"Millionaires Pay A Little More"

Jesus had a different economic and fiscal point of view

The video below is Obama's latest ad about the contrast between his tax plan and Romney's tax plan. Under Obama's tax plan, millionaires would pay a little bit more-- literally... "a little bit." Under Romney's plan they would pay a little bit less. Neither Romney nor Obama wants to collect a cent more from corporations, fearing that the mobility of capital will drive businesses overseas, the way diversified industrial manufacturer Eaton Corporation is plotting to move to Ireland now. Tax Justice-- economic justice in general-- is something that is just a p.r. annoyance for Republicans to deal with and something that Democrats deal with with a teaspoon when an earthmover is called for.

Yesterday I had a conversation with a decent Democrat running for Congress and I tried something for the first time with a candidate-- presenting him with a look at the Howie Klein Tax Policy. He favors tinkering around the edges of the tax code and eliminating loopholes and deductions, maybe raising the rate a widdle tiny bit on the super-duper rich... perhaps even taxing interest and dividends like ordinary income (the way it was under Ronald Reagan). When I suggested we need to eliminate billionaires instead of loopholes, by taxing them out of existence-- basically American tax policy until JFK did a disastrous course correction-- he seemed horrified.

It's much easier for most Americans to look at it as Obama-- if he had a cooperative Democratic Congress not controlled by a de facto coalition of Republicans and Blue Dogs/New Dems-- will make the tax code a bit fairer and Romney would make it much worse. But Obama is a defacto Blue Dog/New Dem himself and his championing of economic justice... barely has a pulse. Is he as bad as Romney? Of course not. But that doesn't make him any good. This is how Reuters presented it to readers yesterday:

Republican U.S. presidential challenger Mitt Romney's proposal to slash individual income taxes by 20 percent across-the-board would primarily boost the income of the wealthiest taxpayers, according to a nonpartisan analysis released on Wednesday.

The report by the centrist Tax Policy Center found that Romney's tax cuts would boost after-tax income by an average of 4.1 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year, while reducing by an average of 1.2 percent the after-tax income of individuals earning less than $200,000.

Tax policy and how to tame the U.S. government's budget deficit, topping $1 trillion in recent years, is a major point of contrast in the presidential race, in which Romney will face President Barack Obama on November 6.

Romney, a multi-millionaire who made his fortune at private equity firm Bain Capital, has not spelled out how he would lower marginal tax rates. But he has said broadly he would cut some tax benefits for the wealthy.

Because the value of the 20 percent tax cut for richer Americans would exceed the gains they get from popular tax breaks that Romney would chop, they would see the greatest income gain from Romney's possible changes, the study said.

"We add up how much people get from the tax cuts and then add up how much can be potentially be raised," from ending tax breaks, said Adam Looney, an economist and one of the study's authors.

About two-thirds of the $1.1 trillion in revenues that the government foregoes annually because of tax breaks would have to be curbed to fund Romney's tax cut, the analysts said.

These tax breaks include popular ones such as the mortgage interest deduction, the break for employer-provided health insurance, and credits for low- and middle-income families.

...The Democratic-led Senate last week passed legislation extending most of those tax rates - but not for households earning more than $250,000 a year.

The Republican-led House of Representatives will likely pass their plan to extend the current rates sometime this week.

Romney also wants to even further cut taxes on interest and dividends-- which is the basis of his own and most of his financial supporters' wealth-- and to eliminate all taxes on inheritance, which are already woefully small and completely inadequate. Even that bastion of conservatism, the Wall Street Journal looked at his plan and reported that "Romney's tax plan would benefit the rich and hurt the poor and middle class, no matter how current blanks in the plan are filled in." The Republicans have a philosophy behind their tax agenda: eliminating taxes for the wealthy and shrinking government-- or at least the part of government that deals with the problems of working families. The Democrats have a defensive and confused approach of treading water and muddling through. and putting out ads like this:



And that was just yesterday's anti-Romney ad. This morning the Obama campaaign itself was out with an even more devastating one.