CNBC's Gasparino: Obama's Tax Plan 'Throwing Gasoline on the Fire'
The broadcast networks have certainly backed liberal economic policies promoted by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. But on CNBC Oct. 8, the network’s on-air editor declared the policies “absurd” and that they would make current economic problems worse. He called raising taxes on anyone during times of economic duress “insane.”
“This is even more insane – this is like throwing gasoline on the fire,” Gasparino said.
The broadcast networks have certainly backed liberal economic policies promoted by Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. But on CNBC Oct. 8, the network’s on-air editor declared the policies “absurd” and that they would make current economic problems worse. He called raising taxes on anyone during times of economic duress “insane.”
“This is even more insane – this is like throwing gasoline on the fire,” Gasparino said.
In an appearance on “Squawk Box” to analyze Merrill Lynch’s collateral obligations to JP Morgan, Charlie Gasparino called Obama a “cool customer” but said his proposal to raise taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 a year “just sounds absurd.”
“I mean, Obama, I tell you – I watched him last night – he’s a cool customer and there’s no doubt about that,” Gasparino said. “But, when you start adding up everything, what he wants to do – it does, I tell you, you can’t help but think, you know, you’re raising taxes. You’re giving essentially welfare checks. Here’s what I don’t get – if you make $249,000 a year, you get a welfare check from the federal government. If you make $250,000 a year – well, you got pay $40,000 extra in taxes that year. That to me – it just sounds absurd.”
Obama’s list of expenditures would be a large burden on the taxpayer, according to Gasparino. And his “tax cut” was just a back door way to wealth redistribution he said.
“I mean, John McCain – listen, say what you want about his performance – but I’m talking, just looking at that debate rationally – could you literally add up – he wanted to invade Pakistan I thought he said, he wants a surge in Afghanistan, he wants expanded health care, he wants to give a tax break to anybody under – not a tax break, essentially a welfare check to anybody who makes $249,000 or less. By the way, it’s not a tax cut because poor people don’t pay income taxes. You’re not changing the tax rates. And then he wants to tax everybody else.”
Gasparino said that despite Obama’s “thin record,” he is much more of an ideologue than McCain, based on his time as a community activist, state senator and in the U.S. Senate.
