Obamaspeak: "Tax Expenditures"

Floyd and Mary Beth Brown

Townhall - Obama is a born again deficit cutter. He wants, according to his speech at George Washington University this week, to slim down nation's deficit by a whopping four trillion dollars in the next twelve years. To achieve this miraculous goal he has a top secret weapon. It is called the "tax expenditure." Now tax expenditures are not new, they have been around for many years, only we knew them by a different name. The old- fashioned name which is heretofore banned from the lexicon is: tax increase. But everyone knows tax increases are bad, so Obama and his team must be thinking that if they changed the name the voters wouldn't notice. There is a deeper philosophical reason for the changing language, and it has to do with the fundamental difference between his vision and the Republicans' vision for the future.

If you assume that all money belongs to the government and the people are privileged to get back some of the product of their labor, then the money doled out to the pockets of Americans must be expenditures. It works like this. You buy a home and pay lots of interest to the bank in the form of a mortgage. When at the end of the year we add up your income, you are allowed to deduct the interest you paid to the bank from that income. This lowers your overall income tax bill. Republicans believe that the lower tax bill is your total tax bill. Obama believes that your tax bill was actually higher, and the government was giving you money to help pay the mortgage. Hence, when he takes away your mortgage deduction, he is actually cutting government "tax expenditure." Read full column here: News New Mexico

Obamaspeak: "Tax Expenditures"