CBO debunks GOP lie that Obama raised taxes

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

There is not a Tea-Publican politician anywhere in America at any level of political office who has not repeated the lie that "Barack Obama is a tax and spend liberal who is raising your taxes!"

Progressive Democrats would dispute the "liberal" part — Obama clearly is a centrist politician.

The CBO yesterday debunked the "Obama is raising your taxes!" part. CBO: federal tax burden keeps dropping:

Given the Republican Party's hyper-orthodoxy on taxes, and the Tea Party activists' cries that they are "Taxed Enough Already," it might be tempting to think the far-right enmity was driven by soaring tax rates that became so oppressive, they created an intense public backlash.

A nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report released yesterday reminds us that the opposite is true: Americans' federal tax burden keeps shrinking.

Americans paid the lowest tax rates in 30 years to the federal government in 2009, in part because of tax cuts President Obama sought to combat the Great Recession, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday. […]

[A]t the very moment anti-tax protesters were emerging as the most powerful force in American politics, handing Republicans landslide control of the U.S. House, the data show that people were sending the smallest portion of their income to the federal government since 1979.

During Obama's first year in office, the average tax rate paid by all households fell to 17.4 percent, down from 19.9 percent in 2007, according to the CBO. The 2009 rate was significantly lower than the previous low of 19.4 percent in 2003 and well below the 30-year average of 21 percent.

The tax burden — which includes all forms of federal levies, including income, payroll and corporate taxes — lightened for households across the board, the result in part of Obama's signature "Making Work Pay" tax credit and other tax cuts passed as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package, the CBO said.

Most Tea-Publican voters who live in the closed-loop alternate reality world of FAUX Nation and hate radio — and a significant chunk of the electorate overall due to the feckless corporate media echo chamber — are likely convinced that their federal taxes went up after Obama took office. The facts say otherhwise.

As Stephen Colbert observed, "The facts have a well-known liberal bias."

Note: The Affordable Care Act provisions do not go into effect until 2014, and the Obama tax plan to allow the Bush tax cuts for the top 2% to expire and to return to Clinton era levels has not even had a vote in the Tea-Publican Congrerss.

And Romney's tax plan? Analysis: Romney tax plan strongly favors the rich – CBS News:

Mitt Romney's new tax plan strongly favors the wealthiest Americans, offering earners in the top 20 percent an average tax cut of more than $16,000 while raising taxes on the bottom 20 percent of earners, according to an analysis from a non-partisan Washington think tank.

The analysis out Thursday from the Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution think tanks, finds that under Romney's plan the bottom 20 percent would see their average federal tax rate increase $149, or 1.3 percent.

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According to the Tax Policy Center, Romney's plan would add $900 billion to the deficit in 2015, when the changes would go into full effect. The group has also found that the 20 percent tax cut, combined with Romney's proposal to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, would add $3 trillion to the deficit over ten years – even if the Bush-era tax cuts and more recent tax cuts are extended. (That part of the analysis looked only at the impact of those two proposals, not Romney's tax plan overall.)

President Obama's tax plan, according to the Tax Policy Center, would increase taxes on the top 20 percent of earners by two percent while leaving taxes on other Americans essentially unchanged.