The number of Americans renouncing U.S. citizenship is soaring compared to the last year of the Bush administration, thanks to a Democratic effort to soak the rich that rich liberals are doing their best to avoid.

According to a report Friday in Bloomberg Businessweek, 1,810 Americans have given up their passports in the first half of 2013, more than seven times as many as in 2008.

In a country of more than 300 million people, that’s pretty small beer, of course, but it’s the reason they’re giving up the citizenship that’s important. The most common is a law passed in 2010 — by the same Democrat majority that enacted Obamacare — that gave the federal government sweeping powers to collect tax on American citizens’ income, no matter where in the world it is earned or what accounts it’s kept in.

The law was sponsored by Montana Democrat Max Baucus, one of the chief authors of Obamacare who’s retiring next year just as the law he calls a “train wreck” goes into full effect. (Thanks, Senator.) In what passes in liberal circles for wit, it was called the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or Fatca. (Get it? Fatcat? Max Baucus must kill himself sometimes.)

The truly funny thing about it, though, is that the people who like to make the rules other people have to follow in America, are among those who will go as far as renouncing their American citizenship before following the rules themselves.

They include people like Denise Rich, for instance, who renounced her citizenship last year. Rich is a billionaire jet-setter, close friend of the Clintons, and ex-wife of the fugitive tax-evader Marc Rich, who you might remember was pardoned in the final hours of the Clinton presidency in 2001 in return for a very large donation by Denise Rich to the Clinton library.

Pardons she’ll pay for. Tax bills she won’t.

(As a historical aside, Eric Holder, then-deputy attorney general, was the main White House man behind that transaction and later feared it had stained him so badly, he was through in public office. Wouldn’t that have been nice?)

So, while Democrats scheme to find more ways to turn flat-broke, non English-speaking illiterates into non-taxpaying, benefits-receiving American citizens, their tax laws are pushing the wealthy, the hated “1 percent,” the golden geese who actually provide the taxes that support the welfare state they cherish, into leaving the country — and renouncing their citizenship while they’re at it.

“Give me your tired, your poor” etc. is all well and good.

But swapping a bunch of huddled masses for a few super-wealthy taxpayers – even if they’re liberal taxpayers – is something only Democrats could think was a good idea.

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Joe Saunders

Joe Saunders, a 25-year newspaper veteran, is a staff writer and editor for BizPac Review who lives in Tallahassee and covers capital and Florida politics. Email Joe at [email protected].

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