Simple Man Politics

Sorry for being so late with today’s post but it’s been a heck of a day. This week I’m covering the Obama and O’Reilly interview on Fox News. Today’s post is about this past Monday’s interview part 2. What do you say we get this over with?

Part 2 of the O’Reilly/Obama interview was about the economy and taxes. Obama and O’Reilly had a somewhat spirited conversation on the subject. O’Reilly stated to Obama that the government derived 20% more revenue under Bush than it did under Bill Clinton. Obama said this was due to economic growth which O’Reilly then stated that the economy grew 19% more with Bush than it did under Clinton. Obama said that while there was growth in the economy it under Bush it was not as great as it was in the 90’s under Clinton. Obama also said that the problem was that wages for people did not go up and that was because of corporate profits going to the top one tenth of one percent of wealthy people. O’Reilly stated that the reason the wages didn’t increase was because of the 10 million immigrants in the country most of them illegal.

Next O’Reilly and Obama discussed the marginal tax rate and how it would go up from 36% under Bush back to where it was under Clinton at 39% for people in O’Reilly and Obama’s level of income. Obama also said that he would be giving tax cuts to 95% of Americans which would be three times as many under McCain.

They discussed the capital gains tax as well. O’Reilly pointed out that Obama would raise the capital gains tax up to between 25% and 28% where upon Obama said that he would go up to 20% which O’Reilly agreed was far considering the capital gains tax was currently 15%. Obama stated as well that the only way he saw to make things right would be across the board tax hikes rather than to continue to borrow and pass it on to the next generation.

I’m not sure if either one of these gentlemen made their case entirely. I will tell you that after watching this interview I’m sure O’Reilly had it right when he said that Obama’s ideas had the appearance of being socialist and I’m not a socialist. I am including the link at the bottom of my post for you to watch the interview and you can decide for yourself. Tomorrow we will take a look at part 3 of the interview and see what Obama has to say about his past associations with Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers. Have a great evening and I will see you guys tomorrow, CIAO4NOW!!!!!

http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/index.html