Politics: Idiot Watch

I am not in the habit of trawling through Ari Fleischer's briefings, but I heard Ari say something this morning on the NPR and sought out his response to questions yesterday about the screwing of 12 million poor kids by removing the increased child tax credit for families making between $10,500 and 26,625 annually. Ari has already avoided answering the question. If you read the whole section on the child tax credit in the briefing, you will note that Ari carefully doesn't answer the question about what happens to families who were denied this credit. He insists, instead on talking about people who have their taxes forgiven -- people earning less than the $10,500 cut-off for the tax credit.

So basically, families who make less than that pay no taxes. The families who earn $10,500-2$26,625 pay their regular taxes (about 1/4 of their income) but don't get an extra $400 per child tax credit. The families who earn more than $26,625 do get the $400 per child credit. So Ari keeps talking about the 3 million additional families who won't pay any income tax at all. But the reporters, see, they want to know about the 12 million kids of families who don't qualify for the credit and are living on less than 26 grand a year for a family of four. Listen to the logic get tortured:

Q Just to button this up, the President was satisfied with sacrificing this area in order to get the compromise and ultimately get the package, even though it would leave this particular group out?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, as the President said, he doesn't get everything that he wants, and if this provision had been included, the President would have signed it. But the conferees did make that decision. The President would have signed it had it been sent to him.

Q You were a party to that conference, so it's not like it's an "us" versus "them." You were a party to that.

MR. FLEISCHER: I'm walking you precisely what happened.

Q So why did the White House conferees agree to drop these 11.9 million children from this benefit?

MR. FLEISCHER: Well, there were many decisions that were made that represented compromises in order to get something done. At the end, it still was a very close vote. You had the interesting position of a senator who advocated for this position, got it -- on the Senate Finance Committee -- and still voted against what she wanted. So different members of Congress made different decisions, based on the compromises that were made in order to still make progress. At the end of the day, the President determined it was still important enough to make progress, even though he was not getting everything he wanted in this bill.

Q Is it fair to say that the White House, not members of Congress, not senators, but the White House at the end of the day thought that to make progress, the benefit for these 11.9 million children should go in order to, in part, save the dividend benefit for investors?

MR. FLEISCHER: Keep in mind, investors are across-the-board in terms of income groups, include many senior citizens, whose only source of income is their investment, because they don't have an income since they retired. And that's aimed at creating jobs. And so there are a variety of economic factors that go into the tax bill in terms of giving it the oomph to create jobs, which is what this is about. And I think economists can argue, they will differ about which provisions help create more jobs. And that's a debate that will go on.

Q No, but you had to make a choice, and I just want to make sure that you are saying that the White House agreed to make the choice to leave these children behind.

MR. FLEISCHER: Many, many choices get made. For example, people of different income levels don't even get a child credit. There are many people who don't qualify because their income levels are too high to even get a dollar's worth of a child credit, and they pay considerable amount of income taxes. The President wanted to have a zero percent dividend exclusion. He got less of a dividend exclusion.

There are many different factors that go into it. There's still the permanent issue. These tax cuts were not made permanent as a result of the compromises that were made. And so, as always, the President has to make a judgment about whether sufficient progress is being made toward the achievement of a good tax bill that creates jobs and growth for the economy. In his judgment, this tax bill is a good tax bill that creates jobs and growth for the economy.

Throughout, Ari lies about the people who pay no income taxes. The people who didn't get the credit will pay income taxes, and they will be paying more since they didn't get the credit. Ari seems to conclude that those people were just going to be getting free money from the government. He actually villifies these people for wanting to get tax relief: "They still benefit from a host of programs that income taxes help them in their daily lives; yet they pay zero income taxes. In fact, they get back money from the Treasury which is in the form of public assistance, above and beyond income taxes."

Go straight to hell you lying bastard. Every night, 12 million American kids go to sleep hungry. With this lazy, callous, and stupid tax cut, and Ari's scum-sucking defense of this absolutely bloodthirsty omission, the Bush administration takes a hand in pushing hundreds across that line every single day. No Child Left Behind indeed.