Shouldn't The Rich Pay Their Fair Share Of Taxes?

All last week Digby had such incredibly penetrating coverage of the Aspen (Bad) Ideas Festival, that I mistakenly thought she had flown off to Colorado to frolic with the rich, Randian, and carefree. Wait, wait, wait... it's unfair to call them carefree. When people aren't worried about where they're going to get the money for the next mortgage payment-- or even for the next meal for their family-- they still have things they worry about and still have things they get angry about. Imagine someone trying to cope with the horror of having to pay FICA taxes (6.2%) on income over that first $106,800. I mean... fair, schmair. What if you want a vacation home in the lovely countryside near Aix-en-Provence? Or a million dollar bargain pad among the vineyards just north of Dubrovnik originally built in 1934 for the king of Serbia's treasurer? And, if, like AIG CEO Robert Benmosche, all you make is $7 million a year and some awful government type or, more likely, a progressive blogger, wants you to pay your fair share of taxes, that means another 6.2% on the untaxed $6,893,200, or $42,737.84-- money that could easily be used for a much needed renovation in a room of some drafty Croatian vacation castle!

Real estate tycoon Mort Zuckerman-- an intellectual nonentity who buys newspapers and magazines for the express purpose of pretending at being a Serious Public Thinker-- and historian Niall Ferguson-- a neo-imperialist who excuses or whitewashes atrocities done by empires in the name of market liberalization and who parlayed his scholarly expertise into a gig as an idiotic right-wing (occasionally blatantly racist) columnist-- apparently successfully convinced Barbra Streisand and James Brolin that our current economic woes have been caused by Obama's hatred of business and that the only solution is to "remove the incentives for idleness."

Never-too-wrong-to-be-ignored Arthur Laffer is already taking this line of thought to its logical conclusion: no taxes at all. Digby speculates that there could be a great deal of stimulative impact on one industry, the businesses dealing with funerals. But for those not in the burying, embalming or cremating trades, Dan Balz had some dire news yesterday in the Washington Post, not that any of this could have been more predictable when Obama stacked the deck with the same kinds of shameless shills for the ruling elite who Digby was frolicking with-- or not-- in Colorado last week:

The co-chairs of President Obama's debt and deficit commission offered an ominous assessment of the nation's fiscal future here Sunday, calling current budgetary trends a cancer "that will destroy the country from within" unless checked by tough action in Washington.

The two leaders-- former Republican Senator Alan Simpson of Wyoming and Erskine Bowles, White House chief of staff under former President Bill Clinton-- sought to build support for the work of the commission, whose recommendations due later this year are likely to spark a fierce political debate in Congress.

"There are many who hope we fail," Simpson said at the closing session of the National Governors Association meeting. He called the 18-member commission "good people with deep, deep differences" who know the odds of success "are rather harrowing."

Bowles said that unlike the current economic crisis, which was largely unforeseen before it hit in the fall of 2008, the coming fiscal calamity is staring the country in the face. "This one is as clear as a bell," he said. "This debt is like a cancer."

The commission leaders said that, at present, available federal revenues are fully consumed by just three programs: Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. "The rest of the federal government, including fighting two wars, homeland security, education, art, culture, you name it, veterans, the whole rest of the discretionary budget is being financed by China and other countries," Simpson said.

Wait... not so fast, you dirty (transpartisan) dogs. This year the Pentagon budget is $663.8 billion, give or take a few cents. By 2008 we had spent nearly a trillion-- a smidge less-- on the direct costs of the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. (Indirect costs-- like interest on the loans to pay for this and medical care for wounded veterans-- are probably more than the direct costs and don't count in the trillion dollar figure.) The Pentagon spending is the biggest single expense in the budget-- 23%-- but one doesn't hear much about cutting back there, despite the fact that the U.S. spends approximately as much on the military than the rest of the world combined-- about 12 times what Russia spends and 10 times what China spends, for example.

Barney Frank (D-MA) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have a far more sensible approach than the malevolent corporate shills infesting the Deficit Commission. The Deficit Commission is looking towards balancing the budget on the backs of the poor-- no cutbacks for the Military Industrial Complex and no fair taxes on the wealthy, just cutbacks on Social Security, infrastructure, education, healthcare... the kinds of things the vast majority of Americans-- though not the wealthy-- expect from government. Barney and Ron:

For decades, the subject of military expenditures has been glaringly absent from public debate. Yet the Pentagon budget for 2010 is $693 billion-- more than all other discretionary spending programs combined. Even subtracting the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, military spending still amounts to over 42% of total spending.

It is irrefutably clear to us that if we do not make substantial cuts in the projected levels of Pentagon spending, we will do substantial damage to our economy and dramatically reduce our quality of life.

...We believe that the time has come for a much quicker withdrawal from Iraq than the President has proposed. We both voted against that war, but even for those who voted for it, there can be no justification for spending over $700 billion dollars of American taxpayers' money on direct military spending in Iraq since the war began, not including the massive, estimated long-term costs of the war. We have essentially taken on a referee role in a civil war, even mediating electoral disputes.

In order to create a systematic approach to reducing military spending, we have convened a Sustainable Defense Task Force consisting of experts on military expenditures that span the ideological spectrum. The task force has produced a detailed report with specific recommendations for cutting Pentagon spending by approximately $1 trillion over a ten year period. It calls for eliminating certain Cold War weapons and scaling back our commitments overseas. Even with these changes, the United States would still be immeasurably stronger than any nation with which we might be engaged, and the plan will in fact enhance our security rather than diminish it.

We are currently working to enlist the support of other members of Congress for our initiative. Along with our colleagues Senator Ron Wyden and Congressman Walter Jones, we have addressed a letter to the President's National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, which he has convened to develop concrete recommendations for reducing the budget deficit. We will make it clear to leaders of both parties that substantial reductions in military spending must be included in any future deficit reduction package. We pledge to oppose any proposal that fails to do so.

In the short term, rebuilding our economy and creating jobs will remain our nation's top priority. But it is essential that we begin to address the issue of excessive military spending in order to ensure prosperity in the future. We may not agree on what to do with the estimated $1 trillion in savings, but we do agree that nothing either of us cares deeply about will be possible if we do not begin to face this issue now.

And then there was this speech Alan Grayson made on the floor of Congress on May 21 when he introduced H.R. 5353, the single most important piece of legislation introduced this year-- and studiously ignored by the media and the Very Serious People in Washington. Watch this: