What Does $40 per Week Mean?

Just to put things into perspective, leaving the Social Security tax as it is will increase national debt by another $120 billion, and will leave the social security trust fund even further in the red. But we are not here to discuss the effects of leaving the Social Security tax alone or not. This article deals with the disingenuousness, and down-right lying, of President Barack H. Obama and his administration.

On Thursday, December 22, 2011, Obama said, “We’ve been doing everything we can to make sure that 160 million working Americans aren’t hit with a Holiday tax increase on January First…If you’re a family making about $50,000 a year this is a tax cut that amounts to about a thousand dollars a year. That’s about forty bucks out of every paycheck.” He continued, “It may be that there are some folks in the House who refuse to vote for this compromise because they don’t think forty bucks is a lot of money. But anyone who knows what it’s like to stretch a budget knows that at the end of the week or the end of the month forty dollars can make all the difference in the world….”

Obama said, “That’s about forty bucks out of every paycheck.” But further in his speech he said, ” So on Tuesday, we asked folks to tell us what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week.  [emphasis mine]  How did “every paycheck” get changed to “every week?” Most people get paid bi-weekly, or every two weeks. Disingenuousness, and down-right lying? Your call. Either way, he is now comparing apples to oranges. A family would have to earn $104,000 a year for Obama’s continued Social Security tax holiday to be worth $40 every week.

But did that little fact stop Obama? To quote the late John Belushi, “Noooooooooooooooooooo.” Obama then, in his speech, quoted some of the emails from his “folks” about how they would deal with the loss of $40 per week.

• Joseph from New Jersey talked about how he would have to sacrifice the occasional pizza night with his daughters. He said – and I’m [Obama] quoting – “My 16-year-old twins will be out of the house soon. I’ll miss this.”
• Richard from Rhode Island wrote to tell us that having an extra $40 in his check buys enough heating oil to keep his family warm for three nights. In his words – I’m [Obama] quoting – “If someone doesn’t think that 12 gallons of heating oil is important, I invite them to spend three nights in an unheated home. Or you can believe me when I say that it makes a difference.”
• Pete from Wisconsin told us about driving more than 200 miles each week to keep his father-in-law company in a nursing home – $40 out of his paycheck would mean he’d only be able to make three trips instead of four.
• We heard from a teacher named Claire from here in D.C. who goes to the thrift store every week and uses her own money to buy pencils and books for her fourth grade class. Once in a while she splurges on science or art supplies. Losing $40, she says, would mean she couldn’t do that anymore.
• For others, $40 means dinner out with a child who’s home for Christmas, a new pair of shoes, a tank of gas, a charitable donation. These are the things at stake for millions of Americans. They matter to people. A lot.
• $40 a week is the cost of my prescriptions; without these medications I would die from a stroke or heart attack.
• $40 buys a week’s worth of the nutrient drink that my 98-year-old mother virtually survives on.
• $40 pays for over a week of groceries, fresh fruits, veggies, dairy, whole wheat bread.

Do any of these e-mails sound like they came from someone making $104,000 per year?

There are, however, some people to whom $40 every week would be make a real difference:

• A hotel maid who works full time for $8.50 per hour
• A construction worker who has been cut back to half time work at $17 per hour
• A self employed business owner whose customers were hammered by the recession and now barely survives by depleting his savings. He generated only $17,700 profit this year after paying his employees and the employer’s half of the payroll tax which was not reduced by the Obama payroll tax markdown.

To each of these people Obama’s temporary payroll tax cut is worth not $40 per week, or even $40 per paycheck, but $6.80 per week.

Much of the MSM has already begun to help Obama plant a false perception in the minds of uninformed voters that Republicans would deny everyone $40 per week. Obama knows that informed voters will figure out the lying. But he doesn’t care about informed voters. They won’t vote for him anyway.

But that’s just my opinion.

Access to other articles like this one can be found at RWNO, my personal web site.