Reagan's Attorney General Calls Out Fiscal Cliff Fallacy

In a discussion with Fox News' Sean Hannity, former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese examined some of the fallacies and misperceptions surrounding the Fiscal Cliff deal and the tax burden borne by higher income earners in America.  As Meese ably pointed out, contrary to popular belief, the wealthy in America not only pay their fair share of taxes, they pay well beyond their share.  The top 1% of earners in the U.S. bring in 17% of income, but pay more than 37% of income taxes collected.  

Meese also clarified the fact that, despite the promise by President Obama that tax hikes would be exclusively for upper income earners in the Fiscal Cliff deal, ALL earners across the board are paying increased taxes in 2013, and will have already begun to see some of those increases by now.  This is because of increases in payroll taxes, as well as other taxes associated with Obamacare.  In addition, despite the promised balance between tax increases and spending cuts from the Obama Administration, the actual Fiscal Cliff deal included over $600 billion in tax hikes compares to only roughly $15 billion in spending cuts.

As the former Attorney General pointed out, these skewed outcomes have come to pass in part because Republicans have failed to point out the inequalities in the tax system as it is, and have neglected to rebut the specious arguments made by the President, that the so-called rich are not paying enough.  Meese agreed with a statement by Rush Limbaugh, that President Obama is attempting to be as transformational a President as Ronald Reagan was, but with the transformation moving in the opposite direction.  As former Attorney General Meese noted, the missed rebuttal opportunities by the Republican Party against the President's statements played a substantial part in election results last November.  He also made the very scathing point that a major difference between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama is that Ronald Reagan always told the truth.

One of the truths that isn't being revealed clearly enough to the American people is the simple fact that, if Americans want to see the continued increase in the size and activity of the Federal Government, they are going to have to look forward to a very significant increase in tax burden across the board.  As Meese said, paraphrasing Margaret Thatcher, this is the main problem with socialism:  Sooner or later you run out of other people's money.  These inconvenient truths need to be asserted much more vigorously by Republican leadership, both Meese and Hannity agreed, before President Obama succeeds in transforming the American economy into something resembling Greece.