sneeze at.  In fact, towards the end of the report, the following is presented:

    Is $2,000 a "substantial hit," but $1,000 is not?  The chart could be revised to read:

WHAT $1,000 MEANS TO THE AVERAGE MIDDLE-CLASS FAMILY
 One month of mortgage payments on their home
 Six weeks of food and groceries.
 Nearly two semesters of college textbooks and supplies.
 Nine months of electric bill payments.
 Two months of car payments.

    Besides all this, the payroll tax increase will hit everyone, even the working poor.  Someone earning only half of the "average middle class family" ($25,000) would be hit with a $500/year increase in payroll taxes.

    In 2011, the payroll tax holiday warranted the What $40 Means campaign from the White House which produced thousands of stories of near destitution that its expiration would cause.  Unless the White House is holding the extension in its back pocket as a trump card to outplay the GOP in the "fiscal cliff" negotiations, it will be interesting to see how the public reacts to suddenly smaller paychecks in January 2013 when everyone was kept under the illusion that "President Obama has stood for providing certainty to more than 100 million middle-class families that their taxes will not go up on January 1st."

    Time is running out for taxpayers, and time is also running out for the GOP to take the initiative on this issue.  At the moment Republicans seem to be going soft on the 20 year old Grover Norquist tax pledge, they have a chance to expose the president's charade and reaffirm that this is not a time to raise anyone's taxes.  John Boehner needs to get in front of every camera in Washington he can find and ask, "Why is President Obama trying to sneak through a tax increase that hits the middle class and working poor the hardest?  Which is worse: Extending current tax rates for everyone?  Or taking $500 from a poor working family or $1,000 from a middle class family?  Is this part of the "fun" Jay Carney was talking about?"

    It's time the tables were turned.  Let's see the White House on the defensive for once.  At the very least, it will provide some catharsis for November 6th.  At best, it will spare Americans a tax increase and show that Republicans really do have all Americans' best interests at heart.

Spot the Differences: The Tax Increase Version

    In activity books for young children, it's not uncommon to find a game called Spot the Differences.  Two pictures appear, almost identical, but with subtle differences, such as this:

    This week, President Obama has presented the American people with a grown-up, higher stakes version of the same game.  Here are his remarks on the "middle class tax cuts" from this past Wednesday's news conference:

The other option is to pass a law right now that would prevent any tax hike whatsoever on the first $250,000 of everybody’s income.  And by the way, that means every American, including the wealthiest Americans, get a tax cut.  It means that 98 percent of all Americans, and 97 percent of all small businesses won’t see their taxes go up a single dime.  The Senate has already passed a law like this.  Democrats in the House are ready to pass a law like this.  And I hope Republicans in the House come on board, too.

    And here's what he said in his Saturday weekly address:

The other path is for Congress to pass a law right away to prevent a tax hike on the first $250,000 of anyone’s income. That means all Americans – including the wealthiest Americans – get a tax cut.  And 98 percent of Americans, and 97 percent of all small business owners, won’t see their income taxes go up a single dime.   The Senate has already passed a bill like this. Democrats in the House are ready to pass one, too. All we need is for Republicans in the House to come on board.

    Yes, there's "option" in the first and "path" in the second.  But that one's about as obvious as the moons in the children's illustration above.  There are several like that.  The difference I am talking about is more subtle, but at the same time enormous.  Give up? (At this point, my youngest daughter would cry out, "No, no, no, no!  Don't tell me!")

    OK, spoiler alert.  Here it is.  That six letter word, "income."  At his press conference, the President said that most Americans "won’t see their taxes go up a single dime."  But in his weekly address, he said "won’t see their income taxes go up a single dime."  Now why did the president add that word?

    If I suffered from delusions of grandeur, I might believe someone at the White House read my blog post on Friday, "'Not a Single Dime' Versus 10,000 Dimes" and developed a guilty conscience.  More likely, the administration has simply realized a need for technical cover for the implicit decision not to extend the payroll tax holiday.  As of January 1st, 2013, millions of Americans will head over their own personal fiscal cliffs as the average middle-class family earning $50,000 sees a net decrease in take-home pay of $1,000.  Last year, the White House presented this scenario as a dire, grocery/heat/gasoline-endangering crisis, but that was before the election, and apparently poor and middle class taxpayers are now well positioned to absorb the blow due to the "recovery," such as it is.

