The fiscal cliff deal doesn’t contain its tax hikes to only those making over $400,000 per year. It also raises the payroll tax of every working American, while giving big tax breaks to the super wealthy. You didn’t hear President Obama bragging about that too much during any of his appearances before the media.

The expiration of the payroll-tax holiday will reduce the real income of middle-class and working-poor households by around 1.5 percent on average. So while the fiscal-cliff deal raises taxes on those making $400,000 and up, it also raises taxes on workers in the bottom (0.00 percent) income-tax bracket, who do pay payroll taxes. Republicans would have been happy to extend all of those tax cuts into the future, but President Obama and his Democratic allies insisted on tax increases — knowing full well that would mean tax increases on the poor as well as on the high-income.

But not all the rich folks got a tax hike. As usual, well-connected special interest groups — from Hollywood to the booze lobby — secured sweetheart deals for their own narrow interests. So the industry that employs Sean Penn and Ed Asner gets a nice fat tax break, and poor people with jobs get the shaft. The people who rail against “corporate welfare” and “crony capitalism” took the time to cut a nice side deal for the rum industry. You will notice that the Bacardi family is not poor. That’s Washington. (Read More)

The sweetheart deals noted above are just a small sampling of the perks given to the well-connected by the Democrats and the Republicans who went along with them. The Wall Street Journal has much more on that.

In praising Congress’s huge new tax increase, President Obama said Tuesday that “millionaires and billionaires” will finally “pay their fair share.” That is, unless you are a Nascar track owner, a wind-energy company or the owners of StarKist Tuna, among many others who managed to get their taxes reduced in Congress’s New Year celebration.

There’s plenty to lament about the capital and income tax hikes, but the bill’s seedier underside is the $40 billion or so in tax payoffs to every crony capitalist and special pleader with a lobbyist worth his million-dollar salary. Congress and the White House want everyone to ignore this corporate-welfare blowout, so allow us to shine a light on the merriment.

Read the whole thing, and remember this the next time your hear Obama on another tear about the rich not paying their fair share. If he really cared about that he would have insisted that these loopholes and special favors be left out of the bill.

Maybe it’s time to bring back Obama’s #40dollars hashtag he used about a year ago to try to beat Republicans into submission.

Update: Linked by Maggie’s Notebook who has the House roll call vote. For the record, Rep. Ann Marie Buerkle who was defeated by statist Dan Maffie in the last election  voted no, but her vote wasn’t electronically recorded, so it looks like she didn’t vote. But she did. That’s how hapless our government is. And we’re supposed to believe they record our votes properly when they can’t even get it right in the House of Representatives?