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There is a better way — we need tax fairness

Published Apr 23, 2012

From The Danbury News Times
Last summer, investor, philanthropist and multi-billionaire Warren Buffett, was frustrated. He and other people of great wealth were not asked to share in the sacrifices that the middle class were asked to make.

So, he proposed, in a New York Times op-ed, that millionaires and billionaires shouldn’t pay lower tax rates than the workers of the middle class.

Like many common sense proposals, it was a great idea, and President Obama soon suggested it as a new tax rule — the Buffett rule — a minimum effective tax rate of 30 percent for all money made over $1 million.

And by asking millionaires and billionaires to pay their fair share, we can give some tax relief to the rest of us, as well as avoiding cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Buffett noted in his op-ed that, despite his enormous wealth and paying millions of taxes in 2010, his effective tax rate was the lowest tax rate in his office (it was a phenomenon noted by none other than Republican President Ronald Reagan in a 1985 speech).

That is so significant that it bears repeating — Warren Buffett, either the richest or second richest person in the world, depending on when you look and how much he has recently donated to charity, paid a lower tax rate than every other person in his office from the IT professionals, to the assistants, to the vice presidents, to the middle managers.

Somewhere along the way, our tax system has gone off the rails of fairness.

When millionaires and billionaires pay a smaller share of their earnings in taxes than the middle class, something is wrong and should be fixed.

The days of Wall Street financiers, bankers, and hedge fund managers paying a lower tax rate than the construction workers who pave the roads they drive on, or the teachers who educate their children, need to end.

Fairness and justice argue that the wealthiest among us should at least pay the same tax rate as the people they employ — not a far lower one.

In tough economic times, and these surely qualify, we all must band together to rebuild an economy shattered by reckless financial speculation.

And when I say we all, I do mean all of us, not just the middle class and working families.

We simply cannot solve the economic crisis and balance our budgets on the backs of the middle class.

Unfortunately, despite the popularity of the Buffett Rule across party lines, Congressional Republicans do not agree.

At the end of March, House Republicans (with one lone dissenter) voted en masse against the Buffett Rule when they rejected the Democratic Budget Alternative.

Recently, Republican Senators joined their colleagues in the House by filibustering Buffett Rule legislation — causing it to fail even though a majority of Senators voted in favor.

At the same time that House Republicans are rejecting common-sense tax fairness, they continue to push for the disastrous Ryan Budget, put forward by Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, which would dramatically lower tax rates for the wealthiest, while cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs that seniors and working families rely on.

Not only would the Ryan Budget not implement a fairness component to taxation of the ultra-wealthy like the Buffett Rule, it would hand people making more than $1 million per year an additional tax cut of almost $265,000 per year.

It is easy to understand the complaints of people who feel that the current House of Representatives is better at representing we, the few, than they are at representing we, the people.
But there is a better way.

In Connecticut, with a Democratic legislature and a Republican governor, we were able to put our differences aside and come together to pass the first millionaire’s tax in Connecticut history.

Washington desperately needs a dose of that sort of pragmatic rule making. Congress should act to pass the Buffett Rule as soon as possible.

Christopher G. Donovan, D-Meriden, is the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives and has represented the 84th Assembly District since 1993. Donovan is seeking the Democratic nomination to run for the 5th Congressional District seat.

Read the full article here

Posted In: In the News