http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/64fuvbw<\/a>): \u201cThe chief economic culprit of President Obama\u2019s Wednesday press conference was undoubtedly \u2018corporate jets.\u2019 He mentioned them on at least six occasions, each time offering their owners as an example of a group that should be paying more in taxes.<\/p>\n\u201c \u2018I think it\u2019s only fair to ask an oil company or a corporate jet owner that has done so well,\u2019 the president stated at one point, \u2018to give up that tax break that no other business enjoys.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the corporate jet tax break to which Obama was referring — called \u2018accelerated depreciation,\u2019 and a popular Democratic foil of late — was created by his own stimulus package.\u201d<\/p>\n
When first proposed, Democratic proponents of the tax break lauded it as a means to spur economic activity by encouraging purchases of large manufactured goods (planes). \u201cSo the president\u2019s statement today — and his call to repeal that tax break generally — is either a tacit admission that the stimulus included projects that did not, in fact, stimulate the economy, or an attempt to \u2018soak the rich\u2019 without regard for the policy\u2019s effects on the economy,\u201d Mr. Markay continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor many Americans, those effects could be dramatic. Cessna and Gulfstream have facilities in a combined 15 cities nationwide (and another four abroad). A significant decline in consumption of private jets would undoubtedly have adverse effects on at least some of those local economies. Given the sizable bump in consumption that the initial tax break yielded, its repeal would likely have that economic domino effect.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Associated Press noted the tax break\u2019s potential economic benefits in February, 2009: \u201cJust a few months after lawmakers scolded auto executives for flying to Washington in private jets, Congress approved a tax break in the stimulus package to help businesses buy their own planes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe incentive — first used to help plane makers recover from the 2001 terror attacks — sharply reduces the up front tax bill for companies who buy assets like business planes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe aviation industry, which is cutting jobs as it suffers from declining shipments and canceled orders, hopes the tax break in the economic-stimulus bill just signed by President Barack Obama will persuade more companies to buy planes and snap a slump in general aviation that began last year.<\/p>\n
\u201c \u2018This is exactly the type of financial incentive that should be included in a stimulus bill,\u2019 said Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., in an interview. His state lost at least 6,900 jobs at Cessna and Hawker Beechcraft, both based in Wichita.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe incentive — known as accelerated depreciation — lets companies take a larger deduction in the early years of the life of an asset such as a plane. …\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, we know from Mr. Obama\u2019s autobiographies that his capitalist-hating mentors included the radical organizer Saul Alinsky, the Rev. Jeremiah \u201cGod Damn America\u201d Wright, and Communist Party member Frank Marshall Davis. But consider the context. The White House is now involved in debt ceiling negotiations, hoping to win approval for even bigger Democratic spending. In a situation where any president might be expected to sweet-talk the (presumably) Republican business owners he hopes will create the jobs he so desperately needs for his re-election, this apparently involuntary falling back, six times in one press conference, on his deep-seated hostility to \u201cthe rich and their private planes,\u201d verges on some political version of Tourette\u2019s Syndrome, in which the afflicted can\u2019t help themselves from blurting out off-putting obscenities at the most inappropriate times.<\/p>\n
So the Obama administration hands out tax breaks for those who buy private jets … and then blames the recipients for somehow causing injuries and deaths to children when they do precisely what the administration hoped they would do: buy more American-built planes.<\/p>\n
Would the president — who flies for free in the world\u2019s largest personal jet — prefer they order their private jets from France?<\/p>\n
And how, precisely, is it more objectionable to fly in privately owned planes purchased with earnings from voluntary business customers, than to fly in planes funded with money extracted from unwilling taxpayers under threat of imprisonment or worse?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This \u201cpost-partisan\u201d president was going to \u201cbring us all together,\u201d some may recall. But at his press conference last Wednesday, President Obama said: \u201cIf we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, … then that means we\u2019ve got to cut […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-808","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-taxation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-d2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=808"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/808\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}