Posted on 07/09/2011 3:47:22 PM PDT by mdittmar
Reid: Republicans Putting The Good Of Millionaires And Billionaires Ahead Of The Good Of This Great Nation
Washington, D.C. – Nevada Senator Harry Reid made the following remarks today on the need for shared sacrifice in deficit reduction efforts. Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:
Today the Senate will consider legislation calling on millionaires and billionaires to contribute to this country’s effort to reduce our deficit.
Republicans have already asked the poor, the middle class, children and seniors to make sacrifices to help get our fiscal house in order. This legislation would reaffirm the Senate’s commitment to ensuring the extremely wealthy are asked to make similar sacrifices.
This principle – that all Americans should contribute their fair share as we work together to reduce the deficit – is so common sense it should go without saying. Yet Republicans have boasted about their opposition to having the wealthy contribute their fair share.
This is the simple, straight-forward statement my Republican colleagues oppose: “Any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1 million or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort.” My Republican colleagues reject that.
Democrats are willing to go on the record saying we believe all Americans – including those who can afford private jets and yachts – should contribute to the collective effort to reduce the deficit. The question is, why aren’t Republicans willing to do the same?
They say it’s because they’re looking out for the people. That claim is ridiculous. It is without foundation.
Let’s talk about the millionaires and billionaires Republicans are determined to protect above all else. Less than one quarter of one percent of tax returns filed in the United States each year belong to people making more than $1 million.
These same people are among the one percent of Americans who control half the country’s wealth.
We are talking about the Warren Buffets of the world. Warren Buffet is my friend, and I have great respect for him. But he is very, very wealthy.
So, what does Warren Buffet, the third richest man in the world, say about contributing his fair share? He welcomes it.
And Buffet criticized a system in which his secretary gives a greater share of her income to the government each year than this man worth $50 billion.
“If you’re in the luckiest 1 percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.” That’s what Warren Buffet said about contributing his fair share.
Since the late 1970’s, incomes for the lucky one percent in America have risen by 281 percent.
The last three decades have been a very, very good time for the very, very wealthy.
President George W. Bush called these people the “Haves and Have-mores.” He also called them his base. And right now the Republican Party is putting what is good for this very small base ahead of what is good for this great nation.
The legislation before us asks only this: that each American be part of the solution rather than of part of the problem.
In poll after poll, Americans have endorsed this principle. They have said they believe we must address our deficit both by reducing spending and by ending tax breaks for the wealthiest citizens and corporations. Democrats have heard them.
If Warren Buffet chooses to buy a private jet – or a whole fleet of them – that’s alright. But the American taxpayers shouldn’t give him a special tax break for doing it.
This country is facing a crisis. We face mounting debt brought on by a decade of war and tax breaks for the wealthy. And we face the prospect that Republicans will force us to default on our financial obligations for the first time in our nation’s history.
Difficult choices must be made. Together we will consider cutting programs that help real people in very real ways. Eliminating tax breaks for oil companies making record profits, corporations that ship jobs overseas and the owners of private jets and yachts should be the easy part of solving this problem.
Yet Republicans walked away from the negotiating table when a solution was in sight because they said no to fairness.
Democrats had already agreed to trillions in difficult cuts in order to prevent a default crisis and avert a world-wide depression. Then Republicans walked away from the table to help the one percent of Americans lucky enough not to need any extra help.
How will Republicans explain this to their constituents back home? As middle class families struggle to make ends meet, my Republicans colleagues are risking the financial future of this country and world for the sake of people who can afford private jets and yachts. I can’t imagine that conversation.
Asking millionaires and billionaires to contribute to solving this nation’s deficit crisis is not unreasonable. It’s just plain common sense and simple fairness.
These jackasses just want mo money from the citizens. They use class warfare to jack-up the ignorant ones that have no clue about taxation.
I believe the USAF only operates the 45 seat C-32 aircraft.
