Barack Obama on Bill O’Reilly
This has been cross-posted from The Left Anchor…
Beginning last Thursday, Bill O’Reilly began airing a five part interview with Sen. Barack Obama. Today, I’ll look at the second segment which aired last night and focused on the economy and taxes. I’ll back track later — either later tonight or sometime tomorrow — and focus on the original interview which dealt with foreign policy. First, here’s the video of last night’s segment which will be followed immediately by my impressions of the fair points and the dishonest points made during the course of the eight minute exchange.
O’Reilly makes what I’m sure is a documented, but highly misleading claim that the economy grew 19% more under Bush than Clinton. Given that he does not bother to mention which numbers he’s quoting when throwing this out, I’m going to assume he’s referring to the GDP. The problem with this is that while the GDP can tell you how much the national economy grew, it has no baring on how the growth was distributed. A Bush GDP which grows 19% more than was achieved by his predecessor does not mean anything when that growth is spread unevenly among the population, and that’s leaving aside the fact that Bush’s war in Iraq alone could account for a significant increase in the economy, but would not be considered by most Americans as being an appropriate way to stimulate an economy.
Obama wastes no time in responding: “You know Bill, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
In a turnaround so quick that it makes your head spin, O’Reilly replies, “I know, I know, it’s bull. I know it is.” I watched this through a couple of times, and I can say without a doubt that there was not a touch of sarcasm in O’Relly’s response. So, Bill O’Reilly presents this data as some sort of defense of Bush’s economic prowess, but thinks so little of it himself that it takes all of three seconds for him to call it “bullshit.”
Then O’Reilly tries to beat back Obama’s accurate portrayal of the gross inequitable gains made among the various income demographics (the majority of the gains O’Reilly cited went to the top 5% of Americans) by claiming that the difference in growth among working Americans between the Bush and Clinton administrations was, “not that much. They grew about $500 in real wages during Bush vs. $2,000 under Clinton.” For those keeping score at home, that would be a $1,500 a year difference. Or to put it another way, real wages grew four times as much under Clinton than they did under Bush. If O’Reilly genuinely believes that an extra $1,500 a year means nothing to the average American, then he is totally disconnected from the economic realities we face, which is not surprising given the millions he makes each year by peddling these glib distortions and paper thin defenses of obviously failing economic policies.
O’Reilly goes on to falsely claim that Obama wants 49% of his income in taxes, when in fact Obama is only proposing to raise the top tax rate three points, from 36% to 39% (the same rate as under Clinton, and significantly less than the rates historically paid by the top income bracket — under Kennedy, the highest tax bracket paid 90% of their income in taxes). Obama counters by noting that in return for this minor increase, he’ll be able to cut taxes for 95% of Americans. Keep in mind here, that ever since the time of Aristotle, a broad and thriving middle-class has been considered essential for the existence of a stable and effective government.
In response, O’Reilly falls back to the red-meat conservative argument: “But that’s class warfare.” To this, Obama responds that “95% of all Americans is not a ‘class.’”
At this point, O’Reilly goes off the fucking rails, basically deriding Obama for thinking that the wealthiest Americans could probably live with a few dollars less if it would serve to save Social Security and ensure that every senior had a secure social safety net to fall back on once they’re past the point of their prime earning years.
O’Reilly calls this “social redistribution” and a “socialist tenet.” Keep in mind at this point, O’Reilly is hammering what is probably the single most popular government program of all time as some sort of slippery slope into outright socialism. I could sum up O’Reilly’s thought process here rather quickly: “Fuck the poor, you can’t take more from the rich in order to secure the middle class, because to do so makes you no better than Lenin or Stalin.”
But in point of fact, it is the middle class that needs the ability to consume if we really want to keep the economy going. This includes senior citizens and working Americans, both whom indisputably benefit more under Obama’s tax plan than they do under McCain’s. Television, middle class homes, new cars, etc…. these are the purchases that keep our economy thriving. And it’s no surprise that the stalled economic process of working Americans during the Bush administration has resulted in a limp economy with one of the worst records of job creation in the history of this nation. We’ve tried trickle down economics. We did it under Reagan. What happened? The deficit sky-rocketed, and he left his successor with a recession on his hands.
