President Obama pushes for Congress to pass the “Buffett Rule” so that those millionaires who are taking advantage of the tax code via the “Romney loophole” aka “carried interest” rule that Bain Capital pushed for…they’ll have to pay a minimum of 30% in taxes. For those millionaires who are currently not manipulating the tax code – this wouldn’t even affect them. For those who are – it would. And Republicans are against it; they would rather see our country go bankrupt before they allow millionaires to be taxed one extra dollar. There are already plenty of Democrats beholden to wealthy interests…but for the Republican party – it’s practically their mantra.
Some people call this class warfare. But I think asking a billionaire to pay at least the same tax rate as his secretary is just common sense. We don’t envy success in this country. We aspire to it. But we also believe that anyone who does well for themselves should do their fair share in return, so that more people have the opportunity to get ahead – not just a few.
Every Member of Congress is going to go on record. And if they vote to keep giving tax breaks to people like me – tax breaks our country can’t afford – then they’re going to have to explain to you where that money comes from. Either it’s going to add to our deficit, or it’s going to come out of your pocket.
~President Obama
From Politico:
The Buffett rule, named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, was first floated by Obama late last year after a New York Times op-ed by the Omaha businessman encouraged Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy.
Since then, Obama has named his plan to raise taxes on investment income after Buffett — pointing to the fact that the billionaire’s secretary pays a lower tax rate than he does because of a system that taxes investment income at a much lower rate than salary and wages.
2 Comments
This is both an obvious opportunity that simply can’t be passed up, and absolute genius at the same time. Romney has left too many damaged lives strewn in his path on the way to riches, and he has made choices that typify what the poor and middle class despise most about the elitist uber-rich class. He is personally responsible for corrupting our legislative system to serve the rich and hurt everyone else.
So calling the laws he paid to have passed the “Romney Loophole” and starting the sure-to-be-covered-24-7 process of passing a law that directly references this loophole by nickname while Romney is trying his best to start moving towards the center is utter genius.
Romney was going to have an up-hill battle connecting with anyone that doesn’t live off the interest of their multi-million dollar investments; Obama has just made the difficult downright impossible.
[...] wonderful it must be for an organization to criticize corporations for “taking advantage of the tax code” while at the same time be a corporation who is taking advantage of the tax [...]