President Obama played the Reagan card while advocating his “Buffett Rule” to a crowd in Texas yesterday, saying that he agrees with President Reagan that it’s “crazy” for a millionaire to pay a lower tax rate than a middle class worker.
Obama invoked this “Great American” to rebut the charge that his millionaire tax amounts to “class warfare” for political advantage:
Obama, Reagan, and likely every other politician who wants to get reelected agree that millionaires should pay a higher income tax than middle and working-class Americans. But, as Mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed out, it’s not really true that millionaires have those low taxes. The ones who do have a different kind of income from other people. They avoid the income tax by getting their money from capital gains income.
And Obama still refuses to show true agreement with Reagan, for all that he touts the “transformational” president while on the stump. Reagan opposed extra tax rates, including those of the kind that President Obama is trying to create for millionaires. Reagan advocated tax cuts and the kind of tax code that would remove the incentive to hire lobbyists and lawyers to find loopholes in the tax system.
Reagan said that “flatter rates will mean more reward for that extra effort, and vanishing loopholes and a minimum tax will mean that every one and every corporation pay their fair share . . . We’ve come this far [and] we can not – we will not allow this tax reform to be undone with tax rate hikes.” Reagan’s tax reform was designed to eliminate the tax code complexity that currently allows General Electric, run by Obama’s jobs czar, to avoid paying any income tax.
Obama claims that his “Buffett Rule” will force the rich to pay their fair share, but he never says what would be a fair percentage. His adviser, David Plouffe, refuses to address the fact that the wealthy already pay 70 percent of the tax revenue. He also claims that this tax hike qualifies as a tax reform, when even his own adviser admits that it’s not reform. But Obama isn’t trying to reform the system. He’s trying to force Republicans to vote for a tax hike so that conservative voters will lose faith in the GOP and Obama can win reelection.
You can see Reagan talking about his Tax Reform Act below. You can see Reagan criticize the use of too many tax rates here. It doesn’t sound like he’d support the Buffett Rule.
