On The War Room, Jim Quinn falsely claimed that most average-income bus drivers, teachers, and autoworkers "don't pay any taxes." In fact, all U.S. workers are required to pay taxes on their wages for Social Security and Medicare, and people in the United States are also subject to excise taxes.

On the October 17 broadcast of The War Room, co-host Jim Quinn falsely claimed that most average-income bus drivers, teachers, and autoworkers "don't pay any taxes." After airing a clip of Sen. Barack Obama saying, "I want to give all these folks who are, you know, bus drivers, teachers, autoworkers who make less -- I want to give them a tax cut," Quinn said: "He wants to give them a tax cut. Most of those people he just mentioned, if they fall into the average-income category that we're talking about here, don't pay any taxes. So how do you give them a tax cut?" In fact, as Media Matters for America documented, in 2008, U.S. workers who are not self-employed are required to pay 6.2 percent of all of their wages up to a cap of $102,000 and 1.45 percent of their wages for Medicare under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). Self-employed individuals are required to pay 12.4 percent of their wages up to the cap for Social Security and 2.9 percent of their wages for Medicare. Additionally, people in the United States are required to pay federal excise taxes. For instance, everyone who buys gasoline in the United States pays 18.4 cents per gallon of gasoline in federal excise taxes.

The Congressional Budget Office's most recent calculation of the effective federal tax rate, which is calculated by combining the effective tax rates of the four largest sources of federal revenues, found that, in 2005, households in the lowest quintile of income earners pay an average effective federal tax rate of 4.3 percent. The second lowest quintile paid an average effective federal tax rate of 9.9 percent. The table below illustrates the average effective tax rate by income level:

From the October 17 broadcast of Clear Channel's The War Room with Quinn & Rose: