When A Tax Cut Isn't Exactly A Tax Cut

*sigh*

It's time to get your oops on:

About 13.4 million taxpayers may be getting unexpected tax bills because they were awarded too much money under President Barack Obama's Making Work Pay tax credit, a government audit said Thursday.

The tax credit, which expires Jan. 1, was designed to increase take-home pay by about $8 a week through new tax withholding tables. The credit was capped at $400 for individuals and $800 for married couples filing jointly.

However, the credit put millions of taxpayers at risk for not having enough taxes withheld from their paychecks, resulting in a tax bill when they file their returns, said the audit by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

Those at risk included people with multiple jobs, married couples who both work, Social Security recipients who also work, and young workers who are also claimed as dependents on their parents' tax returns.

This is what Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress bragged about as being the tax 'cuts' they implemented for the middle class soon after they took over in 2008.  The first problem with that statement is that it was not actually a tax 'cut'.  A 'cut' would actually be a reduction in the rate of taxes paid by Americans, but this was simply a one-time tax rebate.  You probably got one yourself, unless you were in the top income tax bracket.  In reality, this was nothing more than a brazen effort to redistribute money from the top income earners to the bottom and middle income earners.  The second problem is that the IRS considered this redistribution a form of taxable income, so while you got this nice check in the mail from the top income bracket, it counted against you in what you would have to pay the next year.  The third problem is yet another illustration of just how incompetent the federal government is - they couldn't even correctly calculate a one-time tax refund for a few million people!  Isn't tax calculation the entire purpose of the IRS?  And they wonder why most Americans are skeptical of the government's ability to run a universal health care program that would include all 300+ million Americans??

These were all things that conservatives pointed out at the time this tax 'cut' was being debated, but we were scoffed at and derided as not supporting the middle class or as standing up for the rich.

James Madison once said, "If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions."  His if statement has become our reality, and it's bad news for most of us, as this whole episode plays out.

You know, it's great to be able to say 'I told you so', but wouldn't it be better if people listened to conservatives before 'I told you so' became necessary?