The first guy is a multi-millionaire like Mitt Romney. He pays 15% or less on taxes on investment income. The other person is Ronald Reagan's bus driver in 2012 and he earns under $20k a year. Mitt Romney earns ten times that alone in speaking fees, and that's not even counting the investment earnings he pays a 15% or less rate on. In 2012 Reagan's bus driver pays more of a percentage of his overall wealth in taxes than Mitt Romney does. Worse, Mitt Romney's own budget proposal would raise that bus drivers taxes while cutting taxes on multi-millionaires like, you guessed it, Mitt Romney. What is wrong with this picture?
If you think nothing is wrong, watch in horror as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama agree together that millionaires shouldn't be allowed to exploit tax loopholes and pay less than Warren Buffet's secretary. The best part is when Reagan asks his supporters, "Do you think the Millionaire should pay more in taxes than the bus driver, or less?"
The answer was More . . .
Listen to Reagan get one right for once (Reagan was, at best, a very mediocre President compared to F.D.R., at worst, an Iran/Contra war criminal)
We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying ten percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. [...] Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more in taxes than the bus driver or less?
http://thinkprogress.org/...
Mitt Romney is the face of millionaire tax loopholes, and Mitt Romney's budget calls for tax hikes on people who are earning less than $20,000 a year. Think about that, Mitt Romney wants to raise taxes on low income Americans while cutting taxes for himself. Yet somehow, the Mitt Romney's of this world want us to think that he is the helpless victim in this class war and that we are all just envious of his success. Screw Millionaire Mitt, he didn't earn his money or name, he inherited it and then when we bailed out the financial industry he lives off of he has the nerve to call us envious? I'm not against wealth, I'm against whiny millionaires who use loopholes to game the system that want to raise my taxes so we can support their corporate welfare. Envy? If this is Fight Club, then I am Jack's white hot outrage.
More below the fold . . .
OF COURSE we should close loopholes that allow millionaires to pay a lower tax rate than Ronald Reagan's bus driver or Warren Buffet's secretary. And that doesn't mean we can have more tax breaks. NO MORE TAX BREAKS! Create some good paying jobs first, you whiny slave drivers, then we can talk about how you have damn near ALL THE WEALTH, and thus should pay damn near ALL THE TAXES.
Taxes should not be cut anymore, except in small targeted places, until the income inequality gap shrinks to the size where we can drown it in a bathtub.
If the wealthiest 400 families in America have more combined wealth than the bottom 150 million American households we have a moral obligation to make those wealthiest 400 households pay their fair share in taxes. If they can afford to fund Super PAC's, they can afford to pay higher taxes.
If you can afford a yacht, you can afford to pay higher taxes.
'Boo hoo!' You say, 'Taxes will cut into my ability to buy yachts!'
Well then the multi-millionaires will have to settle for a small yacht. You want austerity, you go first, and then sail down to the inlet of CRY ME A RIVER!
In 2012 the GOP is not the party of Ronald Reagan, they are the party of Rush Limbaugh, an unethical openly racist hateful cruel lecherous over paid, under taxed, self righteous gasbag and bloated shell of it's former self, and even Ronnie would be ashamed of the clowns and tax scamers who call themselves the Grand Old Party today.
Because when everything is broken only a fool remains conservative.
But better yet, why not use this footage far and wide, to show that it doesn't matter if you support Barack Obama or if you respect Ronald Reagan, we can all agree that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich shouldn't be paying a lower overall tax rate than Warren Buffet's secretary.
That's not class war. It's just simple math.
Peace and love to all, now listen for the heads exploding when you send this news of Reagan's stance on who should pay more, the millionaire or the Warren Buffet's secretary.
It will probably go a little something like this . . .
You can follow me on twitter @JesseLaGreca