John Cornyn: Buffett Rule is ‘Trojan horse’
Democratic efforts to raise taxes on the wealthy - a Senate vote is scheduled for Monday - is nothing less than a “Trojan horse” and a “gimmick,” Sen. John Cornyn said Monday.
“This is a Trojan horse,” the Texas Republican said of the so-called “Buffett rule” on Fox News.
Continue Reading“This is not just targeted at the very rich, and you know what [Bret], what we also need to do is look at why is it that half of the households in America pay zero income tax,” Cornyn said after questioning the past expansion of the Alternative Minimum Tax. “We need some real tax reform. This isn’t it, this is a gimmick.”
The rule, named for billionaire investor Warren Buffett, calls for taxing millionaires at a higher 30 percent federal rate and is based on the idea espoused by Buffett that he shouldn’t pay a lower tax rate than his secretary. Democrats have scheduled a procedural vote on the rule for Monday, the eve of tax day.
Meanwhile, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisc.) appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday to defend the rule and again emphasizing the issue as a matter of equity.
“The bottom line is that this about fairness,” Baldwin, who is sponsoring the Buffett rule in the House, said.
“When they calculate it and they see that there are people who make over a million dollars a year are paying at a lower tax rate, they’re furious,” she said of her meetings with voters in the Badger State. “They’re saying that the system is rigged. There is two sets of rules.”
For his part, Brown said that something akin to the Buffett rule has been brewing for a long time.
“It’s absolutely not a political gimmick,” he said. “People like Tammy Baldwin and others, and I have for long time, supported like that — we didn’t call it the Buffett rule years ago.”
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Apr. 16, 2012 - 1:18 PM EST
The Democrats may be using class warfare to their advantage but make no mistake... Republicans used a similar tactic by demonizing the hard working middle class public sector work force and turning private against public to yield the very same division of America.
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Read all 24 comments in our forumObama's class and race warfare is all is a diversion because Obama cannot run on his record.
A trojan horse? I bet he just made that up, no way he's heard anyone use that exact same phrase recently. Is Cornholyns argument "I know you are, so what am I?"
So Cornholyn is not engagiong in class warfare by denigrating 50% of Americans?? You guys are so whack I do daily spittakes
This is a stupid argument, it only talks "income tax". No S, medicare and local and state sales or "income tax". The only Trojan horse is the GOP. Romney wants to be elected, but refuses to actually say anything other than I'm rich.
What about GE getting making billions and getting billion's in tax rebates, that GOP fairness.
What about the job creators, whom do not create jobs and move them overseas, that GOP fairness.
Women getting daycare vouchers so they can enter the work force and bolster the low paying, GOP labor pool. That's a Trojan horse.
The Ryan budget nothing but a Trojan horse.
Why is the GOP extreme. They want the deficit to be gone in a week, but it took W 8 years to get us there. Any effort to lower it slow and steadily over time is repulsive to the GOP because it would mean the average person would have a life and not have to pray for what they want or need.
Funny how all that praying and we had fires in Texas and the "wildest" weather in history in those southern and mid-western bible belt states. I believe if you "pray" for salvation, then you do not qualify for financial support. If you own a gun, no unemployment or food stamps. If you pay a tithe to the church, you should not get government subsidized benefits. If you are a TPer, same thing.
Cornyrn wants 'real' tax reform. Yet, he's not even willing to take a step towards a fairer system. Makes me think his 'real' tax reform has nothing to do with fairness but more protecting the wealthy and the expense of the rest of us.
I'm not getting how it's a Trojan Horse: it raises the minimum federal tax on people earning more than one million dollars in a year to 30%, right?
Seems pretty straight-forward, not much suprises. It's an alternative minimum tax for people earning over a million a year.
Where's the suprise?
If there are so many people unemployed thenexactly whom is benefiting from tax relief? I smell horse pucks from a Trojan Horse.
BTW why is a GOPER talking about Trojan anything? They believe in abstinance, not birth control!
And Corynn is a texas dumbkoff.....However, gimmicks and horses are the projection tools of the the repub right..They have nothing else...
