GOP Has Abandoned Fiscal Responsibility By Adopting ‘Theology’ Of Tax Cuts

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By ED CHAINEY

We don't have a spending problem in American government so much as we have a revenue problem, through plutocratic influences, the wealthiest elites and most corporations in America have succeeded over the last thirty years, through the enactment of voodoo economic policies in transferring the tax burden from themselves and onto the American middle- and working-classes.

Yesterday [11/28/2010] Warren Buffett restated it AGAIN, saying the richest Americans didn't sacrifice at all, during this recession. In fact, they have prospered at the expense of the average American – normally I would say worker here, but too many of our former workmates are unemployed.

In an interview on ABC’s "This Week," Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said that the rich should be paying more taxes and that the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy should be left to expire at the end of December.

Buffett said, "If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further."

He said, "But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

Buffet said, "There's no sacrifice among the rich. There's plenty of sacrifice going on now."

He said, "I mean, if you look at Iraq and now Afghanistan, there's been sacrifice. But I would doubt if you take the people on the Forbes 400 list - whether many of them have a child or a grandchild that served in Iraq or Afghanistan - they come home in body bags to Nebraska, but they don't have to call up anybody up at the country club to notify them."

“A rising tide raises all yachts, not all boats.” - Warren Buffett

And remember the RICH don’t have to pay payroll taxes. They contribute nothing to Social Security, and in fact are hell bent on eviscerating it

On CNN, Reagan Budget Director David Stockman revealed: GOP Has Abandoned Fiscal Responsibility By Adopting ‘Theology’ Of Tax Cuts:

David Stockman continues to make the [media] rounds after bucking with the Republicans on tax cuts for the rich last summer. He is a Republican statesman who is in favor of returning to higher tax rates on the truly wealthy.

David Stockman has never been one to shy away from a roaring economic-policy debate. The former boy-wonder budget director in the first Reagan administration and the architect of Reagan’s supply-side economic policies, Stockman has been very busy lately rejecting the tax-cutting recommendations of Republicans in Washington and arguing that we must get our fiscal house in order or watch our way of life continue its decline. As an “imperialist power,” he says, America is in danger of being at “sundown.” Stockman, who turned 64 on Wednesday, has always been ahead of the curve on tax and fiscal issues, and it appears that he is ahead of it again this time, too.

As Congress prepares to take up extension of the Bush tax cuts during its lame duck session, Republican lawmakers have been unanimous in demanding that the cuts for the richest two percent of Americans be extended, claiming they are necessary for economic growth and that tax cuts (miraculously) pay for themselves.

While independent economists have shown these arguments to be false, today [11/28/2010] on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, President Reagan’s former budget director took on his own party for pushing this faulty logic. David Stockman, who led the all-important Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and was a chief architect of his fiscal policy, criticized today’s GOP for misreading Reagan’s legacy by adopting a “theology” of tax cuts.

Stockman has spoken out before, but took perhaps his strongest stance yet against his own party today, saying “I’ll never forgive the Bush administration” for “destroying the last vestige of fiscal responsibility that we had in the Republican Party.”

(Excerpted From ABC, CCN & Crooks & Liars.)

So, what should we average Americans do?

Unearned income should be taxed at a progressive rate – with a base income level exemption for the fixed-income retired – and not at the flat rate it is now.

It is the capital gains tax rate’s regressiveness that motivated Warren Buffett to expose the Republican’s dark secret: due to the capital gains rate reductions and counting payroll taxes, Buffett pays taxes at a lesser rate than his secretary and everyone else in his office.

We don’t really have a spending problem in America – we have an unfair tax revenue problem.