Obama's Tax Threshold Coming Down

The Democratic vice-presidential nominee, Sen. Joe Biden may have committed another accidental truth telling this week when he told a local Scranton, Pennsylvania, television interviewer that under Sen. Barack Obama's tax proposal, no one making over $150,000 would get a tax cut. Biden's remark is the second time in recent days that the Obama campaign has lowered it's threshold for tax cuts under the proposal. Earlier this week, the campaign released an ad that said nobody making over $200,000 would get a tax cut.

Sen. Obama has been under withering criticism from Sen. John McCain for his tax policies, which Obama himself described as being designed to "spread the wealth." The Obama campaign insists that Obama's tax plan would give a tax cut to 95% of Americans, a claim which has come under increasing media scrutiny. The Obama campaign responded to the Biden gaffe by saying that Biden was accurately describing Obama's plan. But the campaign, and Sen. Obama himself, have often said that everyone making less than $250,000 would see their taxes cut. The new figure of $150,000 for tax cuts casts serious doubt on whether the 95% claim that the campaign has been making with great urgency has been true all along.

Ironically, perhaps the most famous individual example of the impact of Sen. Obama's tax proposals, Joe Wurzelbacher, known as Joe the Plumber, predicted that Obama's income level for tax cuts would eventually come down. In a televised interview with Good Morning America, Wurzelbacher said, "I mean - $250,000 now. What if he decides... $150,000, you're pretty rich too? It's a slippery slope...when's it going to stop?" Wurzelbacher's questions may have been prescient, and it is clear now that Sen. Obama's previously stated limit of $250,000 in income for tax cuts is coming down fast.