The Quote of the Day

(2 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

Posted, in a slightly different form, at Daily Kos.

This morning on Brian Lerher the topic was Deductions and Loopholes. Peter in Armonk called in and said;

I’m a small business owner and have been one for thirty-five years, employed between eighty-five and one hundred and ten people at various points in time. I never understood why, some of the deductions that I was allowed to take, I take a customer to play golf, I get a fifty percent deduction. And the number of deductions as a business person that I can take compared to an individual or an individual wage earner is just, to me, extraordinary.

I also want to say that during all those years when I was, I guess a so called job creator, I never once, once considered taxes or the tax rate in a decision to hire or fire a person.  

We either had so much business that we needed more employees to do the business or we didn’t have enough business and we needed to make cutbacks or cutback through attrition. But I never said “Oh my God, taxes are going up. I’m going to fire people.” Never.

David Cay Johnston, author of the forthcoming book The Fine Print: How Big Companies Use “Plain English” and Other Tricks to Rob You Blind, had this answer.  

Oh I think it’s incredibly common and you know I’m chairman of the board of a little company with twenty-five workers. I agree exactly. We hire more workers when we have demand for our services and that’s the only reason we do so. Every business person I know operates on a different theory than you’re hearing from people on Capital Hill. You have customers, you need work done, you hire people. You don’t make these decisions based on taxes.

Now, here we are the lowly wage earners getting the squeeze for decades and now our social safety net and our basic tax deductions are on the table? As pointed out “Every business person I know operates on a different theory than you’re hearing from people on Capital Hill.” But that is more like every small and large business person in the nation. Still we keep hearing Republican claiming that the business owners who can get away with deducting almost everything, those business owners need the assistance of government, with little to no reality coming from the Democrats. Still they get away with claiming that almost all business owners file individual claims with little to no reality from the Democrats.

And still so many Democratic supporters continue to try to blame the Republicans for owning the debate or the media for not stepping up where the Democrats should. It’s like being forced to watch a really bad movie over and over. But while the Democrats continue to hide Peter in Armonk called in and said what the President of the United States should have been saying for years.

I also want to say that during all those years when I was, I guess a so called job creator, I never once, once considered taxes or the tax rate in a decision to hire or fire a person.  

We either had so much business that we needed more employees to do the business or we didn’t have enough business and we needed to make cutbacks or cutback through attrition. But I never said “Oh my God, taxes are going up. I’m going to fire people.” Never.

You can listen to the entire interview here.