And The Horse He Rode In On
CBS News has an ‘exclusive’ interview with Mitch McConnell: Tax code favors lower income too much already
(CBS News) The United States tax code favors lower income Americans too much already and should be restructured to make it fairer to upper income earners, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said.
In an interview that aired on “CBS This Morning” Tuesday, the Kentucky Republican said he is ready to sit down with “this president or the next president” and have an animated discussion about the tax code to “reach a conclusion” that would bring down the ballooning U.S. deficit.
“Almost 70 percent of the federal revenue is provided by the top 10 percent of taxpayers now. Between 45 percent and 50 percent of Americans pay no income tax at all. We have an extraordinarily progressive tax code already. It is a mess and needs to be revisited again,” McConnell said in the interview, taped Monday.
He is lying and knows it. The tax code includes so many loopholes for the wealthy that the alternate minimum tax had to be instituted to collect anything from a lot of people in the top bracket.
The personal income tax only represents a little over 40% of the Federal revenue stream, just slightly more than the revenue from payroll withholding taxes, which are only collected from working people and are currently capped at about $110,000 of income.
The poor may not make enough to pay income taxes, but they pay the payroll withholding taxes, as well as state and local taxes, like sales taxes, school and property taxes, gas taxes, utilities taxes, etc. The wealthy generally pay a lower percentage of their income in taxes than the poor, as I can personally attest to based on my last tax return, compared to Mitt Romney’s for the same period.
The super-rich don’t usually pay at the income tax rate, they pay at the capital gains rate of 15%, the bottom of the income tax table and don’t pay payroll withholding taxes.
McConnell has made it crystal clear who he works for, and it isn’t the coal miners of Kentucky, it is the mine owners.
3 comments
Turtleface can go suck eggs. Few GOPers are more personally offensive.
No one will push back on his lies or use any critical thinking to see through this bogus argument. Though I do not know the figures exactly, but I believe the top 2% of Americans hold 40% of the wealth, bottom 6o% hold something like 5% of the wealth. The basic principles of math will give the conservatives talking points a run for the money. lets say for sake of argument, that there is a group of people that make 10,000 per year, and a group of people who make 100 per year. Let’s make another assumption that in this example the tax rate for both is 20%. The first group will pay $2000 in taxes, the second $20. So the 10,000 group as a unit will be accountable for a higher percentage of the tax revenue, not becasue they are over-taxed, but because they make more money, the second group pays same percentage, but will be accountable for a smaller percentage of the tax revenue
So now we look at the bigger picture, for the group that is earning 100 per year, the 20 dollars, though the same percentage as the 10,000 group, is more of a burden because the basic neccesities to survive in a year (food, housing, etc) costs $ 90, so the gov’t decided to give this group a break on the taxes so they could manage to survive the year and in turn, by partcipating in the necessities, they put money into the economy
What seems to be a common inference in the talking points is that the percentage of americans who pay no INCOME TAX, somehow do not particpate in society economic engine, and those who do, are the true americans. This is the lie
If he wanted more people to pay incomes taxes, he could sponsor a military pay raise that would get the lower ranks off food stamps and making enough money to be taxpayers. That combat exclusion benefit that says you don’t pay income taxes when you are deployed in a combat zone is worthless to the lower ranks. I doubt the two months he spent in the Army Reserve in 1967 left him with much of a feeling of camaraderie for the military.
My general feeling from personal experience is that the people at the top are the ones who use all of the government services, so they should pay for them. The State Department and Commerce Department are of almost no benefit to the people at the bottom, but they are important to the 1%. The wealthy have the access and get the services, so they should pay for them.
As for national defense, I don’t see many of the wealthy volunteering to get shot at when the country goes to war. The trenches are filled with people who don’t make enough to pay taxes. Putting your life on the line ought to count for more than just cash, but it doesn’t to today’s GOP.
If you ever hang around with really wealthy people, as I did in Southern California, it is amazing how little they actually buy. With more than two-thirds of the US GDP dependent on consumers, the wealthy aren’t really pulling their weight.
Chuck, you can’t explain anything to people whose paycheck is based on remaining ignorant. As you say, there are reasons for a progressive tax system, but the Repubs would rather blame the poor.