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Tea Partiers Just Plain Ignorant

Anti-tax activists have no idea how much they pay in taxes

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff

Posted Mar 19, 2010 1:43 PM CDT

(Newser) – For a movement that frets so much about the “burden of federal taxation,” Tea Party adherents have a remarkably dim understanding of what they actually fork over to Washington. In a recent survey of anti-tax activists in Washington Tuesday, tea partiers thought, on average, that 42% of GDP goes to federal taxes. The actual number depends on how you calculate it, but the highest possible figure is 14.8.%, writes Bruce Bartlett.

Ditto for the personal income tax burden, Bartlett writes for Forbes. Angry, misinformed activists think an average family pays out up to 25% of income. But if they bothered to look at the tables, they’d see that no matter how you figure it, you won’t give the government more than 14.5%. They also think taxes are higher since President Obama took office, but they’re actually “very considerably lower by every measure.” Rather than being a philosophical opposition, Bartlett writes, “tea parties just represent unfocused anger at current economic conditions.”

Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., speaks at a health care rally by The American Grassroots Coalition and The Tea Party Express, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, on Capitol Hill.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., speaks at a health care rally by The American Grassroots Coalition and The Tea Party Express, Tuesday, March 16, 2010, on Capitol Hill.   (AP Photo)
Tea partiers at a rally at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Monday, March 8, 2010.
Tea partiers at a rally at the Capitol in Richmond, Va., Monday, March 8, 2010.   (AP Photo)
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Whatever the future of the Tea Party movement in American politics, it's a bad idea for so many participants to operate on the basis of false notions about the burden of federal taxation. It only takes a little bit of time to look at one's tax return.
- Bruce Bartlett

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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 132 comments
shusss
Mar 21, 2010 12:44 PM CDT
The cry of the tea partier: "I'm stupid as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more!
cornelison
Mar 20, 2010 9:28 PM CDT
The baggers know that people die needlessly when they have no health insurance. They make up things as they go along. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Derni
Mar 20, 2010 9:11 PM CDT
Tea baggers and anti -health care citizens today called John Lewis a MNEGGER and our gay senator from MN :they chanted kill the bill and kill the gay! So all the mentally challeneged people are out there..keep showing how your frontal lobes don't work

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