Quoted Text

Corporate Jet Tax Hike Hits Ailing Plane Makers
Published July 13, 2011
| Associated Press

In this Nov. 4, 2004 file photo, workers service Cessna Citation business jets at Cessna's service center in Wichita, Kan.
WASHINGTON –  President Obama aims at corporate fat cats when he calls for a tax increase on companies that own private jets. But he hits an American manufacturing industry that is just starting to show life after years of slumping sales and thousands of job losses.
Most business aircraft are made in America, and the companies and unions that produce them don't appreciate the president's rhetoric or his plan to raise taxes on private jet owners. They fear that both will hurt sales, costing them even more jobs.

"I think it's just insulting," said Steve Rooney, president of District 70 of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers in Wichita, Kan. "He acts like it is just a luxury for somebody to own a business jet when they're used as tools. And I don't think he realizes how many people that this industry employs and how much revenue is brought in here from those types of aircraft."
Obama's proposal would scale back a tax break enjoyed by the private jet owners but not by commercial airlines. The administration has acknowledged it is more symbolic than substantive: The tax increase would raise $3 billion over the next decade, but that's a tiny fraction of the $4 trillion in deficit reductions that economists say are needed to put the government and U.S. economy on sound footing.
Nevertheless, Obama hammers away at the issue on a regular basis, using it to portray Republicans who oppose tax increases as defenders of the rich, the kind of people who fly around in private jets. Obama said this week he wants to get rid of "egregious loopholes that are benefiting corporate jet owners or oil companies at a time where they're making billions of dollars of profits."
The proposal, however, illustrates how difficult it is to limit even the most obscure tax deduction: All tax breaks benefit somebody, and some have deep tentacles that reach far beyond the high-flying executives targeted by the president.
How corporate jets are treated by tax law reaches deep into the heartland, places like Wichita, Kan., where companies like Cessna, Hawker Beechcraft and Bombardier Learjet have been manufacturing private aircraft for years.
"We are one of the few remaining manufacturing industries left in this the country, and it would seem to me it would be important to help us grow, not put impediments to our growth in place," said Shawn Vick, Hawker Beechcraft's executive vice president................>>>>................>>>>..............Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politic.....akers/#ixzz1RzF9PmV2

So, how many people will this put out of jobs?  Probably not many, or the planes will now be built in a foreign country.  Good idea!  Raise the taxes on those rich people!  They deserve it for figuring out what people want!  Obama finally found a business in America that was doing OK, so it must be time to penalize them.