Tell Harry Reid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes

Hi all, 

It's time, Harry!

I just got this note from Matt Lockshin at Credo. I signed, how about you?

Dear Virginia,

We hear a lot about "shared sacrifice" and belt-tightening out of Washington, but as billionaire investor Warren Buffett noted on Sunday:

"Our leaders have asked for 'shared sacrifice.' But when they did the asking, they spared me...and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks."¹

As complicated as some want to make it, this issue is very simple. In a time of economic crisis, it's both healthy for our democracy and fundamentally fair to ask the super rich to pay more.

Senator Bernie Sanders has a bill to do this and make millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share. But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has yet to call a vote on it.

Tell Harry Reid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

One of the main drivers of our federal deficit are the Bush tax cuts, which have driven down tax rates for the wealthiest Americans to the lowest levels we've seen since the 1950s.

Tax rates for the richest Americans have fallen sharply despite the fact that taxing millionaires and billionaires is wildly popular, and the cost of not taxing them extremely high. The Sanders bill alone would bring in an additional $50 billion a year in revenue.

When someone like billionaire investor Warren Buffett says that he and his friends "have been coddled long enough by a billionaire-friendly Congress,"² people pay close attention. And with Washington focused on what to cut and by how much, Mr. Buffett asking for Congress to raise his taxes represents an important opportunity.

This is a rare moment to inject common sense into the debate over budgets and get senators on the record about being for or against record low tax rates enjoyed by billionaires like Mr. Buffett.

Tell Harry Reid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

With the creation of a new twelve member Super Committee empowered to fast-track through Congress budget-slashing legislation that cannot be amended, it's more important than ever that we pressure our representatives to deal with the crisis caused by their inability to end the Bush tax cuts and bring back rational taxation rates for the richest Americans.

And before the congressional Super Committee issues a draft of its budget plan, we need all senators to go on the record about whether they support or oppose the simple notion that the super rich need to pay their fair share. This will create much needed momentum to help Democrats on the Super Committee hold the line on our demands for revenue increases.

Tell Harry Reid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. Click here to automatically sign the petition asking Harry Reid to call a Senate vote on Sen. Sanders' bill to tax millionaires and billionaires.

Republican hostage-taking and other deeply undemocratic tactics by members of both parties have left us with a budget process that is broken, and as a result most senators avoid taking a stand on important issues like whether we should raise taxes on the very richest among us.

But in the face of massive budget shortfalls, and with a billionaire like Warren Buffett literally asking for it, there's no excuse for Congress not to vote on taxing millionaires and billionaires.

Tell Harry Reid: Warren Buffett wants you to raise his taxes. Click here to automatically sign the petition.

Matt Lockshin, Campaign Manager
CREDO Action from Working Assets

Notes:
¹"Stop Coddling the Super-Rich," Warren Buffett, New York Times, Aug. 14,2011.
²Ibid.

The worst bet in all of politics

Gale  Russell Chaddock at the Christian Science Monitor offers a lucid analysis of where Congress is now with debt ceiling negotiations, and it’s not pretty.

Washington

 

After a night of high drama on Capitol Hill, a legislative solution to the debt crisis now shifts to the Senate, where leaders of both parties must now try to guess what will pass in the House – perhaps the worst bet in all of politics.

The situation is the result of strategic mistakes in the buildup to Friday's debt-ceiling votes, which produced an outcome exactly the opposite of what GOP leaders had hoped. Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio had hoped to win support from House Democrats this week by scaling back the House's earlier “cut, cap, and balance” bill. With Democratic support in the House, the bill would have had a credible shot in the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Instead, his proposal alienated not only House Democrats but also the president and GOP conservatives. After an aborted attempt to hold a vote Thursday, an amended bill did at last pass the House Friday, 218 to 210, but without a single Democratic vote and without 22 Republican defectors. Later Friday, it failed in the Senate, which voted to table Mr. Boehner's bill, 59 to 41, effectively derailing it.

Read more:

Obama sidesteps Hill Dems to put Medicare and Social Security on the table in deficit debate

This week Katalusis has suffered from a fickle Internet connection that has prevented me from posting since my Fourth of July message suggesting that in light of the stalled deficit debate at the federal level and the shutdown of our state government here in Minn., it’s time for our leaders to grow up.

That’s evidently too much to ask. And today we learned that yes, Obama has caved again and now both Medicare and Social Security are on the table, while our glassy-eyed pundits continue to rave about “entitlements.”

