From Rush:
They're calling it the Buffett Tax. You know, Warren, would you pay your secretary a little bit more instead of us sitting here having to hear how she pays a higher tax rate than you do? Why don't you just give her a raise, Mr. Buffett?
For crying out loud, what are we talking about here? Here's a guy, a trillionaire, who is running around talking about how his secretary pays a higher tax rate than he does, which isn't actually true.
Give her a raise, for crying out loud. This poor woman is being paid to sound like she can barely get through the day because the government's taking so much of what she earns.
The top 1% of taxpayers already pay 40% of all income taxes. And by the time you get to the top 5% you are at about 70% of all taxes. And yet this bunch comes again proposing a bill that has no way of becoming law, by the way...
He also proposed a cut in Medicare benefits. Means testing Medicare benefits. That's twice now he's proposed cuts to Medicare. No outrage over that from the Drive-Bys.
Millionaires and billionaires who make $200,000 a year or more, that's the target, millionaires and billionaires. And I was watching MSNBC earlier this morning during some show, and they had some Democrat guest on saying, "No, no, no, no, people that file subchapter S-Corp, those people have minimum million dollars a year to be a subchapter S." It was a Democrat strategerist.
I'd never heard such a bald-faced lie, you gotta have a million dollars a year to be a sub-S. No, you don't. And we're only talking about millionaires and multiple millionaires and billionaires that we're talking about raising taxes -- no, we're not...
Remember now, "millionaires and billionaires" equals $200,000 a year. The Buffett tax -- and I think they're mispronouncing it. It ought to be called the "Buffet [Buff-fay] Tax," not Buffett, since anybody and everybody who makes over $200,000 a year is now on the menu and is about to get carved up...
The whole argument for the Buffett Rule is Buffett himself says it's not fair that he's paying a lower tax rate on his capital gains and dividend income than his secretary pays on her earned income. It just isn't fair.
The only problem is that is completely untrue.
It's a great sounding argument, comes together as a nice sound bite, but it is untrue. Buffett is paying a tax in his dividend and capital gains on money that's already been taxed once before as income. So you have to add that first tax rate to the second lower rate on capital or dividends to find out what somebody's actually paying on it.
Of course that's too complicated, and they're not gonna get into that kind of an explanation here, anyway. They're just gonna try to draw a contrast between the two rates: Capital gains at 15% and income at 36% or 35%, something like this.
The top rate -- and that's what they're gonna raise, because Warren Buffett, "he's only paying 15%." Not true.
If he has any earned income he's paying just the same rate as anybody else, and will.
Now, the difference is if the only thing that goes up is the earned income tax rate, Warren Buffett's tax rate won't go up -- unless they raise capital gains, which Obama is talking about doing as well.
I think it's a little ironic and typical of the floundering position Obama finds himself in, to name a tax plan after a guy whose company hasn't paid their taxes for about half of the last ten years. I mean, Buffett is still arguing. He owes a billion dollars in taxes!
That's what he's arguing about. The Feds say he owes a billion and he doesn't want pay a billion so he's in dispute with them, yet here comes a guy who owes a billion dollars to the Treasury and Obama's naming a tax increase plan after the guy!
I want the Immelt Tax Plan where I don't pay anything! I'm tired of this.
End Rush comments - there's much more. Read it here.
Posted by Maggie @ Maggie's Notebook