Schaeffer blasted conservative Republicans who have opposed Barack Obama: "...a lot of ordinary Americans who aren't on the religious right understand something and that is as the first African-American president, he has been up against a racist white bloc in the Republican Party that has come dressed as the Tea Party..."
He also predicted the President would be reelected by "a wide margin" and added, "Most Americans understand that in a second term, [Obama] is going to come out swinging and do a lot more than in the first term when the obstructionists have been swept out of the way. And I predict that."
Regardless of the rightness or otherwise of the claims of the Republican congressmen elected by the so-called “Tea-Party Republicans” that the American federal government needs to trim sharply its expenditures to match its revenues, seeking to fight their war via threatened defaults of existing US federal government debt is incompatible with holding the highest credit rating. Whatever their protestations, the Tea-Party Republicans must be held responsible for this self-inflicted wound on the US of A. Why should we care in West Africa? For one, we do not want African legislators emulating the egregious conduct of some American congressmen. Nigeria, for example, is a recovering sovereign deadbeat. The last thing it needs is for its politicians to think that threatening to default on debt is acceptable behaviour.
A comparative perspective is helpful. The US has been far more indebted than it is today. Its debt as a percentage of American gross domestic product in 1946 was 130 percent versus its comparable 2010 ratio of 59 percent. There are some triple A rated governments today with higher debt ratios. For example, Singapore has a debt ratio exceeding 100 percent, Germany has a ratio of 79 percent, and the United Kingdom has a ratio of 79 percent. What distinguishes the USA today from its state of 1946 and other countries is simple: the United States today has made a host of promises, known as “entitlements”, to look after its sick and its aged, regardless of income, for which it has not set aside the money. By contrast, Singapore compels all its workers to save for their own retirement and to provide for their own medical expenses. The US government spent $742 billion (or 85 percent of 2009 individual tax) on healthcare alone in its 2010 fiscal year. Constituting 8.2 percent of America’s economy, it is up from 1.3 percent of America’s economy 50 years ago.
It is ironic that many Tea-party Republicans opposed to entitlements in principle consume them in spades. But President Obama cannot rely on that irony. His calls for the so-called “rich” to pay their “fair share” of taxes is an attempt to get them to contribute to discharging those unfunded entitlements. It would be preferable to reduce the rights of middle class Americans to enjoy the pot of entitlements for middle class Americans while maintaining the rights of the poor.
Mr Obama claims that American households earning more than $250,000 are wealthy or rich. I consider his definition to be an example of linguistic inflation. Nevertheless, let me restrict his definition to those households earning $300,000. Here are the facts for the tax “fairness” debate. A total of 140.5 million tax returns were filed by American households in 2009. Only 1.768 million households earned adjusted gross incomes equal to or exceeding $300,000. They earned $1.448 trillion out of a total income of $7.626 trillion or 19 percent. That is unequal. No question. But, total personal income tax paid was $866 billion, of which $343.8 billion or 39.7 percent was paid by those 1.768 million households. To me, they paid more than their “fair” share because their taxes constitute a larger percentage of the actual individual tax take than their share of American adjusted gross income.
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