This week, President Obama proposed raising taxes. So what's surprising about this? The only surprise is that he's waited so long to lay out a tax increase plan in any detail. Up to this point, we've just been inundated with "tax the rich" or "make the rich pay their fair share".

I did some checking. According the U.S. Census Bureau, we have 307,006,550 people in this country as of 2009. We have 236,000 that have earned income above $1 million per year. That is .0077% of the people in this country. Please note, that's less than 1% of the people in this country earn $1 Million or more per year.

It's tough reading numbers and correlating them. But let's give it a shot. According to the Internal Revenue Service, those earning over $1 million per year are paying over 20% of the taxes. Put these numbers together. Less than 1% of the people in this country are paying 20% of the taxes paid.

Here's another for you. People making over $1 million per year are paying 29.1% of their income towards taxes. While people making between $50,000 and $75,000 per year are paying just 15%. So again, let me simplify it for you. The "rich" are paying a 29.1% rate while the middle class is paying 15%. Do we really need to be told that 29.1% is a higher rate than 15%? Apparently so, because here's the quote from Obama. " It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million." So I can only ask, who is it that really doesn't get it? The American people or President Obama? The facts state that it's President Obama that doesn't understand simple math.

Obama has decided to call this the Buffett Rule. If I were Obama, I'd hestitate to use any word that that sounds like "buffet" meaming food. I'll explain that in a minute.
Warren Buffett is not being completely honest when he talks about his secretary paying more in income taxes than he pays. Technically, he's correct, so he's not a complete liar, but he does lead people to believe something that's not true. Warren Buffet pays 15% capital gains tax on his investments. He doesn't pay income tax for work. So he's comparing his secretaries income tax to his investment tax.

I said that I'd explain my little comment about the name of his plan. A report is out by the Department of Justice saying they paid $16.00 for donuts. $8.00 for a cup of coffee, at conferences. This reminds me of the $600 toilet seats from about 30 years ago.
Obama does seem to have a problem with naming his different little policy plans and even his campaign. There's the Buffett Rule a day before the DOJ talks about spending millions on appetizers at conferences and his slogan for re-election seems to be "Winning the Future". After the nearly 3 years we've gone through do you really think that a slogan with the initials "WTF" is something a normal man would use for his re-election campaign (Thank you for that information Bev)?

The good news in all of this is that the Buffett Rule will not come to pass (no pun intended). The Republicans in the House will not vote for raising taxes during a recession.

You're welcome to comment.

Brett