The White House may have called and asked Warren Buffett’s permission to use his name to help push their latest round of tax hikes, but apparently they failed to brief him on the actual plan.
In an interview with CNBC this morning, Buffett said that Counselor to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner did call him and ask his permission to use his name for President Obama’s new tax policy. But when pressed on whether he supported Obama’s Buffett Rule, Buffett declined:
Buffett: The precise program … I don’t know what there program will be. My program would be the very high incomes that are taxed very low, not just high incomes, some guy making $50 million a year playing baseball, his taxes won’t change, a guy making $50 million a year appearing on television, his income won’t change, but if they make a lot of money and they pay a very low tax rate, like me, it would be changed by a minimum tax that would only bring them up to what the other people pay.
CNBC: Does that you mean you disagree with the president’s new jobs proposal which would be paid for by raising taxes on households with incomes over $250,000?
Buffett: There is another program that I won’t be discussing. My program is to have on ultra rich people who are paying very low tax rates. Not just all the rich people. And it would probably apply to 50,000 people in a population of 300 million.
Buffett is not media shy. The White House had to know that he would eventually be asked if he supported the actual policy Obama was peddling under the ‘Buffett Rule’ banner. You’d think, if they were going to ask permission to use his name in the first place, they also would have made sure he supported the actual program. Oops.