Hey Reid, when four people in a room vote to take the wealth of the fifth, that is not DEMOCRACY, that is rule of the mob. When 49% of the nation pays no income tax at all - then that is the time to stop listening to them about who should pay more taxes! We are being lectured by those who are creating a parasitical nation, who have the gall to tell the people who have produced the wealth and who have created the jobs and who pay the greatest portion of national income taxes that they are too greedy? That they need to pay more in taxes? That they need to be fair? This is madness. If I don’t pay taxes but I vote for a working citizen to pay to subsidize my life - that is not sustainable. The Democrats are eating the seed stock, just like Obama took oil out of the strategic reserve, and irresponsibly doing it for political power – either they are totally ignorant of how wealth is created or they don’t care and will destroy the nation’s future to aggrandize their own political power.
If you do not pay income tax, what gives you the right to demand that others pay more? It is stupid to the point of hilarity that those who pay zero income taxes now vote for a Democratic program that burdens those with jobs and income to continue to subsidize these non-paying hordes with free housing, medical and education. Will they ever vote against this self-interest? Or will they continuously hop on the Democratic bus that has promised to ‘get them their fair share of the pie and not to worry because it is the rich that will pay.’
If all those making 500K or higher were taxed at a 100% income tax rate, there would still be a massive deficit. The numbers are not there. It is a red herring, and they will tax further on down the income scale.
When half the nation has no ‘skin in the game’, gets promised a free lunch and is implored to vote for the Democratic Party ‘to make the rich pay’, we have now witnessed a nation that has gone off the rails. We will be Greece in a few years. We will have no future. At this point we have half the nation on the dole and the other half paying for it. We have 12 million unskilled, uneducated, dirt poor illegal aliens demanding free social services – and they pay no taxes. As the non-taxpaying numbers rise above 50%, when 65% are on the dole and 35% are paying all the tax, our nation will collapse. Riots like Greece, but only much, much worse – cities will burn.
This nation is losing its way!
Britain’s 90% income tax rates created an idle rich, who stopped working and lived off bond interest – while their economy stagnated to death. That’s what this tax insanity will create in the US, more people just living on muni bond interest and not lifting a finger – why invest, because Obama will steal everything that is earned. The numbers are not there - and when they stop working and live off muni bond interest - this nation will lose a vital job creating engine, stagnate and die.
Enough theft of other people’s labor, it is really annoying.
This US Government is far too big, too unproductive and too wasteful to command this stealing of other peoples’ labors.
And what will they do with the money....When US government money is spent on teaching African men how to wash their genitals after sex - I think we can safely say that the government is now out of control. They don’t have a clue!
It is time to use the collective wisdom of the nation to reduce the size and scope of this engorged parasitical government and allow wealth producers to flourish, unimpeded by the legions of bureaucratic pygmies who do nothing but live off other peoples’ wealth while simultaneously trying to stifle their ability to create more. In addition, no more professional political class that sits around to think up news ways to give themselves more power - after 8 years of federal office you are then banned for life – ENOUGH.
Stop the madness.
The millionaires and the billionaires are the people that made this country great. They are the visionaries, the innovators, the creaters of wealth and industry, the financiers of capital. America is who she is because of the great entrepreneurs who took risk. America did not become the pre-eminent economic and cultural powerhouse of the 20th century because of the poor people or the middle class, she became that because of the industrialists and the capitalists.
*YAWN*
Same old tired Dem playbook.They need some new screed to accuse us of. They are boring me!
Harry’s full of stale, Democrat baloney from the ‘60s. Both political parties work for public interests and foreign interests.
Almost all of Buffet’s wealth is tied up in the biggest shelter of them all- unrealized capital gains on stock ownership. When the Dems call for a tax on accumulated wealth then I’ll call them sincere. Wrong but sincere.
Doesn’t harry have some wealthy White House Csars, union heads, global warming watermelons, banksters, Government Electric or Government Motors CEO’s to pay off?
He sure did not mind Nancy using the military as her personal airline service to prance around the nation and globe.
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