Many aspects of President Obama’s policies and approach give me indigestion. His reckless spending, economically destructive and unconstitutional Obamacare, deceit with respect to Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” perpetual arrogance, and love affair with an EPA that repeatedly jeopardizes our ability to become energy independent, are just a few examples.
However, there’s one facet of the Obama ideology that turns my stomach with particular force — that of class warfare. Not only is it profoundly un-American, but it pins one citizen against another in order to promote the idea that the federal government should step in and equalize for the common good. The candidate who once advocated spreading the wealth around is determined to do just that.
President Obama has repeatedly taken jabs at those who meet his definition of wealthy. That includes hard-working individuals, families, and small and large business owners who hire employees, pay salaries, and invest in our economy. Obama ignores the fact that when you increase taxes on a business owner, you stymie the ability of that individual to help grow our economy, create jobs, and generate opportunity for others based on his/her own success and expansion. He also ignores the fact that despite what he and his liberal comrades might think, the success of individuals, families, and/or businesses is not an invitation for the federal government to seize more of their hard-earned cash.
In order to promote his class warfare-driven policies, Obama repeatedly extols a notion of “shared sacrifice.” (Translation: The “rich” aren’t funneling enough of their cash to the federal government.) As noted by The Heritage Foundation, “The top 1 percent of income earners paid 38 percent of all federal income taxes in 2008, while the bottom 50 percent paid only 3 percent. Forty-nine percent of U.S. households paid no federal income tax at all.”
In April of 2010, the AP reported, “Less noticed were tax cuts for low- and middle-income families, which were expanded when Obama signed the massive economic recovery package last year. The result is a tax system that exempts almost half the country from paying for programs that benefit everyone, including national defense, public safety, infrastructure and education. It is a system in which the top 10 percent of earners — households making an average of $366,400 in 2006 — paid about 73 percent of the income taxes collected by the federal government.”
Does that sound like a system in which the top earners haven’t been sharing the sacrifice?
2012 conservative contenders, watch closely as President Obama advocates taking from one person to give to another. Provide a stark contrast to his divisive rhetoric. Be his opposite by upholding an America in which free-market principles, limited government, and a decrease in tax rates for all would incentivize business, unleash entrepreneurial spirits, and yield greater opportunities for people of all shapes, sizes, colors, and incomes.
President Obama, keep your class warfare and the policies through which you’ve added more to our national debt than any president from Washington through Reagan combined. When it comes to 2012, getting this country back on track, and reawakening everything that makes America exceptional, conservatives have it covered.
Jedediah Bila is a conservative columnist and commentator living in New York City. For more information on Jedediah, please visit jedediahbila.com. Follow Jedediah on Twitter.