Even if Barack Obama does adhere to his income tax plan, his promise that he won’t raise taxes on the common man is still a lie.

A continual theme of the Barack Obama campaign has been his vow that no one making less than $250,000 a year would get a tax increase. Now he has provided more details, pointing out that to qualify for a tax cut you must earn less than $200,000. Then, on Tuesday, Joe Biden said during an interview that tax breaks should go to “people who make $150,000 a year.”  My, my, when Obama said he was the candidate of change, he never mentioned that it applied to figures and campaign promises.

Wisecracks aside, Obama can credibly say his tax plan remains the same, that he is merely providing some nuance and Biden was simply being a maverick à la Sarah Palin and expressing the vice-opinion. But it doesn't matter, because there is a dirty little secret of taxation. 

I will now tell you what the socialists poised to further increase their hold on government won't talk about. Obama may or may not keep his promise once in office; after all, if the Democrats have a lock on both houses of Congress, there will be tremendous pressure from the legislature to raise taxes. Remember that Congressman Barney Frank has already expressed the desire to do just that. But even if we give Obama the benefit of the doubt and assume he won't change his tune once in office, we have to be a bloodhound and sense those notes played above the range of normal human perception.

A promise to simply not raise income taxes is like a promise to not hit you on the medial side of the left knee: if it makes you feel secure, you're crazy. With all the hidden taxes in existence – there are taxes on gasoline, phone bills, airline tickets and a multitude of things we're not even aware of – the government can fleece us like sheep in springtime without ever touching the income-tax rate. Thus, when Obama boasts of being a tax cutter, he is simply weaving a nice-sounding election-year yarn.

There is absolutely no question that these hidden taxes will be raised. How do I know? Because the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and this is what leftists do. Moreover, how do you think Obama will fund the laundry list of federal programs he will foist upon us? Believe me, he won't be cutting government or taxes, only the size of your wallet.

Regardless of whom you support, however, all citizens should understand we're being played for fools. When a politician – any politician – casts himself as a tax cutter but only discusses income-tax policy, it's simply election-time artifice. He is banking on the ignorance of the masses, knowing that he can promise to not touch a hair on their head and that they will never think that he said nothing about the head itself.

Statist politicians love the hidden-tax system. This is because it enables them to appropriate Americans’ money under the cover of darkness, so that most people will be none the wiser and won’t take these scoundrels to task at election time. To raise the high-profile income tax is to raise ire, to approach a citizen as a mugger on a street brandishing a gun; the hidden tax is the clever embezzler who covers his tracks well.

This is why I long ago proposed a foolproof tax plan that would limit the federal government to only one form of taxation, thereby eliminating the hidden-tax racket, this most deceitful, underhanded tool of big government. It would force politicians to raise taxes under the light of day, making government more transparent and the average voter more informed – and the average tax-and-spend statist more imperiled at the polls.

Even more important than limiting the government to one form of taxation is another feature of my plan: national referenda on all tax increases. In other words, before any tax increase takes effect, it should have to be passed by a vote of the people. After all, as former Chief Justice John Marshall once said, "The power to tax is the power to destroy," and shouldn’t this great power be placed directly in the hands of the people?

Money is the life-blood of the government beast, and the greater the supply, the more this leviathan grows. Thus, one of the best ways to shrink government is to treat it like a child who is a profligate spender: cut the supply. And for this to happen, the purse strings must be controlled by the people, not the politicians.

The last part of my proposal is to make our one form of taxation a national sales tax. But whatever we choose, it definitely should not be anything resembling our current income-tax system.

If I approached you on the street and asked how much money you made, what would your response most likely be? Well, if you were polite, you’d probably say it was a private matter; if you were a New Yorker, you’d probably tell me to mind my own business. Regardless, virtually no one wants to divulge such information to a stranger. Yet, did you ever stop and think that we reveal such facts to strangers every year, those working within the government? Not only do we tell them how much we earn, but also how we make it, what our deductions are and numerous other excruciating details. And most of us never question it, good little shorn sheep that we are.

The bottom line is that Uncle Sam has no moral right to have this window into our private financial lives. It is offensively intrusive.

Then there is the offensively furtive, things such as Barack Obama’s intention to dig further into our wallets. It’s something almost as well-hidden as most of the taxes he would raise.

Selwyn Duke is a columnist and public speaker whose work has been published widely online and in print, on both the local and national levels. He has been featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show, at WorldNetDaily.com, in American Conservative magazine, is a contributor to AmericanThinker.com and appears regularly as a guest on the award-winning, nationally-syndicated Michael Savage Show. Visit his Website. 

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