The “Buffett Rule”, the idea that those who earn more than a million dollars a year should pay a tax rate of 30 percent, more than their secretaries and other workers, was defeated in the Senate on a party line vote on Monday, with only Susan Collins of Maine voting with Democrats, and Mark Pryor of Arkansas voting with the Republicans, and 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster being unable to be accomplished.
Of course, the “Buffett Rule” is really a restatement of the “Reagan Rule”, the assertion of the 40th President that one should not expect an employee to pay a higher level of taxes than his or her employer. It is an embarrassment to the GOP of 2012, that they are actually defying their icon, their god, their “savior”, who they claim to be following and worshiping, but only when they choose to follow his lead. The fact that 72 percent of the American people in polls support the “Buffett Rule” has no effect at all on the Republicans, as they argue that $50 billion over ten years collected if the “Buffett Rule” went into effect is a “drop in the bucket”!
Meanwhile, the Republicans wish to cut spending on food stamps, the main source of funding for nutrition for poor families, attacked as socialism, but they insist that cutting it over ten years, saving $33.2 billion, is substantial, and must be done as part of the Paul Ryan budget plan in the House of Representatives.
The Republican Party has no conscience, as they are willing to take from the poor to give more tax cuts to the rich. They are Robin Hood in reverse, with no second thoughts!
So 4,000 families will benefit from the defeat of the “Buffett Rule”, while $46.4 million Americans, who are already dependent on food stamps for survival will see an 11 percent cut in monthly benefits after September 1.
The long term unemployed, who lost their jobs through no fault of their own, will now suffer even worse, as we now live in a society in which government leaders do not care about what hunger means, and do not care about the desperation of millions left behind, a large percentage of them children and single mothers, as long as the elite continue to get tax cuts!
Hello Professor,
I have a Brother-in-Law who is a right wing nut job and will swallow anything so long as it has a Conservative Flavor to it and will repeat it without checking the facts as if it were the “Words From God†truth.
I should add that this Brother-in-Law is a retired Army Officer with a master’s degree in Russian. He is also a recovering alcoholic after many years of alcohol abuse so I guess his brain is pickled and the only suggestion I have for his thought process.
This Brother-in-Law gets a lot of what he wants reality to be from a web site ironically called, “American Thinker.†Yea there is no real thinking here at all. I guess because it is on the internet….then it must be true…..RIGHT?
Just by using simple “Socratic Irony†on my part just makes him an easy target to have him tripping over many of his epiphany statements he gets from this web site or heard from the “Blowhard Radio†he listens to everyday.
My last conversation with him was on Easter when the family got together. He started with a lot of nihilistic conservative crap. Some of his enlightening statements were, “Trayvon had on a shoulder holster with a gun on his side and the reason that Zimmerman had to shot him.†He also enlightened us all to the “Don’t Re-Nig†bumper sticker as he thought it was quite funny and clever and the arrest of George Zimmerman that was “mandated directly from the White House.â€
I decided to use reverse sociology and agreed with a statement he made for the need to cut government entitlements (like Welfare, food stamps, unemployment, etc.) only I added much like Greece has done trying to get their economy corrected as an example. In Greece the legislators voted to cut government retirements by 50% across the board. I told him that I agreed with the Tea Party’s proposal that the country can no longer afford the legacy retirements much like the touted example for allowing the Auto Industry to go bankrupt instead of being bailed out. (It was all that legacy retirement of Union Auto Workers’ fault for the downfall of that industry.)
I passed on that the Tea Party Members of Congress are outraged of those who ONLY worked for the government for 20 years but expect to suck on the government’s retirement tit for what could easily be the next 30 years plus. I concluded with, “The Conservative Tea Party Members in Congress are proposing a cut in those government retirements as much as 50% just like Greece had to do.â€
Needless to say the Brother-in-Law had the preverbal “Deer in the Headlights†look with the realization that his military retirement has the potential of being drastically cut by the Tea Party Conservative Congress and that through his own Extreme Conservative support. He did not say much the rest of the day.
I drove home with a smile on my face that day.
Wow, what a story! I laughed so hard, imagining that “deer in headlights” face 🙂
This is the problem, the failure of so many people to have ANY concern about others, and instead an attitude of smugness, and a sense of “entitlement”, while others can starve or die. This selfishness, self centeredness and greed are what is going to tear this country apart, if attitudes do not change!