Tax Policy & Propaganda

I got an email forwarded to me from a friend; a circulating piece of propaganda that that is being used to trash Obama. It suggests that Obama is going to tax everybody into oblivion, and you can read it and the facts about it at factcheck.org. (They debunk rumors about both candidates, so I tend to trust the facts that they publish.)

Regardless of the policy or the candidate, voters need to remember that Congress and only Congress can enact any tax of any description. Neither Obama or McCain, if elected, can raise or lower any tax by one red cent or a single percentage point. Only Congress can do that. If you think that members of Congress, of either party, are going to engage in hairy dramatic increases of taxes you are utterly unhinged. If they raise taxes on the wealthy their campaign funding will vaporize, and if they raise taxes on the non-wealthy they will be voted out of office in a heartbeat. The one thing they absolutely will not do is raise taxes by any significant amount.

When a candidate promises, “I will cut this rate by three percent” he is telling you that he subscribes to the “unitary executive” theory of government. For years Congress has bowed to the Administration’s demand that it pass whatever budget is proposed by the executive without questioning or amending it, so there has been some truth to a President’s statement that he will enact a given tax. When Congress does what it supposed to do, however, a President may only propose a tax and Congress is vested with the sole power to enact or decline to enact the tax.

It should be noted that the most recent Congress, controlled by the Democratic Party, has continued the policy of allowing the Executive Branch of our government to control the “power of the purse” by following its preceding assemblies in the practice of passing the spending requests of the executive without alteration.

So the reality of the candidates’ promises to enact various tax laws is false under our constitution. Whether they are false as to actuality remains to be seen.