Thursday, April 19, 2012

The Buffett Rule isn't 'a gimmick'

Buffett, Obama, Romney Warren Buffett and President Obama (White House) and Mitt Romney (Reuters) Mitt Romney, yesterday on CNBC, defending his opposition to the Buffett Rule:
LARRY KUDLOW: Listen, the 30 percent millionaires' tax, the Buffett tax was stopped in the Senate last night, you know that. Let me ask you this. President Obama, Vice President Biden and others, they're taking to calling it the Romney Rule. It's not the Buffett tax. It's the Romney Rule because they say that wealthy, successful people like yourself don't pay their fair share in taxes. I want to get your initial response to that, please.

MITT ROMNEY: Well, you know, these kind of gimmicks that they've talked about, the so-called Buffett Rule, if they want to change the name, that's fine, too, they couldn't get it through their own Democratic Senate. And I think the reason is, people recognize that these gimmicks are not going to get America strong again, they're not going to create jobs. They're going to have the opposite effect of creating jobs.

Of course, the reason the Buffett Rule couldn't get through the Senate is that Republicans filibustered it. And the reason Republicans filibustered it is because they know that the Buffett Rule isn't a gimmick. Yes, making sure that folks like Mitt Romney don't pay lower taxes than anyone else would only raise about $47 billion over the next decade, but if we can't even do that, how can we realistically expect to handle the bigger fiscal issues? Far from being a gimmick, the Buffett Rule is a start'and a wildly popular one.

If you want a gimmick, look no further than Mitt Romney's absurd claim that letting him pay less than 15 percent in taxes on $21 million of income will create jobs. If you want a gimmick, look no further than the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy which have been steadily undermining our national strength for nearly twelve years. If you want a gimmick, look no further than the trickle-down economic philosophy that Mitt Romney has put front-and-center in his campaign. None of those gimmicks have created a single job, yet they persist to this very day. And for that, we have Mitt Romney and his Republican Party to thank.


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