Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
9/18/2011
Talk about your mixed messages! While Barack Obama goes on the campaign trail trying desperately to drum up support for a jobs plan that will cost $450 billion, the President will also deliver at the same time his plan to reduce the spiraling federal deficit and slow the runaway growth of the national debt. And while claiming that he’s not engaging in class warfare, Obama wants to target a new tax at one segment of society in order to protect and amplify his redistributionist policies. Care to guess what that segment of society is?
President Barack Obama, in a populist step designed to appeal to voters, will propose a “Buffett Tax” on people making more than $1 million a year as part of his deficit recommendations to Congress on Monday.
Such a proposal, among suggestions to a congressional supercommittee expected to seek up to $3 trillion in deficit savings over 10 years, would appeal to his Democratic base ahead of the 2012 election but likely not raise much in revenues.
White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a tweet on Saturday the tax would act as “a kind of AMT” (Alternative Minimum Tax) aimed at ensuring millionaires pay at least as much tax as middle-class families.
The “Buffett Tax” refers to billionaire U.S. investor Warren Buffett, who wrote earlier this year that rich people like him often pay less in tax than those who work for them due to loopholes in the tax code, and can afford to pay more.
The AMT? Say, isn’t that the “millionaire’s tax” that Congress passed decades ago that now has to be “patched” each year so as not to hammer middle-class families? What a great model to use for the new “millionaire’s tax”! And inevitably, it won’t generate “much in revenues,” which I’ll explain in a moment.
Besides, if Warren Buffett wants to pay taxes, he can start with the billion dollars his company already owes the federal government…
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