A buffet of stupidity

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed nearly 30 jobs bills that have not even been brought to a vote by the US Senate. In addition to that, the Senate has not passed a budget in nearly three years.

So what has the "laziest Senate in 20 years" been focusing on lately? Well, since the upper chamber is controlled by Democrats, it's gimmicky class-warfare games of course. At the insistence of the White House's current occupant, the Senate has attempted to bring up for a vote the "Buffett Rule" which looks to increase minimum tax rates to 30% for those earning more than $1 million per year.

Unfortunately for the President and his Democrat colleagues, there weren't sixty votes for cloture in the Senate, thus killing the proposal

The Senate on Monday rejected the so-called “Buffett Rule” on a largely partisan roll call that was more of an election year show vote than a substantive debate on tax policy.

The procedural vote was 51-45, falling short of the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster.

The Buffett Rule — named after mega-investor Warren Buffett, who famously disclosed that he was paying a lower tax rate than his secretary – was designed to ensure that millionaires don’t skirt the higher tax rates often paid by the middle class.

First of all, that is such a disingenuous and utterly asinine way to measure taxes being paid.

The lower tax rate is often applied to investment income, which means the money initially earned (aka ordinary income) to make the investments was already taxed at the higher rate. Also, it boils down to simple math. Suppose someone who earns $2 million is taxed at, say, 15%. Then hypothetically that person hires a secretary who earns $75,000 and pays 20% of her salary in taxes. Who has the higher rate? The latter, of course. But who pays more in taxes in actual freaking dollars?!?!?! The former, to the tune of $300,000 to $15,000 for the latter, a 20-to-1 ratio!

What makes this demagoguery even more despicable is the fact that the Federal government is currently running annual deficits of more than one trillion dollars. Nevertheless, the Democrats continue to play these nonsensical class warfare games that, by the White House's own admittance, does nothing to solve the most pressing problem we face: out of control spending.

In closing, I'd like someone to answer a question for me. If this is such an important issue, the fact that the "one percent" should pay the same tax rate on their investment income as the middle-class pays on ordinary income, why wasn't this brought up when Democrats had complete control of Washington (including a "Super Majority" in the Senate) in 2009? It could've been rammed through within a week with that kind of control.

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