Thanks to cribbing their views on women's rights from Mad Men and seeming hopelessly out of touch with the country's growing sense of economic inequality (see: car elevators), the Republican party's presumptive nominee is trailing President Obama in the polls, 48% to 43%. Somewhere buried under the Zimmerman / Santorum news cycle, President Obama was in Florida today to push for the Buffett Rule, requiring those who make more than $2 million annually to pay a minimum of 30% tax rate. But Ham Rove's American Crossroads PAC has a plan: make Obama and Buffett pay more in voluntary taxes.
The Washington Post's Greg Sergeant does an excellent job explaining why this is just really, really stupid.
Really, it continues to amaze that people in positions of real influence could venture something this idiotic with no evident sense of embarrassment. [Ed: seriously?] The problem Obama and Buffett are trying to address isn’t that each of them personally can’t pay more in taxes if he so chooses. The problem they are trying to address won’t be fixed if Obama, Buffett, and another dozen wealthy Americans write more checks to the federal government. Rather, they are trying to solve a society wide problem that threatens the future of a country of over 300 million people — one that, in their telling, requires a bit more sacrifice from high earners as a whole class if we are to have any hope of solving it.
This latest move is about nothing more than muddying the waters, pure and simple. The silly implication that there’s something hypocritical about calling for higher taxes on the wealthy when you are wealthy yourself and could just write a check if you really wanted to is about nothing more than sowing confusion about who is really looking out for whose interests.
If anyone is curious about the Republican party's position on taxation, keep an eye on next Monday's Senate vote on the Buffett Rule, or check out George W. Bush's awesome new economic solutions.
