On Saturday, one-tenth of a million faithful Obama-maniacs gathered in St. Louis, Missouri to hear their man claim that his proposed tax cuts for ninety-five percent of American working families are not welfare payments, as correctly asserted by Senator John McCain.

Said The One:

I'm not giving tax cuts to folks who don't work, I'm giving tax cuts to people who do work. John McCain is so out of touch with the struggles you are facing that he must be the first politician in history to call a tax cut for working people 'welfare’.

The words “blah, blah, blah” come to mind.

They are very chantable. Try it.

By definition, a tax cut is a reduction of taxes. When someone is allowed to keep more of their earnings by virtue of lowering a tax rate, it is a tax cut, period. Whether one is cutting a lawn, cutting their hair or cutting taxes, the word “cut” has a very specific meaning. It can mean to divide, to trim, to pare, to purge, to take away or to otherwise eliminate from – none of which are applicable under Obama’s characterization.

Assuming that Obama will extend the already existing Bush tax cuts for those making less than $250,000, it is imperative to understand that Democrats are not defining or portraying the phrase “tax cuts” truthfully.

Obama is famously proposing a “tax credit” - called the “Making Work Pay Tax Credit” - of $500 for each worker and $1000 to couples. He calls it a “tax cut.”

It is not. Rather, it is a “refundable tax credit.” The difference – which is infinitely significant - matters.

If married citizen John Smith, for example, completes his tax forms and discovers that he and his wife owe $150 in federal income taxes (assuming they earn less than $250,000 a year) they will receive a “refundable tax credit” of $850. Accordingly, if Smith and his wife owe no federal income taxes at all, they will receive the full “refundable tax credit” of $1000.

Notice that nothing has been cut. Tax rates weren’t trimmed. Mr. Smith is not keeping more of his own money. All that happened there was that a payment from the federal government - that may or may not have offset federal taxes Mr. Smith owed - was issued.

And where did this money come from?

From collected taxes, of course.

Thanks to Senator Obama, Mr. Smith suddenly (magically) had more money to put toward his taxes (assuming he owed federal income tax), add to his refund, or spend as he wished - all because he and his wife didn’t earn more than $250,000 a year. The kicker is, those “collected taxes” came from those who did earn more than $250,000 – the richest five percent of wage earners in America.

Nifty plan, eh?

Indeed, Senator Obama has a whole bunch of these “refundable tax credits” on his drawing board, including a FOUR THOUSAND DOLLAR “credit” for college tuition, a 10% “mortgage interest credit,” and an expansion of the “earned-income tax credit” (among others).

Understanding that “refundable credits” are simply “payments” to tax payers that either counteract taxes already owed or wind up as “wow-I-don’t-really-deserve-this” money in the pockets of “American working families” (and taking into account that according to the Congressional Budget Office, the bottom forty percent of income earners do not pay any income tax at all), where does the funding for these payments come from?

You guessed it – from the richest five percent of wage earners in America.

The fact is taxes on ninety-five percent of “working families” will not go down. Instead, these people will be getting undeserved, unearned money – under the guise of “tax credits” – that will ultimately adjust their income “net,” creating the appearance of tax cuts. They will have more money than they would have had otherwise, thanks to Barack Obama and his “tax cut” tag.

Supporters of the Obama tax plan like to thwart conservatives by saying the proposed “cuts” are not undeserved – even to those who have no federal income tax liability – because of other tax burdens on the middle and lower class, such as Social Security payroll taxes and Medicare (among others). As Obama campaign chief economist Jason Furman wrote in an e-mail to Washington Times chief political correspondent:

The tens of millions of families working hard and paying payroll taxes do not think that tax cuts are a form of “welfare” or “redistribution” – they think it is only fair to reward work.”

Rewarding work?

(That sound you heard was me falling off my chair).

The way to reward work in this country is to punish work in this country?

How on earth does someone come to the conclusion that work is fairly rewarded by taxing those who have more money and redistributing those taxes to those who have less?

On top of that, to try and cleverly shift the focus of these so-called “tax cuts” from federal income tax to the “other” federal taxes workers pay in an attempt to justify calling these government payouts “tax cuts” is remarkably disingenuous on two levels.

First, go back to the John Smith example alluded to earlier. The amount of money he and his wife get for free from Obama’s “Making Work Pay Tax Credit” is based on the federal income tax he owes – not Social Security tax, Medicare or anything else. If John (who is married) owes $400 in federal income tax, he and his wife get back $600. If he owes $510, they get $490. If he owes nothing, he gets it all. That fact alone makes the entire issue legitimately a federal income tax issue, as conservatives accurately point out.

Second, many Americans who pay these “other” non-income taxes already get much of that money back through a well-known “refundable tax credit” currently in existence called the earned-income tax credit.

Facts are nasty little buggers, aren’t they?

Andrew Roman, Brooklyn, NY