    What continues to amaze me is that six weeks away from this tax increase, it continues to approach virtually unnoticed.  While the Obama administration certainly exploited the issue last time around, the effect on paychecks is real and the primary impact is certainly not on the "rich."  Unless the administration is holding the payroll tax extension as its trump card to outmaneuver the GOP in the fiscal cliff talks, it is difficult to imagine how President Obama will escape the blame for this stealth tax increase.  A Great Depression song is about to be reincarnated as "Brother, Can You Spare 10,000 Dimes," and the answer will undoubtedly be a resounding, "No!"

"Not a Single Dime" Versus 10,000 Dimes

    Even as the White House continues to champion the cause of the middle class, the average middle class family will be facing a $1,000 tax increase effective January 1, 2013.  The front page of the White House website urges citizens to contact Congress to "Pass the Middle Class Tax Cuts," but this is doubly deceiving.   President Obama is simply planning to maintain current federal tax rates on those making under $250,000; there is no "tax cut" to be passed.  And on top of this, none of the proposals from the White House currently includes extending the Social Security payroll tax holiday that was instituted for 2011 and 2012.  This means a family making $50,000 a year will see a $1,000 decrease in take home pay beginning January 1st no matter what.  

    The last time I can find a record of the administration being asked about the payroll tax holiday was on October 27, 2012.  Deputy Press Secretary John Earnest was asked the following aboard Air Force One [emphasis added]:

Q    Josh, is the White House crafting an alternative to the payroll tax cut, as The Washington Post reported this morning?
MR. EARNEST:  I saw the -- I read The Washington Post story today.  I can tell you that the report is not correct -- the administration is not contemplating at this time a tax cut as the way that it’s described in the Post.
     What I can tell you is that when the President ran for office in 2008, one of the central planks of his agenda was cutting taxes for middle-class families.  That's a promise he made good on.  Middle-class families over the course of the President’s first year [term] in office have enjoyed a tax cut of about $3,600. [see here for more on this]
     Moving forward, the President does believe that cutting taxes for middle-class families is an important part of his economic agenda.  It’s something he’ll continue to push for.  And if we see Republicans in Congress sharing the same commitment to cutting taxes for middle-class families that the President has, then the House will do what the Senate has done, and that's to extend tax cuts for middle-class families.  In fact, it will actually cut taxes for 98 percent of American families, 97 percent of American small business.
That's something that we should all be able to agree on pretty quickly.  It’s a way that would provide certainty to middle-class families all across the country.  And it’s exactly in line with the President’s -- with the emphasis that the President has placed on reducing the tax burden for middle-class families.
     Q    Given your emphasis on the phrase "as described," is there something new in the works?
     MR. EARNEST:  I’m not trying to be clever.  I’m trying to be as clear as I can, which is to tell you that that Post report today is not correct.
What is accurate is the President does believe that we should have as our priority tax cuts for middle-class families.  There are a variety of ways to do that, and it’s something that the President will continue to push for.  The most important way right now, in the President’s view, is to extend the Bush tax cuts for middle-class families.  That's something the Senate has already done.
And again, if Republicans do share the priority that the President has for cutting taxes for middle-class families, then what they’ll do is they will come back into session, either before Election Day or right after, and move quickly on legislation that the Senate has already passed, to pass tax cuts for middle-class families and 97 percent of small businesses.

    Mr. Earnest, in spite of his protestations to the contrary, indeed does appear to be trying to be clever. He continues to imply that the middle class will receive additional tax cuts rather than just an extension of current rates, and he ignores the clear implication that the payroll tax holiday will expire resulting in higher taxes not only for the middle class, but all wage earners as even the wages of the poor are subject to social security taxes.

    I have written extensively (most recently here) on the White House's What $40 Means campaign that was used to push through the payroll tax holiday last year.  This year, the silence from the White House is deafening on this issue, and despite this week's press conference with the President, the media have been relatively silent as well.  The President at his press conference even briefly mentioned the payroll tax holiday ("payroll tax extension") but only as a reference to what was done in the past.  However, he delivered the following whopper relative to middle class taxes in 2013:

Step number one that we can take in the next couple of weeks, provide certainty to middle-class families -- 98 percent of families who make less than $250,000 a year, 97 percent of small businesses -- that their taxes will not go up a single dime next year.  Give them that certainty right now.  We can get that done. 

