Progress Illinois

Conservative author and political commentator Dick Morris was dropping more idiot bombs on WIND's John and Cisco in the Morning yesterday. In the course of telling co-host Cisco Cotto why an Obama presidency would mean an end to life as we know it, Morris offered up some egregious distortions of the Democrat's tax plan -- distortions that he earlier peddled on Fox News, as Media Matters for America noted.

Here's what Morris had to say about Social Security:

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MORRIS: Obama says he' s not going to raise taxes on the average American -- that he's just going to raise them on the wealthy. But that's just not true. If you take a Chicago police officer whose married to a Chicago teacher, their income is about $120,000 a year together. Right now they pay Social Security taxes on the first hundred. Under Obama's plan they'd pay it on all $120,000. So the next $20,000 would suddenly be subject to tax for them, and that would be taxed at six-and-a-half percent or 6.2 percent for a total of $1,300 a year -- over $100 a month for extra taxes.

Media Matters easily debunked Morris' claims that Obama's plan would raise Social Security taxes on folks in that income bracket:

Obama's plan to raise the cap on income that is subject to Social Security taxes would include a "doughnut hole" that exempts income that is over the current cap of $102,000 but less than $250,000; Obama stated in a June 13 speech of his proposal that "[a]nybody under $250,000 would not be affected whatsoever. Ninety-seven percent of Americans will see absolutely no change in their taxes under my plan."

Then came Morris' second lie -- this time about the capital gains tax:

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MORRIS: Old people who rely on corporate dividends and utility bond interest would have their dividend tax doubled [by Obama]. And anyone who owns stock -- and 52 percent of Americans do -- would have to pay double the capital gains tax.

Here's Media Matters on the claim that Obama's capital gains proposal would affect all stockowners:

Obama has said he would not raise the capital gains tax rate on individuals with income of less than $250,000. Moreover, an increase in capital gains taxes would not in any event affect most distributions from 401(k) and IRA accounts, which are taxed as ordinary income

But Morris' distortions weren't limited to the arena of tax policy. He also repeated the claim that illegal immigrants make up about a quarter of the uninsured in America:

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MORRIS: What I talk about in this book at some length is that Obama's plan for health insurance involves covering all illegal immigrants with federally subsidized health insurance. And part of the reason I'm worried about that is partly the huge cost it would entail. When he says there are 47 million uninsured Americans -- 10 to 15 million of those are illegal immigrants.

If this claim rings a bell, it's because Rep. Mark Kirk similarly exaggerated the number of illegal immigrants without health insurance back in May. But as we noted, a recent study (PDF) by the National Institute for Health Care Management put the number of uninsured illegal immigrants at approximately 5.6 million.  Indeed, contrary to Morris and Kirk's assumption that all undocumented workers lack coverage, many receive health insurance through employer-sponsored programs or purchase it themselves.