Some bullshit on ABC's This Week:

David Walker former US Comptroller General from 1998 to 2008:

If we broaden the tax base and recognize that we're spending $1.1 trillion a year in deductions, exemptions, credits, exclusions, and differences in tax rates. We can lower the top marginal tax rates for corporations, individuals, the estate tax at 25%. We can get more people paying income taxes. 35 to 51 percent don't pay any income tax. That's a dangerous disconnect.

George Stephanopoulos:

What I hear when you say that is that if you're a working american making $50, $60 thousand a year, your taxes are going up?

David Walker:

Well, here's what I'm saying. Let me finish. Buffet has got a real issue. But the reason that's an issue is because the wealthiest people make more of their money through capital gains and dividends. So if you can do what I've just said, bring the top marginal rate down to 25%, you can eliminate the difference between capital gains, dividends, and ordinary income, and we will accomplish multiple objectives in a prudent and sustainable manner.

Walker doesn't answer the question. Instead his solution to low capital gains and dividends rates is to lower the top rate for the rich (and lower the estate tax by 10% at the same time) while eliminating deductions that many in the middle class benefit from. Walker is a stooge for the ultra rich. Broadening the tax base means taxing more at the bottom and less at the top.

Wikipedia on Walker:

Walker has compared the present-day United States to the Roman Empire in its decline, saying the U.S. government is on a "burning platform" of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, expensive overcommitments to government provided health care, swelling Medicare and Social Security costs, the enormous expense of a prospective universal health care system, and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon.

"swelling ... Social Security costs" is the tell. Oh, and Walker is closely involved with Pete Peterson's Concord Coalition.


posted by Quiddity at 4/29/2012 09:04:00 AM