He really was one of the first people “The Left” tried to cancel in 2008 when we stood up to Barack Obama.
While Obama was campaigning in 2008, he met a man named Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher and that meeting has lived on in infamy.
The meeting between Wurzelbacher aka “Joe the Plumber” was iconic. The conversation was so bad that the Obama administration started attacking him. The left went after his business and leftist local officials began investigating him.
Wurzelbacher won his case against the corrupt officials and in 2012 a federal court ruled against leftist officials trying to revive the case.
Sadly, Joe the Plumber has passed away at age 49, after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
Obama: What’s your name?
Joe: My name’s Joe Wurzelbacher.
Obama: Good to see you, Joe.
Joe: I’m getting ready to buy a company that makes about $250,000 … $270-$280,000 a year.
Obama: All right.
Joe: Your new tax plan’s gonna tax me more, isn’t it?
Obama: Well, here’s what’s gonna happen. If you’re a small business which you would qualify as, first of all, you’d get a 50 percent tax credit, so you get a cut on taxes for your health care costs. So you would actually get a tax cut on that front. If your revenue is above $250,000, then from $250,000 down, your taxes are gonna stay the same. It is true that for … say, from $250,000 up, from $250,000 to $300,000 or so …
Joe: Well, here’s my question …
Obama: I just want to answer your question. So, for that additional amount, you’d go from 36 to 39 percent, which is what it was under Bill Clinton. And the reason we’re doing that is because 95 percent of small businesses make less than $250,000 so what I want to do is give them a tax cut. I want to give all these folks who are bus drivers, teachers, auto workers who make less … I want to give them a tax cut and so what we’re doing is, we are saying that folks who make more than $250,000 that that marginal amount above $250,000, they’re gonna be taxed at a 39 instead of a 36 percent rate.
Joe: Well, the reason why I ask you about the American Dream I mean, I work hard. I’m a plumber, I work 10-12 hours a day …
Obama: Absolutely.
Joe: … and I’m, you know, buying this company and I’m gonna continue to work that way. Now, if I buy another truck and adding something else to it and, you know, build the company, you know, I’m getting taxed more and more while fulfilling the American Dream.
Obama: Well, here’s a way of thinking about it. How long have you been a plumber? How long have you been working?
Joe: Fifteen years.
Obama: Okay. So, over the last 15 years, when you weren’t making $250,000, you would have been getting a tax cut from me. So you’d actually have more money, which means you would have saved more, which means that you would have gotten to the point where you could build your small business quicker than under the current tax code. So there are two ways of looking at it. I mean, one way of looking at it is, now that you’ve become more successful …
Joe: Through hard work.
Obama: … through hard work, you don’t want to be taxed as much.
Joe: Exactly.
Obama: Which I understand. But another way of looking at it is, 95 percent of folks who are making less than $250,000, they may be working hard, too, but they’re being taxed at a higher rate than they would be under mine. So what I’m doing is … you know, put yourself back 10 years ago when you were only making whatever – $60,000 or $70,000. Under my tax plan, you would be keeping more of your paycheck, you’d be spending lower taxes, which means that you would have saved and gotten to the point where you are faster. Now, look, nobody likes high taxes, right? Of course not. But what’s happened is that we end up … we’ve cut taxes a lot for folks like me who make a lot more than $250,000. We haven’t given a break to folks who make less and, as a consequence, the average wage and income for just ordinary folks, the vast majority of Americans, has actually gone down over the last eight years. So all I want to do is … I’ve got a tax cut. The only thing that changes is, I’m going to cut taxes a little bit more for the folks who are most in need, and for the 5 percent of the folks who are doing very well, even though they’ve been working hard … and I understand that; I appreciate that … I just want to make sure that they’re paying a little bit more in order to pay for those other tax cuts. Now, I respect your disagreement, but I just want you to be clear. It’s not that I want to punish your success. I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you, that they’ve got a chance at success, too.
you can read the full transcript here courtesy of the Tampa Bay Times
