By Marc Caputo and Patricia Mazzei, McClatchy Newspapers –
BOCA RATON, Fla. — President Barack Obama came to South Florida on Tuesday to raise money from millionaires and ask them to pay more in taxes.
Obama interrupted his $2 million campaign-fundraising trip to advocate for his proposed tax-the-rich “Buffett Rule.” Republicans say the president is waging class warfare while sticking taxpayers with his campaign travel expenses.
By highlighting the Buffett Rule in his public speech at Florida Atlantic University, Obama ratcheted up the pressure for the tax-day April 15 Senate vote on the rule, which seeks to tax those who earn more than $1 million annually a 30 percent rate.
“In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few. Prosperity has always come from the bottom up,” Obama said. “And yet we keep on having the same argument with folks who don’t seem to understand how it is that America got built.”
The chances of the Buffett Rule — nicknamed for billionaire investor Warren Buffett — passing are virtually nil in the Senate, where Republicans can filibuster the vote.
Still, Obama urged the FAU college students to get active and contact their members of Congress.
“Tweet them,” he said, eliciting laughs. At another point, the students chanted “four more years.”
As with the president’s speech in February in Miami —where he chastised his opponents for attacking him over high gas prices — Republicans noted that Obama’s address had a negative and defensive quality to it when compared to some of his more positive 2008 campaign speeches.
“The candidate who ran for hope and change has now become the president of divide and deceive,” Miami Republican Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart said earlier in the day.
Though it’s rare for candidates to call for tax increases, Obama is on safe ground. The Buffett Rule is popular. A recent McClatchy/Ipsos poll found that 6 in 10 Americans favor higher taxes for the rich.
Even Warren Buffett likes it, saying his secretary shouldn’t pay a higher proportion of income taxes than he. The rule, however, doesn’t touch taxes on capital gains, such as those from the sale of investments, which provides substantial income to the wealthy and is taxed at a 15 percent rate.
Talking about the Buffett Rule helps highlight the wealth of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Obama’s campaign has pointed out that Romney, who earned about $21 million in 2010, paid a far lower rate — about 14 percent — than the average American. Obama steered clear of mentioning Romney, but took a swipe at “some people who are running for office who should not be named.” He broadly tried to portray Republicans as heartless for pushing for cuts to entitlement programs and for being out of touch with working people.
“They are doubling down on these old broken down theories,” Obama said. He said higher taxes on the rich won’t hurt the economy.
In a Republican National Committee conference call Tuesday morning, Rep. Diaz-Balart and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus bashed Obama for the substance and timing of the FAU speech.
Diaz-Balart accused the president of scheduling the public speech, wedged in between his high-dollar fundraisers, to stick taxpayers with the cost of travel. When asked about Obama’s Republican predecessor, President George W. Bush, doing the same thing, Diaz-Balart said Obama has overtly abused the privilege.
“At the last minute they threw something in (the FAU speech) to justify getting taxpayers to pay for it,” Diaz-Balart said.
Obama had three fundraisers Tuesday: A $10,000-a-plate luncheon at the Palm Beach Gardens home of former Raytheon executive Hansel Emory Tookes II; a larger event at the Westin Diplomat Resort & Spa with Grammy-winning artist John Legend that cost as much as $5,000 per person; and a $15,000-per-plate fundraiser at the home of trial lawyer Jeremy Alters in Golden Beach.
Republicans contrasted Obama’s rhetoric about helping the middle class with his hobnobbing with the super-rich. They also noted Obama failed to mention the Buffett Rule at his first fundraiser.
Also, they said, the Buffett Rule wouldn’t do anything to create jobs or fill the deficit.
Still, the Buffett Rule would generate about $47 billion more for the treasury over the next decade — and that would reduce the deficit more than some of the cuts proposed by Republicans.
In all, Obama has proposed about $1.5 billion in specific tax increases for next budget year and has identified trillions in spending cuts or reductions to proposed increases.
Romney and House Republicans rallying around the so-called “Ryan Plan” have called for more tax increases by way of closing so-called tax loopholes, but they haven’t provided specifics — on that or on their tax-cut proposals in a time of deficits.
“Right — you didn’t because you knew that people wouldn’t accept them,” Obama said in his speech. “You can’t pay down the deficit by taking in $4.6 trillion in less money.”
Republicans pointed out that the deficit and national debt has exploded on Obama’s watch.
The White House on Monday hosted a conference call with reporters and released a seven-page report detailing how, in the past 50 years, the wealthiest Americans have seen their average tax rates cut in half, to about 26 percent. Meantime, average income earners have seen their tax rates stay the same or slightly increase.
The report failed to note what Republicans have been saying for years: The wealthy pay more in total taxes than everyone else does right now.
The Buffet plan will raise approx 45 billion over 10 yrs…simple math makes it approx 4.5 billion per year. Please subtract 4.5 billion from 1.4 trillion deficit this year…this is a simple math excercise…I want you all to write out the number 1.4 trillion then subtract 4.5 billion…and tell me in a straight face its a revenue problem versus spending explosion. Obama talks cutting oil subsidies…again less than 20 billion a year..2 billion a month. WE ARE BORROWING CURRENTLY 135 BILLION A MONTH!!These are numbers have never been hit before.
“In this country, prosperity has never trickled down from the wealthy few. Prosperity has always come from the bottom up,” Obama said.
In 1859, a wealthy man named William Butler Ogden chartered a company. That company operated til 1995, and created hundreds of thousands of jobs. He was also the first Mayor of Chicago, and later the first president of Union Pacific. Ogden donated money and time to the fledgling city, and it’s new institutions.
Space prohibits listing every case where a businessman contributed to the human cause in some form or another.
When we look at our local United Way campaigns, who are the top contributors? They may be few in numbers, but their sums are far greater than most working folk.
I take umbrage with the idea that people who have made a lot of money, never contribute, never trickle down. The comment is misleading, and patently false.