I may try to do this semi-regularly, may not. But there were some interesting nuggets buried in yesterday's press briefing. As you might expect, the basic frame of the questions was something like "OH NOES! TAXES!" One particularly odd exchange centered around the White House's proposal to raise money for health care by limiting itemized deductions for the rich. Limiting itemized deduction affects, among other things, charitable deductions, leading one reporter [Update: Chip Reid of CBS, according to comments] to argue "charitable groups are not going to get the kinds of funds they need, particularly when people are suffering." Charities do good work, but is there some charity out there providing universal health care -- or the actuarial equivalent -- and I just missed it? And if not, then predicating this question around the plight of the needy is a bit of a strange approach. People are, as Reid says, suffering. Would they prefer guaranteed health care or university endowments? I'm also going to excerpt this sharp exchange between Robert Gibbs and, well, someone (the transcripts don't identify reports by name), arguing whether the upper-income tax increases kill jobs. Bit of a long quote, but worth reading in full:
Q On jobs, which is the big complaint up on Capitol Hill right now from Republicans, that this plan is a job killer, I mean, the $787 billion plan was all about jobs more than anything else, and now you've got a plan in place that -- how can you possibly tax people making over $250,000 something like $667 billion over the next 10 years and not have a downward effect on jobs?MR. GIBBS: Well, Chip, how did it work in 1994 and 1995 and 1996 and 1997?Q I guess their argument would be, imagine if they didn't have those -- those taxes, how much better it would have been?MR. GIBBS: Isn't it interesting that there's always some little slip? Again, you know -- again, I don't do this by happenstance. There isn't a member of Congress, if they were to file a single taxpayer form, that makes above $200,000 a year.Q Well, Congress. There's a lot of millionaires up there.MR. GIBBS: Well, that's true. But it's on their income. I mean, I think it's interesting, as people listen to those complaining about some aspects of the budget, I think it's just interesting to note -- I think the President was pretty clear on Tuesday -- we're talking about people that earn in excess of a quarter of a million dollars a year.Q And a huge percentage of those people are small business owners.MR. GIBBS: Some of them are, sure. Some of them are big business owners. Some of them are home-run hitters in major league baseball. Some of them run kickoffs back for a living. Some of them are the President of the United States. Q But a lot of them create jobs.MR. GIBBS: Some of them -- certainly, some of them, that's what their job is. But I would reject this overall premise that when we're asking for tax fairness from the American people, that we're -- that this is going to kill jobs. I guess if I follow the logic of the Republicans on Capitol Hill, how do you explain last month's unemployment figures? Current tax rates, 550,000 jobs -- what happened?Q This is a unique moment. (Laughter.) MR. GIBBS: Apparently, it always is.
