President Obama recently proposed to impose a minimum tax rate on the country's wealthy. A tax rate on those making more than $1 million a year won't go into effect if republican lawmakers have anything to say about it. They've called the proposal "class warfare" and "a political tactic intended to portray his opponents as indifferent to the hardships facing middle-class Americans."(which they really don't need help playing the part at all.) The proposal would go into effect in 2013 and potentially limit the deductions & credits those in the "ballin'" tax bracket could get once they reach that promised land that is the million-dollar threshold. Its just a part of the Pres' big plan to reduce the deficit by $2 trillion. President Obama is scheduled to uncover his plan no earlier than this Monday. Rep. Paul D. Ryan who is the chairman of the House Budget Committee & a leading supporter of cutting spending on cutting benefit programs like Medicare (booo!!) said the President's proposal would "weigh heavily on a stagnating economy."(hater) Dude man actually went on Fox News Sunday to say the tax plan would add "further instability to our system, more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation." The proposal itself adds "a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. This is all in a greater effort to cut at least $1.5 trillion in our country's spending over 10 years. (dayyyyummm!!)
The Pres' calls his plan the "Buffett Rule" after billionaire investor (& king baller) Warren Buffett who has called attention to his fellow wealthy American bastards being allowed to pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes sticking us the middle-income earners because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.
There are many detractors to the President's proposal, as to be expected. Among them Republican Senator Lindsey Graham & Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell who went on popular news programs like Meet The Press & CNN to tell the public that taxing the rich is generally a bad idea. Senator Graham was quoted as saying: "raising taxes on billionaires and millionaires would add a minimal amount of money to the Treasury to pay off the debt." Mitch McConnell joked, “if Warren Buffett would like to give up some of his benefits, we’d be happy to talk about it.” Then went on to say there was “bipartisan opposition to what the president is recommending,” which he said would slow growth in difficult times. He also told Meet The Press,"Republicans were ready to consider means testing as part of a broader overhaul to the big entitlement programs, meaning that the well-to-do would receive less from programs like Social Security."
All in all both sides of the aisle could agree that there needs to be some kind of drastic reform to the current tax code. The President's proposal would see those with a taxable income of more than $1 million would pay a closer rate to those that they employ. Meaning everybody pays the same amount of taxes. There aren't any specific numbers in regards to the actual rates, the Pres wants to leave that to the bean counters. Administration officials said that the number of millionaires effected by this new tax plan would be fewer than 450,000 taxpaying Americans; 144 million returns were filed in 2010 alone. So You do The Math. Should we even bother? Props to nytimes.com.
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