     Unless the payroll tax holiday is extended in 2013 or replaced before the end of the year with a comparable cut, the average middle class family certainly will see their taxes go up to the tune of 10,000 dimes.  As I have noted, the Republicans are not excited about extending the payroll tax either, and perhaps this is one reason the GOP is not calling attention to White House hypocrisy on this issue.  But there is no excuse for the press to allow the President to get away with this.  If by some miracle a compromise is achieved before December 31st and the country finds itself able to back away from the dreaded "fiscal cliff," the middle class is going to be rather shocked to find they will still come up $1,000 short in 2013.  Perhaps then we'll all find out what $40 means.

The Obama Administration's Tax Plan Scam

    President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden can hardly make it through a speech these days without mentioning Mitt Romney's "$5 Trillion Tax Cut."  They've continued the full court press on this issue despite the debunking of the claim by Politifact ("half true" rating) and other fact checkers the Obama campaign has been quick to cite in the past for support on other issues.  (I guess they've decided that their campaign won't be dictated to by fact-checkers.)  But what about the President's tax plan?  Is all the bluster about Romney's $5 Trillion a case of deliberate misdirection?  A closer inspection of at least one of the claims of the president's tax plan would suggest the answer is yes.

    One of the most prominent claims of the Obama campaign on the tax issue appears in bold type on the website:

    Indeed, using the handy tax-calculator on the same page produces these results:

    The White House website repeats the $3,600 savings on its list of 11 Facts in the Tax Debate:

Over the past 4 years, a typical family making $50,000 a year has received tax cuts totaling $3,600—more if they are putting a child through college.

    Since the $3,600 figure keeps popping up, it must be well documented, right?  Clicking on the "Learn More" link brings up the following fact box:

    And there it is, the first bullet point.  The $3,600 saved during the president's first term comes from $1,600 from the Making Work Pay Credit and $2,000 from the payroll tax cut.  But now, before we get to reconciling how a savings of $3,600 over Obama's first four years translates into a "continued tax savings of $2,200 [$2,168 rounded up]" in 2013, how about that payroll tax cut?  I guess this means the Obama administration is seeking to extend that 2% cut for another year?  Not so fast.  The last official word I can find from the administration on the payroll tax holiday was in September from Jay Carney:

MR. CARNEY:  The payroll tax cut originally and through its extension was a temporary measure.  And as you know, when it comes to the middle-class tax cuts, the President believes we should make them permanent -- on the so-called -- the tax cuts under President Bush for the middle class, for the 98 percent.
The payroll tax cut was a temporary measure, and we’ll evaluate the question of whether we need to extend it at the end of the year when we’re looking at a whole range of issues, obviously, that will need to be worked on to ensure that we continue the progress that we’ve made.

    In other words, the payroll tax holiday is NOT included in the "continued tax savings of $2,200" in 2013, because the Obama campaign has been using these figures for months.  So if our typical family making $50,000/year is facing a $1,000* increase (2%) when the payroll tax holiday expires, how in the world does the Obama team come up with $2,200 in savings, which, figuring in the $1,000 payroll tax increase, means a $3,200 savings in other taxes?

    The Obama campaign has some serious explaining to do.  On its face, the claim is ludicrous.  President Obama has saved the average family $3,600 in his first four years, but in 2013 the same family will reap a windfall of $3,200 in non-payroll tax savings?  In the spirit of "Romnesia," I submit that the calculations for the president's tax plan must have been done using "Obamathematics." (Also in the spirit of "Romnesia", "Obamathematics" is not original with me, either.) The president and his campaign must be held accountable for this farfetched claim aimed at hoodwinking the middle class.

* * * * * * *

*In a scamlet within the larger scam, when the Obama administration was pushing for the payroll tax holiday to be extended in 2011, they were making the claim that "President Obama's payroll tax cut... puts $1,500 in the pockets of the typical middle-class family." But the New York Times in an article just a few weeks ago confirmed that "the typical American family had $1,000 in additional income from the lower tax."  Obamathematics!