Spank the middle and call it rich

I recall that, when I was but a wee lad, my parents were able to buy their house for about $28,000. My dad’s salary at the time was somewhere around $14,000.

Now, that same house is worth about $600,000. To even hope to qualify for a loan to buy it, you would have to make $200,000 a year or up.

Currently, Rep. Charles Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, is pushing his tax “reform” package that would hit any couples making $200,000 or more with an additional 4 percent surtax, rising to 4.5 percent for those making $500,000.

This all comes about because of the Alternative Minimum Tax, a device that originally was meant to snag the two dozen or so ultra-rich families who got away without paying taxes, but which next year will apply to some 23 million people.

Due to rising prices and a growing economy, the AMT has “accidentally” become a big money maker for the government. In past sessions, Ways and Means chairmen have approached the problem by helping enact “patches” to limit the number of families affected by the AMT.

Not Rangel. His plan is to use the yearly AMT mini-crisis as an excuse to pass his tax plan. Left unpatched, the AMT would suck $1.4 trillion out of the pockets of 23 million families over the next 10 years. If Rangel eliminates the AMT outright, the reasoning goes, the federal government will lose that money. (To “lose” money in Capitol-speak means the politicians leave it in taxpayers’ pockets.) Sounds like a big tax reformer, right?

Hold on. Rangel plans to make up the “difference.” (Bear in mind that the AMT, if patched, would not raise that $1.4 trillion in the first place, and it is not intended to raise that much money.)

Rangel wants to vastly increase the number of people paying the top tax bracket, 36 percent, applying it also to people who currently pay only capital gains taxes. On top of that, he wants to add his surtax on “the rich,” couples making $200,000 or more per year.

All told, Rangel’s “reform” is a plan to redistribute $1 trillion of this country’s $13 trillion economy.

The plan seems unlikely to pass the current Congress, but Rangel’s real target is 2009 and a Hillary presidency with a Democrat Congress.

While protesting the rich and wealth disparity, the Democratic leadership is once again trying to keep down the middle class.

These days, it takes $200,000 a year in many states just to live like our parents did. Many of us are struggling to get to that level.

A Democrat regime would ensure that if any of us ever rise to that level of success, we will be sent quickly back to “go.”