You've Got Mailers!

Summary
A direct-mail piece sent to voters by the Clinton campaign twists Obama's words and gives a false picture of his proposals:

     * It says he "wants to raise Social Security taxes by a trillion dollars," a big distortion. Obama has said a "good option" would be to apply Social Security payroll taxes to incomes over $97,500 a year, but that would only affect taxes paid by 6.5 percent of individuals and couples. And he hasn't formally proposed such a move anyway.

    * The Clinton mailer says Obama has "no plan" for a moratorium on foreclosures such as the one Clinton has proposed. That's true, but Obama has his own plan for homeowner relief. The mailer leaves the impression that Obama has "no plan" at all, which is false.

    * It says Obama "voted for Dick Cheney's energy bill that gives huge tax breaks to oil companies," another distortion. By the time Congress passed the 2005 energy bill, it raised taxes on the oil industry more than it decreased them and also contained billions for alternative fuels research and subsidies for energy-efficient buildings and vehicles.

Analysis
The battle between Democratic front-runners Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama isGraphic turning into one fought with good old-fashioned snail mail. Both have launched attacks on the other through fliers delivered to voters' mailboxes. Here we take a look at a recent Clinton mailer sent out in Arizona, which was posted on The Atlantic magazine's Web site. Clinton has made similar claims in a mailer distributed in Nevada and in Democratic debates.

Trillion-dollar Tax Hike
Perhaps the most eye-catching claim in the Clinton mailer is the charge that Obama "wants to raise Social Security taxes by a trillion dollars." That's an awful distortion. Nothing Obama has proposed or supported would affect Social Security taxes paid by the overwhelming majority of workers.

First, the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes is now set at $97,500. (It went up to $102,000 in January.) Obama has said he's open to raising it, but such a move would only increase taxes on people earning more. In fact, lifting the cap would affect taxes paid by 6.5 percent of individuals and couples, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. Second, the "trillion dollars" is an estimate of the amount of taxes to be collected over a decade and only if the cap is eliminated completely. And third, Obama has said that increasing the cap is a good choice, but he hasn't formally proposed to do so or said whether he'd eliminate it entirely or increase it to some higher level, or some other option. Meanwhile, Clinton herself has not formally disavowed the idea of raising the payroll tax cap, though she hasn't come out in support of it.

Obama has publicly supported the idea of raising the payroll tax cap on a number of occasions. In a Sept. 26 debate in New Hampshire, he said that lifting the cap was "probably going to be the best option" and "much preferable to the other options that are available." But he came just short of promising to do so:

    Obama, Sept. 26 debate: I think that lifting the cap is probably going to be the best option. ... My personal view is that lifting the cap is much preferable to the other options that are available.

Later, on Nov. 11 on NBC's "Meet the Press," Obama indicated that a Social Security tax increase could fall only on those making more than $200,000 a year:

    Obama, Nov. 11 "Meet the Press": I have not specified exactly how we would structure it. Conceivably, you might have the equivalent of a doughnut hole ... where you have a gap between people who are of middle income and very wealthy people.

The Tax Policy Center estimates the "doughnut hole" approach, which had been proposed by former presidential candidate John Edwards and would have left incomes between $97,500 and $200,000 untaxed, would increase tax revenue by $816 billion, also over 10 years.

During the Sept. 26 debate Clinton said she wasn't willing to talk about raising the wage cap, or any specific proposals to shore up Social Security's solvency, as long as the U.S. continued to run large budget deficits.