White House Pushed Phoney Numbers During Payroll Tax Cut Debate

The White House said the average household would save $40/week; it’s actually only $20.

Phoney Numbers.

The White House’s big Payroll Tax Cut win over Speaker John Boehner and the House Republicans was fraught with half truths and flat out lies. President Obama took to Twitter using the #40dollars hashtag, asking the 160 million working Americans what they would have to give up if the House did not act by the end of the year.

The truth is there are only 131 US million workers and they would save $20 per week.

The White House is manipulating numbers to boost the emotional impact of its allegation that Republican legislators are denying a $40 per paycheck tax cut for 160 million American workers.
According to the Census Bureau, the U.S. economy supports only 131.7 million American workers — not 160 million. That total is only slightly up from last November’s total of 130.3 million workers, because of the stalled economy.
Still, White House officials continue to push the 160 million number.
“We’ve been doing everything we can to ensure that 160 million working Americans aren’t hit with a holiday tax increase,” President Barack Obama said Dec. 22 at a White House press event intended to pressure the GOP into signing the Senate’s compromise deal on taxes and spending for 2012.
Also, according to White House spokesman Jay Carney, the temporary rollback of Social Security tax is worth about $1,000 a year. That means about $20 a week to the average worker, not the $40 per week the White House commonly cites.
On Thursday, Obama repeated the $1,000 estimate, saying “if you’re a family making about $50,000 a year, this is a tax cut that amounts to about $1,000 a year”
But he also repeated the $40-per-week misdirection on Thursday, saying thousands of people have responded to a White House request for people to describe “what would it be like to lose $40 out of your paycheck every week.”

The whole Payroll Tax Cut debate teaches the White House a very important lesson. As the 2012 elections roll around, Democrats are going to have to lie, cheat and steal, do whatever they can to take the electorate’s focus off of jobs and the economy, if they are to have any hopes of winning.

Fortunately for the President, his buddies in the press have demonstrated that they will remain completely silent, refusing to call out the White House for it’s blatant and intentional lies.