Barack Obama's online, townhall-style Q&A this morning consisted of his usual assortment of long-winded, wonky-sounding non-answers. He did spice up his mealy-mouthed riff on universal healthcare with a couple of odd references to 'obie/gynies' (as in OB/GYNs), but aside from that you didn't miss much.
Here's an exchange that stood out to me, and was typical of the dodging Obama did throughout the session:
Q Sir, I'm Tom Sawner. I'm a service-disabled veteran, small-business owner in Arlington, Virginia. My company, Educational Options, works with public schools. We serve more than 200,000 at-risk kids within public schools, providing online content, partnering with teachers, and I was honored to serve on your education platform committee.
THE PRESIDENT: Wonderful.
Q Today my question is, as a small-business owner, my company is still profitable. We're still growing, we're still hiring. The money that I make as a profit, I'm plowing right back in, and even the money that I pay to the bank for my business loans. Yet under current tax laws, all of that counts as income to me before I ever see a penny of it.
Sir, could you please help small businesses by allowing, some way, somehow, money we pay to the bank in principle to not count against our income, and put us in the "richest" before we ever seem a dime, and allow us to invest in this huge engine to drive economic recovery?
And a final question: As a veteran, would you please see if we can enforce the existing laws for veteran and other small-business set-asides? Thank you, sir.
THE PRESIDENT: Okay, good. Well, thank you for the question. Obviously, I'm not completely familiar with your circumstances or your tax status. But we want to do everything we can to relieve the tax burden on startups and small businesses, and as they grow, then their tax burden is going to grow accordingly.
So one of the things that we have already proposed and is reflected in our budget is that we are eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses. That's something that we've already proposed and put in place.
Now, what'll happen is, you won't see that reflected in an immediate benefit because it will kick in five years from now. The law starts now, but you have to have those capital gains accumulate over the course of five years before it counts, because we don't want people gaming the system. But that's an example of the kinds of tools that we are already putting in place in the tax code to provide you relief, so that as you're reinvesting, that you are not penalized for that reinvestment.
And we will do everything we can to enforce the existing rules with regard to small businesses for veterans.
Translation: "Mr. Small Businessman, you're still going to have to count everything as income. I know I didn't answer that directly, but my non-answer should tell you everything you need to know. But trust me - if you can hang on for at least five more years, there just might be a captial gains tax cut waiting for you at that point. I'd give it to you now, but there are so many tax cheats out there [take a look at my cabinet!], I wouldn't want to make things too easy for them."
Maybe for the next townhall meeting, someone could ask Obama: "When are you going to stop campaigning and start presiding, Mr. President? Don't you have better things to do with your time"?
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