"Buffett Tax Baloney - So the Buffett tax ruse is finally dead.
The millionaire tax—named for financier Warren Buffett and
designed to ensure that high earners pay at least 30% in federal income
tax—failed to get the 60 Senate votes necessary and went down 51 to 45.
The Senate's class warfare champion, Democrat Sheldon
Whitehouse of Rhode Island, even acknowledged that this is not about growth or
deficit reduction or raising tax revenues. Rather, it's about "tax
fairness." Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney noted that the
plan "would pay for government for less than 11 hours. This isn't a grand
idea." But President Obama thinks it is. Mr. Obama wasted no time blasting
Republicans for "spending money" on tax cuts for the "wealthy
that they don't need."
Only one Republican senator, Susan Collins of Maine,
supported the tax. Mark Pryor, a Democrat from Arkansas voted no. Democrats
thought that this issue was solid political gold, and polling seemed to show
that two of three Americans supported the tax hike on "millionaires and
billionaires." But what this exercise has accomplished for the Democrats
is an open question. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York promised after the vote to
bring the issue up again and again. The party now appears to be more obsessed
with socking it to the rich than with creating jobs, growing the economy, or
solving the middle-class squeeze." - Stephen Moore, The Wall Street Journal,
Political Diary, 04/17/2012
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