A few media reps like Dan Friedman continue to get the word out. Writing for the National Journal, Friedman reports that Hill Democrats aren’t happy about Obama’s latest sellout of his base:

Before Thursday's White House meeting on the budget, congressional Democrats said they planned to remind President Obama not to leave his party and base behind. The Democrats' testiness followed reports that the White House was proposing to alter Social Security and Medicare as part of a potential debt-ceiling deal with Republicans.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in the meeting “expressed concern that we hadn’t been as much in the loop as we would have liked to have been," said a senior Democratic aide who asked not to be identified so he could speak candidly about the friction between the president and Democratic congressional leaders.

(RELATED: Obama Says Dems, GOP to Work All Weekend on Debt Deal)

That feeling is shared by many Democrats, irked not just by the potential cuts, but by the White House’s failure to float it to Democratic lawmakers before they learned of the proposal through media.

Read more:

Stimulus Package Takes Care of the Affluent

You only need to read the screaming banner headlines on the front page of the Huffington Post to get the picture of what happened with the stimulus bill today:

PELOSI: WE HAVE AN AGREEMENT

White House Has Yet To Speak... $789 Billion Bill Preserves Obama's Signature Tax Cut... House Vote Possible Thursday... Senate Will Follow...Payback: Dems Strip Business Tax Cuts... Big Winners: The Upper-Middle Class

Got that? The big winners are the upper middle class.

Thomas Edsall writes:

When President Obama outlined on January 8 the rationale for the economic stimulus bill, "The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act," he clearly identified the men and women most in trouble:

Nearly two million jobs have now been lost, and on Friday we are likely to learn that we lost more jobs last year than at any time since World War II. Just in the past year, another 2.8 million Americans who want and need full-time work have had to settle for part-time jobs.

The House-Senate compromise, however, cuts funds for extended health care coverage for the unemployed; cuts $30 billion in aid to state governments to prevent reductions in social services to the poor and out-of-work; and also cuts a special "Making Work Pay" tax holiday from $500 to $400 for an individual, and from $1,000 to $800 for a couple, for low-to-middle-income workers still hanging on to their jobs.

Amid all the cutting, however, one group emerged unscathed: the upper-middle class, the not-quite-super-rich, but certainly not on the ropes. Most of these folks, in terms of income and employment, are what could be called the un-needy, a group clearly distinct from those Obama identified as the core target of the legislation. The "compromise" legislation includes $70 billion, or just under 10 percent of the whole package, to be used expressly to take care of these affluent people.

Read more:

Agreement Reached on Stimulus Bill; Final Vote Possible This Weekend

Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine.


Over the years, I’ve watched centrist Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine again and again provide the calm and rational voices needed to move stalled legislation. The two women played significant roles in negotiations that helped the senate reach an agreement this evening on a stripped down stimulus bill of about $780 billion.

Hulse and Herszenhorn at the NY Times report:

Democrats succeeded, after a long day of private negotiations and intense public debate, in winning the support of enough Republicans to move the package toward a final Senate vote, where Democrats are confident of passage, given the support announced by several Republicans. Exact outlines of the accord, which is somewhat smaller than the amount originally sought by President Obama, were not immediately available, but the senators agreed to cut some spending and strip out some business tax cuts to gain enough Republican support.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic majority leader, hailed the agreement. “This is a very critical juncture for our great country,” he said on the Senate floor.

The timing of the Senate vote was not clear, but Mr. Reid signaled that action could take place over the weekend. Once it the package is approved, differences between the Senate legislation and a considerably different version passed recently by the House will have to be reconciled. President Obama has said he hopes all that can be accomplished in time for him to sign the measure within 10 days.

Three centrist Republicans, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Olympia J. Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, were among the senators wooed by Democrats, whose efforts were bolstered by Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, who is a former Congressman from Illinois.

Senator Reid and Mr. Emanuel reportedly met with Ms. Collins and Mr. Specter Friday evening to smooth out any remaining wrinkles. Soon afterward, Mr. Reid conferred with his fellow Democrats to gain their approval.

Gaining enough Republican support was essential, since 60 votes are generally required under Senate rules to move a bill forward. “Is it perfect?” Senator Collins asked rhetorically on the Senate floor. “No.” But what was put together is a worthy compromise, she said.

Mr. Reid singled out two negotiators, Ms. Collins and Senator Ben Nelson, a conservative Democrat from Nebraska, as “two people who got us where we are, with great work by others.”

Read more: