{"id":2296,"date":"2004-08-10T09:44:50","date_gmt":"2004-08-10T14:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2296.html"},"modified":"2004-08-10T09:44:50","modified_gmt":"2004-08-10T14:44:50","slug":"bushs-lackadaisical-approach-to-federal-tax-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bushs-lackadaisical-approach-to-federal-tax-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush’s lackadaisical approach to federal tax law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Much has been made of this Bush quote<\/a> already, but I wanted to add my two cents.<\/p>\n

“Just remember, when you’re talking about, oh, we’re just going to run up the taxes on a certain number of people — first of all, real rich people figure out how to dodge taxes.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now if this seems like an unusually dumb thing for a multi-millionaire who has slashed taxes for other multimillionaires, and who happens to be charged with the responsibility of executing the laws of the land, that’s because it is.<\/p>\n

But there are two points that I wanted to point out about this remark. First, as David Sirota noted<\/a>, Bush’s comment stands in stark contrast to the administration’s message on tax enforcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“[I want] to make sure that tax cheaters are found, make sure the IRS gets after those who don’t pay taxes; make sure that the system is fair for those of us who do pay taxes. We want everybody paying their fair share.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Everyone, that is, who isn’t rich, because they’ll end up dodging the system anyway.<\/p>\n

Second, the other dumb thing about Bush’s remark is that he keeps saying it<\/i>. This wasn’t a spur-of-the-moment soundbite in which the president said something he didn’t mean; this comment has become standard Bush rhetoric. Indeed, yesterday’s transcript reads almost word-for-word with Bush’s remarks in Wisconsin<\/a> three weeks ago:<\/p>\n

“People need to be aware of this talk out of Washington, D.C. that says, oh, don’t worry, we’re just going to tax the rich. That’s not the way it works in the tax code. The big rich dodge taxes, anyway.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The mind reels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Much has been made of this Bush quote already, but I wanted to add my two cents. “Just remember, when you’re talking about, oh, we’re just going to run up the taxes on a certain number of people — first of all, real rich people figure out how to dodge taxes.” Now if this seems […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2296"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2296\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}