REPUBLICANS have RUN AGAINST THE NATION AND THE PEOPLE SINCE THEY LOST POWER 4 years ago!
90% of all income goes to the top 10% yet many of those complain that they might have to pay at the same rate as middle class and of course the same group are up in arms over a significant portion not paying federal tax at all. When so many incomes fall below the poverty line and all of the money is flowing to a select few... there is a real problem.
THIS COUNTRY SIMPLY CANNOT AFFORD ANY MORE OF OBAMA.
http://www.tradeaidmonitor....
The PEOPLE who don't pay income tax are too poor to pay, and even it they did pay they wouldn't pay much by percentage compared to what the billionaires would pay. The CORPORATIONS who don't pay income taxes are the real villains IMHO. And they use the money they don't pay the government to pay the lobbyists, the PACs, and to make donations to legislators who vote them more loopholes so those legislators will stay bought.
Rather than raise the tax burden of the wealthy, why not decrease the tax burden of everyone else and then 'right' the government?
Trojan horse? So whose side are you on, Jon? The Greeks (the 99 percent) or the Trojans (the 1 percent)?
No, the Buffett Rule is not "the Trojan horse." It's "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo." In other words, revenge for the Bush Tax Cuts, which were Pearl Harbor.
http://www.comunitee.com/co...
Midway is coming. Guadalcanal is coming. I'm not saying Hiroshima and Nagasaki are coming. I am saying that, one way or another, the 1 percent WILL be signing the Articles of Surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri.
I think ovomit is pushing a typical wealth redistribution scheme. All men are created equally. Some work, some don't. Some learn how to make money, some whine. So now we want to reward the whiners and penalize the workers. Good luck with that!
"Obama's class and race warfare is all is a diversion because Obama cannot run on his record."
Bull. He's running HARD on his record: Saving the economy and straightening out our foreign policy. Class warfare? He's turning America's nonrich from defense to offense. Race warfare? You are a bald-faced liar. If anyone's fighting a race war in this country, it's the Republicans. Or do you really want George Zimmerman to become Romney's "Willie Horton"?
The so-called Buffet rule is named after real capitalist. His salary by the standards of corporate communists is paltry. His income largely depends on investing in Berkshire Hathaway. He receives no stock options or giveaways of the equity owned by stockholders. This is what separates him from the anything passes for capitalism approach taken by vulture capitalists like Romney. His tax avoidance parallels his draft avoidance. He claimed to be a divinity student while vacationing in France. Similarly he claims to be a lasez-faire capitalist, selling bad paper to investors, taking millions in “forgiven loans” (taxpayer money) and always taking a profit for which he pays a marginal tax rate 1/6 of that which his father paid. Wealth has been redistributed in the United States form the middle and working class to those who can afford buy senators and congressmen and supreme court justices..
"Rather than raise the tax burden of the wealthy, why not decrease the tax burden of everyone else and then 'right' the government?"
Because we need to raise revenue, and the way to do that, now that Obama has wisely ended the wasteful Iraq War, is to "do a Willie Sutton" and go where the money is.
As for "rightsizing" the government, I'm all for it. Because, as anybody who understands the situation knows, that means INCREASING the power of the federal government. We saw 8 years of minimal government enforcement in the Bush years, and the result was the collapse of this nation -- which Obama stopped.
"I think ovomit is pushing a typical wealth redistribution scheme."
No, it's atypical. A typical wealth redistribution scheme would be taking from the poor and middle class and giving it to the rich.
"All men are created equally. Some work, some don't."
The workers work, the CEOs don't.
"Some learn how to make money, some whine. So now we want to reward the whiners and penalize the workers. Good luck with that!"
Wrong: It's the 1 percent who are whining that they don't get enough, when they don't earn a penny. There is a difference between MAKING money and EARNING it. Until you hold that truth to be self-evident, don't lecture anybody else on economics.
We are not trying to penalize the workers. We are trying to penalize the predators. People like Mitt Romney. You right-wingers are all for punishing street crime, unless it's Wall Street or K Street.
The Republican Party the party of CLOWNS!!!
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