"The Buffett Rule, they've run the numbers, they've crunched the numbers. The Buffett Rule is going to generate $5 billion. And when that figure got out earlier this week, Obama and the Democrats switched their tune. They said, "Well, the point of Buffett Rule is not to raise revenue and reduce the deficit. The point of the Buffett Rule is 'fairness' and make sure rich people pay their fair share." Don't forget the AMT is the first Buffett Rule, the first millionaires tax. This is purely a campaign device of class envy, or class warfare. But it's not gonna affect Buffett or Gates or anybody else who does not have earned income as opposed to investment income.
And Buffett, by the way, owes close to a billion dollars in back taxes anyway, and he's fighting it. He's fighting it! So this is a tax increase named after a guy fighting the IRS over his tax bill."
From the National Review, re the Buffett Rule:
If the Democrats wish to revoke the tax benefits given to long-term investments — say, on Americans’ retirement accounts — then let them do so openly, in the light of day, rather than furtively, based on a platform of what we might charitably call myths, if not outright lies. That reducing Americans’ ability to invest and save for their own futures would leave them more dependent upon Social Security, Medicare, and the like surely is not lost on Democrats, who profit from the increasing servility of the electorate. Americans should not be distracted by the Democrats’ class-warfare sleight-of-hand from the fact that the Democrats here are contemplating a purely punitive measure that will add yet another level of complexity to the tax code and create a new arterial blockage constricting the flow of the lifeblood of our economy.
From The Wall Street Journal, in an interesting piece about the conservative message and how it embodies compassion:
"To me, the principle of subsidiarity . . . meaning government closest to the people governs best . . . where we, through our civic organizations, through our churches, through our charities, through all of our different groups where we interact with people as a community, that's how we advance the common good. By not having big government crowd out civic society, but by having enough space in our communities so that we can interact with each other, and take care of people who are down and out in our communities.
"Those principles are very, very important, and the preferential option for the poor, which is one of the primary tenets of Catholic social teaching, means don't keep people poor, don't make people dependent on government so that they stay stuck at their station in life. Help people get out of poverty out onto a life of independence."
Related Video
Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Henninger on the Obama campaign's war of rhetorical destruction.
Subsidiarity—an awful but important word—attempts to discover where the limits lie in the demands a state can make on its people. Identifying that limit was at the center of the Supreme Court's mandate arguments.
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