Chump Change for Obama: Tax Hikes on $31,850?

Perhaps more than any time this year, Barack Obama has been revealed of late as recklessly progressive on economic policy, market regulation, and tax policy.

Just one day after revelations that an Obama administration would "bankrupt" coal companies resistant to cap-and-trade mandates, the Democratic nominee, in an interview with MTV News, quipped that tax-increases on those making more than $250,000 (his threshold for the "wealthy") would be just "chump-change":

Sway [Interviewer]: Just out of curiosity, for those that are being taxed that are making more than $250,000 a year, how much difference would it be from how they are being taxed today?

Obama: Well, right now, they are getting taxed at 36 percent. Under Bill Clinton in the 1990s, they were being taxed at 39.6 percent. You are talking about a 3.6 percent difference, and for the average person who is making half a million, a million dollars, now people like you Sway, that's chump change, that's nothing. But it could make a big difference for that young person who is trying to figure out whether they can go to college or not, if we could give them more of a break or more scholarships or grants to go to college [bold added].

Depending on the total proportion of income subject to a new tax-rate restored to higher 1990s' levels, "Sway" could be paying thousands of dollars more in federal income taxes annually. To call that "chump change" is insulting to Americans who work hard for every dollar they make, citizens who see billions of dollars annually splurged frivolously on "earmarks" in far-flung budget appropriations that do nothing to improve daily lives for millions of people.

But that's not all: As Jim Geraghty reported in June, Obama voted for the Fiscal Year 2009 budget that included a restored tax rate of 28 percent (up from 25 percent) on incomes as low as $31,850.

That is, in voting to repeal by 3 percentage points the Bush administration's 2001 tax-cut, Barack Obama would reach down to an individual earning just $31,850 a year.

See also the RNC's "Obama Tax Backgrounder" for further details.

Barack Obama has claimed he'll cut taxes for "no less than 95% of 'working families'." But his actual voting record reveals an old-school tax-and-spend Democrat who will impose tax-hikes down to the average "Working Joe" struggling to get by and hoping to get ahead.

It doesn't take a lot of digging to see how truly cavalier Obama is toward other people's money.

As I noted this morning, Democratic Party activists hope to capture an Obama administration for a massive range of far left-wing interest group initiatives. Considering how friendly Obama is to radical demands to expand spending entitlements and redistribute wealth, they're not going have to lobby too hard.