MIddle-Class Backers Shocked Obama Raised Their Taxes

 

IBDEditorials.com

Dyed-blue-in-the-wool supporters of President Obama are blue as can be after opening their paychecks and discovering that "ordinary folks," as the president likes to call them, got slapped with a sizeable tax hike on New Year's Day.

"What happened?" was the exclamation found repeatedly by the Washington Times' Joseph Curl as he surveyed commentaries posted on liberal websites.

"What happened that my Social Security withholding in my paycheck just went up?" a DemocraticUnderground.com post asked. "I guarantee this decrease is gonna hurt me more than the increase in income taxes will hurt those making over 400 grand. What happened?"

The squeals came from people with usernames like "RomneyLies," "DemocratToTheEnd" and "BlueIndyBlue."

The tax increase is the result of the expiration of the payroll tax holiday, something we never heard Obama talk about either during his re-election campaign or when he was riling up crowds against Republican leaders over their commitment to preserve the Bush tax cuts.

What does it say to these Obama supporters that the first thing the president does after being elected is raise the payroll tax for "ordinary folks" from 4.2% to 6.2%?

'$86 A Month Is A Lot'

Curl found some Obama-supporting posters claiming it wasn't really all that much money, to which another responded, "$86 a month is a lot ... Groceries for a week, as someone said. More than what I pay for parking every month ... A new computer after a year."

A thousand bucks a year in new taxes are nothing small for a middle-class family, and for most the new taxes will actually be more like $1,600 more a year.

Listen to Obama himself last month: "If Congress doesn't act soon, meaning in the next few weeks, starting on January 1st, everybody is going to see their income taxes go up," he told a Michigan crowd.

"Typical, middle-class family of four will see an income tax hike of around $2,200. How many of you can afford to pay another $2,200 in taxes?"

Several weeks before the fiscal cliff deal, the president says that a couple of thousand dollars in new middle-class taxes is "a hit you can't afford to take."

Then he — or rather the White House auto-pen, since the president took Air Force One back to Hawaii to finish his $7 million-in-taxpayer-cost vacation — signs a deal slapping a middle-class family something close to just that "hit" in new taxes.

Broken Pledge

As a candidate in 2008, Obama said, "I can make a firm pledge" that "no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes."

Addressing Congress as president for the first time in 2009, Obama said, "If your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime."

But the liberal Brookings/Urban Institute's Tax Policy Center finds that, thanks to the fiscal cliff deal, those earning between $30,000 and $200,000 will see their paychecks reduced by anywhere from about $450 to nearly $1,800. A bit more than "one single dime."

And Americans for Tax Reform last week noted that ObamaCare as of Jan. 1 increases income taxes by billions on some 10 million middle-class families with high medical expenses — average salary a little over $53,000 — from $200 to $400 a year for each family, because of its change on claiming out-of-pocket medical expenses as an itemized deduction.

It was said many times during last year's campaign — and many times ignored by an Obama-loving mainstream media — that when Democrats start talking about taxing the rich, the middle class better check their wallets.