Labor & Employment Law

These Millionaires Say: Don?t Extend Tax Cuts for Us

By Tula Connell

Looks like some bazillionaires are joining Warren Buffet in urging that Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest expire at the end of the year.

Calling themselves “Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength,” more than 40 of the nation’s wealthiest individuals wrote an open letter to President Obama urging him to “allow tax cuts on incomes over $1 million to expire at the end of this year as scheduled.”

We have done very well over the last several years. Now, during our nation?s moment of need, we are eager to do our fair share. We don?t need more tax cuts, and we understand that cutting our taxes will increase the deficit and the debt burden carried by other taxpayers. The country needs to meet its financial obligations in a just and responsible way.

The U.S. public agrees. A new survey out today shows 51 percent of registered voters want Congress to extend the tax cuts only for households making less than $250,000 a year.  

As Joe Conason reminds us, the Patriotic Millionaires campaign came out the same day as a new study showing that half of the members of the House and the Senate are millionaires?and many of those millionaires want our tax money to go to their tax breaks. And some of these congressional millionaires also say we can’t afford to maintain unemployment insurance for long-term jobless workers in the worst economic morass since the Depression.

The Patriotic Millionaires site notes that ”letting tax cuts for the top 2 percent expire as scheduled would pay down the debt by $700 billion over the next 10 years.” That’s real money?money the nation’s more than 16 million jobless workers certainly don’t have to hand over to the 375,000 people who make more than $1 million a year. 

The site notes that in 1963?when prosperity in the United States was far more widespread?millionaires had a top marginal tax rate of 91 percent. Today, millionaires have a top marginal tax rate of 35 percent.

The millionaires who signed on this letter are indeed patriotic?and others in that income bracket should show their red, white and blue colors as well.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on November 23, 2010 (boomark / email).