ABCNews 2007: Obama initially floated a tax increase of people making over $97,000
Obama’s Definition of Rich:
- $250,000 or $200,000 or $120,000 or $97,000.
This report was from an ABC report on Sept 2007. Read for yourself:
Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is considering a major tax hike on the rich to shore up the nation’s Social Security system.
“If we kept the payroll tax rate exactly the same but applied it to all earnings and not just the first $97,000,” Obama wrote this week in an Iowa newspaper, “we could eliminate the entire Social Security shortfall.”
Obama’s idea, which he described on the op-ed page of Friday’s Quad City Times as being “one possible option” and not a formal plan, would raise more than $1 trillion over 10 years by subjecting income of more than $97,000 to a 12.4 percent tax. Half of the tax would be paid by employees and half would be paid by employers.
Obama is floating the idea of a tax hike on the rich as a way of assuring lower- and middle-income voters that he sees an option for ensuring Social Security’s solvency that would not burden them. Obama has been indirectly criticized by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., for suggesting on ABC News’ “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” that a higher retirement age should be “on the table.”