Obama goes on to note that even Republican Teddy Roosevelt supported the progressive income tax. Bill responds, “Not to the level you do.” Here’s the wonderful thing about the internet. These assertions are easily refuted. Here are some of Roosevelt’s own words regarding not only the income tax, but the ultimate Republican boogey man, the estate tax, as well:
I speak diffidently about the income tax because one scheme for an income tax was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court; while in addition is a difficult tax to administer in its practical working, and great care would have to be exercised to see that it was not evaded by the very men whom it was most desirable to have taxed, for if so evaded it would, of course, be worse than no tax at all; as the least desirable of all taxes is the tax which bears heavily upon the honest as compared with the dishonest man. Nevertheless, a graduated income tax of the proper type would be a desirable feature of Federal taxation, and it is to be hoped that one may be devised which the Supreme Court will declare constitutional.
Here he is speaking of the estate tax.
A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood.
Roosevelt was not merely a supporter, but a champion of progressive taxation, so much so that he was willing to pursue such legislation even over the objections of the Supreme Court. I’m having difficulty tracking down the tax rates implemented under Roosevelt’s presidency, so if anyone locates them, please leave a link to the source in the comments.
From this, Obama moves on to the fact that George W. Bush has increased our debt by $4 trillion dollars. O’Reilly attempts to defend this by claiming the “War on Terror” (TM) was the driving factor in this, without bothering to note that Bush is the only president to cut taxes during a time of war and it is this recklessness on his part which has greatly added to our annual deficits. And considering the largest expense in the “War on Terror” (TM) has been the conflict in Iraq, which O’Reilly previously admitted was a mistake during the Thursday segment of the interview, totally undercuts this line of reasoning. O’Reilly essentially depends on his viewers being unable to remember what he said mere minutes before he completely contradicts himself. If Iraq was a mistake, then the deficits accrued by those efforts are equally a mistake and cannot be used to defend Bush’s reckless economic policy.
I’ll be back with the first part of this interview later and will continue to follow it through the rest of the week as it unfolds.
September 10 2008 02:31 am | American Politics
September 10th, 2008 at 9:21 am
big blue,
” …so much so that he was willing to pursue such legislation even over the objections of the Supreme Court.”
i’m a little dense here. how did you come to this conclusion? was it something that you read but failed to include in your post?
” If Iraq was a mistake, then the deficits accrued by those efforts are equally a mistake”
this is illogical. one, we all make mistakes and some of those mistakes are costly but it is not a mistake to accept the cost of those mistakes. this is only an assumption but i think even you have made mistakes that were costly. do you consider the paying the cost of your mistakes a mistake? and remember a lot of those costs were costs necessary to bring about the desired solution.
two, wars once begun, are meant to be won or lost, regardless of whether or not it was a mistake to begin with. and wars cost money regardless of whether or not you win or lose. and winning wars are always more costly than losing wars. so, to say that spending the money to win a war is a mistake is to say it is far better to lose a war that was a mistake in the first place than to bring about the desired solution of any war, a win.
three, there are those who would argue that every war was the result of a mistake and should never have been waged or should be waged. and everyone will agree that a every war waged and lost was a mistake regardless of how good or how poor the reason was to wage it in the first place.
September 10th, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Does this mean we will see McCain on Olberman???
September 11th, 2008 at 6:15 am
My point about his pursuing it over the objections of the Supreme Court was based on this quote (which is included in the post):
“I speak diffidently about the income tax because one scheme for an income tax was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.”
The “scheme” he was talking about there — I believe — was a measure he had already passed but which had been struck down, but that didn’t stop him from fine tuning the wording in order to get the bill passed, because he felt it was neccessary to do so.
I get your point about the funding of the war not being a waste in the same sense that the war was a mistake, but without the first mistake, the funding wouldn’t have been necessary. Perhaps it’s better to call it a proxy mistake. Without the war — which was ill-founded — we wouldn’t have needed to spend so much money there. So, I don’t see how you can judge the funding of the war without the ultimately bogus reasons we went to war. I’m not suggesting that we could have stripped all funding after we started, but neither should the money we’ve bled into Iraq be judged separately from the original decision to send us there.
Bush doesn’t get a freebie on that count.
September 11th, 2008 at 3:20 pm
First let me just say that you have an awesome blog…Now…this is my take on the whole thing…short and sweet. As an American, it great to see such a great display of international interest and all we can talk about is lipstick, pigs and pitbulls. What happened to America?
September 13th, 2008 at 2:16 am
Excellent article! When will you be appearing on The O’Reilly Factor?
I thought Bill-O was going to jump out of his seat when he started talking class warfare. That guy really can’t stand to part with all that cash he makes distorting and smearing.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:46 am
I have an interview scheduled with Bill the day after Hell freezes over. I was hoping to get the Hell freezes over spot on the day of, but apparently that’s been reserved for reanimated corpse of Franklin Roosevelt.