Lies & the Lying Liars Who Tell Them_ A Fair & Balanced Look at the Right - Al Franken [121]
Someone who seems to buy heavily into the supply-side ethos is my friend Bill O’Reilly. On his January 14, 2003, Factor, O’Reilly explained, in his typically modest way, how an increase in income taxes would cause him to fire several of his employees. The explanation came in his Talking Points Memo segment of the show.
As far as the economy is concerned, “Points” continues to believe that putting more money back into the hands of Americans who earn it will help private enterprise. Raising taxes and increasing government spending is a surefire way to continue the economic doldrums. I’ll back up that statement with my own story. Right now, I’m a busy guy, with TV, radio, books, a syndicated column, and a website. There are scores of people working with me, people who are making money and supporting their families. As I have mentioned, when my tax obligation is all added up, the government takes a bit more than 50 cents of every dollar I earn. And the Democrats want more. [I have no clue who he was talking about.] But I will tell you what. If my tax rate increases, I will cut back and do fewer things. It simply will not be worth my time, because I have enough money saved to live comfortably. I don’t need to kill myself to pay the government. And if I do cut back, some of the people currently earning money under the Factor banner will stop earning that money.
The thought of O’Reilly cutting back is a frightening one. Not just for the employees he’d let go, and their families, who would suddenly have the wolf at their door. What scares me is the prospect that we could be deprived of thoughtful Talking Points like this one. Or that we’d see them only on TV, and not also get them on radio, in his syndicated column, and on his website. It’s enough to make me want to fight for further tax cuts for the five-million-and-up bracket, even if it means that we’d have to cut back on Head Start and prenatal care for the poor.
It’s also good to know that O’Reilly has enough money saved to live comfortably and that the only reason he’s working so hard is pure greed.
In fairness, Bill is probably working extra hard so that his children can inherit enough money to live extravagantly without ever having to work or challenge themselves. That, of course, is every parent’s dream.
And now, thanks to the visionary who coined the terrifying phrase “death tax” to describe the eminently reasonable estate tax, more Americans than ever will be able to see that dream come true. In 2001, Congress endorsed the deeply American idea of a permanent aristocracy by passing a phase-out, and eventual repeal, of the estate tax.
As Bush said in his acceptance speech: “On principle, every family, every farmer and small business person should be free to pass on their life’s work to those they love. So we abolish the death tax.”
By this “principle,” every elementary school teacher should be able to pass on their life’s work to the people they love. They should be able to pass on the lives they’ve touched, the children they’ve inspired, the futures they’ve changed. Logistically speaking, that would be hard to do. It is, however, easy to pass down money. As you can see, this principle breaks down very quickly.
Yes, a family farmer should be able to pass his farm down to his children. Fortunately, that hasn’t been a problem. As the law existed before Bush took office, family farms had a $2.6 million exemption. For family farms worth more than $2.6 million, the heirs had a grace period of up to fourteen years to pay the tax bill at low interest rates. The fact is that neither The New York Times nor the American Farm Bureau Federation could find a single family farm that has ever been lost to the estate tax.
That didn’t stop the Republicans from running extremely ugly ads about the issue in both the 2000 and the 2002 campaigns. My favorite was this radio spot run against Paul