"If We Did Not Share in the Prosperity, Why Should We Have to Share in the Sacrifice?"

[stuffmatters]

65. The Lessons we learned from Romney's tax return

Is that the middle class have been paying a higher tax rate than the rich for years. It bis not up to us to now chip in 10%
more from our meager 15000 soc sec via the rigged cola or pay thousands more for raised medicare or let it be means tested into a welfare program, or allow medicaid to be starved an its safety net supporting old age nursing homes removed.

There is public knowledge that existed before Romney's candidacy and after Romney's candidacy. The public learned that the super rich in this country do not and have not paid anything close to a fair income tax via capital gains, off shore tax shelters, son of boss exclusions, renting religious exemptions, tax free pass through trusts, tax free pass through 401ks etc ...while the rest of us every year of our working lives have religiously paid a higher tax rate than these people for decades.

Anything Obama or the Democrats proposed as"balanced sacrifice" is now pretty much an obscene demand to further bilk the middle class while further enriching this tax privileged and ultimately tax enriched class. Rev Al is completely right. We see now that we have sacrificed all along and they have not paid even close to their proper percentage. We have paid our bills and theirs. It is time for the rich and the corporations to pay the bills they have avoided all these years.

We've already borne the pain, done or part, lost our businesses, our houme equities, our retirements etc AND paid our taxes. Now it's time to ask the 1% to do the following & see how fast our deficit shrinks & economy grows:

There should be a progressive tax schedule for income (including capital gains) over 250,000 that STARTS at 39% and goes up to at least 60%. Inheritance tax should also returned to rates at least of the nineties.
Go with the Nurses on a Financial transaction tax . Also eliminate the cap on taxable soc security income. Apply a soc sec, a medicare and a medicaid tax to capital gains (over 250000 if you want to cushion retirees, no cushion if you don't)

The two biggest drivers of the deficit are the Bush wars and the Bush tax cuts, not soc sec (not even in the budget), medicare and medicaid. I'm so sick of hearing these austerity/Wall Street shills on Sun morn talk shows blame the deficit on "entitlements" , social insurance the middle class pays for all their working lives, instead of reckless military and economic decisions made by the Bush Administration and exploited by the 1% and by Wall Street.