Biden: Jesus Would Want Higher Taxes
Joe Biden isn’t backing down from his startling claim last week that raising taxes on the rich is the “patriotic” thing to do. On Thursday he upped the ante, thundering that he also has Jesus in his corner. “Catholic social doctrine as I was taught it is, you take care of people who need the help the most,” Mr. Biden preached to a group of union supporters on Thursday.
If Sarah Palin said something like that the left would be calling her a theocrat, and MSNBC would be holding panel discussions questioning whether or not Palin would talk McCain into establishing a national religion.
But Joe Biden? Meh.
As for wealth redistribution being Christian, the Wall Street Journal notes:
We won’t get into a theological debate with Mr. Biden, except to say that Biblical tax rates tended to run around 10%, not the 39.6%-plus that Barack Obama’s tax plan calls for.
I’m no Christian myself, and I’m not really interested in theological discussions either, but I’m pretty sure that Jesus wanted to help people who wanted to help themselves. Which is different than punishing the most successful members of society with exorbitant tax rates in order to fund government services used to buy votes from everyone else.
