United Liberty

In recent days, Mitt Romney’s campaign has been pushing President Barack Obama’s record of failure on the economy. His team has even released a “presidential accountability  scorecard” highlighting Obama’s poor performance. Business owners, an occupational group with which Obama has an underwater approval rating, have taken umbrage with Obama over his “you didn’t build that” remark last month in Virginia.

The comments show a disdain for the engine of our economy, regardless of “context.” But ex-Speaker Nancy Pelosi may have one-upped Obama. During a press conference yesterday, Pelosi said that those making more than $250,000 per year don’t “get the pie sweetened for them” under President Obama’s tax hike proposal:

In her weekly press briefing, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi called President Barack Obama’s tax policy “very clear,” saying that couples bringing in over $250,000 per year do not “get the pie sweetened” for them under his plan.

“The fact is we’ve been very clear. President Obama has said it in his campaign and since then and in this campaign as well. The Democrats want to be — have fairness in our tax code; that we want to go forward with giving — having the tax cuts for those making over $250,000, a couple making over $250,000, to have those tax cuts expire,” said Pelosi on Thursday at the Capitol.

“What that is is a tax cut for 100 percent of the American people. It’s just that over $250,000, you don’t get the pie sweetened for you. And with that, to say when we go down that path and inject some more certainty into our economy and our fiscal soundness, we then go to the table, put everything on the table and talk about tax fairness, tax simplification. You cannot do it dribs and drabs. You have to do it comprehensively.”

Wow. Talk about an out of touch view of business.

Pelosi mentions tax reform, which isn’t even on the table. Remember, President Obama  rejected the Simpson-Bowles proposal, a plan that came out of his own Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. And when it did come up for a vote in the House, it was rejected in overwhelming bipartisan fashion. In fact, Pelosi voted against Simpson-Bowles.

This isn’t about tax reform. It’s about raising taxes on a long-targeted group central to the class warfare themes we’ve heard endlessly since the tax cuts were passed in 2001 and 2003.

Another point is that no one “sweetened” anything for people earning over $250,000. This is their money. The government takes it from them through force. This goes back to what I wrote about Obama’s “you didn’t build that” comment. The Left seems to view government as an omnipotent entity that grants its citizens rights and views all income earned by everyone as its own. The government, in their view, just allows taxpayers to keep a percentage.

It also echoes the questions last week from Jake Tapper to White House Press Secretary Jay Carney. Tapper asked why Carney refers to the tax cuts as a “giveaway” when, after all, the money belongs to those who earn it. Of course, Carney wouldn’t directly answer the question.

With the top 20% of income earners paying 69.1% of all income taxes, it’s hard to say that these people have been given anything thing other than a headache from politicians, who, like vampires, want to suck more money away from them.