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Jewish World Review Oct. 17, 2008 / 18 Tishrei 5769 Obama's magic number By Rich Lowry http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Barack Obama's lucky number is 95. As in 95 percent of working people will get a tax cut in an Obama administration. He trots the figure out every time he's portrayed as an old-school tax-and-spender. He's mentioned this factoid 10 times in the three presidential debates, brandishing it as a token of his concern for the economic struggles of the middle class. If Obama lived in number-obsessed China, he'd try to have 95 in his phone number or live at an address with 95 in it. If he becomes president, the number 95 will have almost as much to do with it as the word "change" or the date, Sept. 15, when Lehman Brothers collapsed. Obama is borrowing from Bill Clinton, who successfully ran on a middle-class tax cut in 1992. Of course, Clinton jettisoned his tax cut as soon as he was elected. Anyone who is confident Obama will follow through on his 95 percent promise is letting hope triumph over experience. John McCain hasn't been able to rebut Obama effectively on 95 percent, until in the final presidential debate he latched onto Joe Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber." Wurzelbacher, who hopes to buy a plumbing business, confronted Obama on a rope line in Ohio about how his tax increases on "the rich" will raise taxes on small-business people like him. Finally, McCain had something as vivid as the number 95, a regular guy who wants to climb the economic ladder — call him "Joe the Entrepreneur" — without getting punished with higher taxes. Except Wurzelbacher isn't there yet. Obama's plan calls for higher taxes on families making more than $250,000 a year. According to ABC News, Wurzelbacher wants to buy the business for roughly $250,000 but doesn't expect to make that much in income right away. In the meantime, he might be eligible for the Obama smorgasbord of middle-class tax credits. Ninety-five percent strikes again! McCain's broader point is sound. Many small-business owners pay taxes on their business income as individuals, and if they are successful and employing people, they will pay higher taxes under Obama. This would be a tax on job creation, at the worst possible time. Where Obama's 95 percent promise is fundamentally dishonest is in how it discounts the effect of his health-care plan. Obama would require businesses to cover their workers or pay a tax. If the tax is relatively low, employers will choose to dump their employees into Obama's new public program, making a hash of his talking point that no one will lose his current coverage under the plan. If the tax is high, employers will provide coverage themselves, but will inevitably fund it by paying less in wages or hiring less. Obama is proposing a large new tax on employment. McCain's health plan, in contrast, would amount to a $1.3 trillion tax cut, according to the Tax Policy Center. McCain would tax employer-provided health benefits for the first time, but offset that with a $5,000 tax credit per couple for all health-insurance purchases. Independent analysts say the vast majority of taxpayers would be better off. McCain rarely talks of his plan in these terms, and Obama has taken after it as a tax hike in a series of devastatingly effective and misleading negative ads. The latest CBS/New York Times poll says 51 percent of people think McCain would raise taxes, compared with 46 percent who think Obama will. This means Obama is holding his own or winning the tax debate with his Republican opponent, a necessary condition for a Democrat to win the White House. McCain has other tax proposals he rarely talks about, including a doubling of the dependent exemption that could mean more than $1,000 for a typical family. But they don't substitute for an easy-to-understand, big-ticket tax cut for the middle class that would have kept Obama from outbidding him on the issue. For now, Obama has his magic number and is sticking to it. Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Comment by clicking here. Rich Lowry Archives © 2008 King Features Syndicate

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