Say Anything Blog

Sure.  It’s easy for one of the richest and most powerful men in the world to call for “the rich” to pay more in taxes, and certainly the Democrats love using Buffet and his tax demands as propaganda for their soak-the-rich fiscal policies, but let’s keep in mind that by “the rich” the Democrats don’t just mean the super-rich like Buffet.

Warren Buffett, the renowned investor and the world’s second richest man, told Senate Democrats that wealthy Americans need to pay higher taxes, giving Democrats something to mull as they address healthcare reform and soaring federal deficits.

Senate Democrats met with Buffett for more than an hour over lunch Thursday, peppering him with questions about the economy, said lawmakers in attendance.

“He said rich people are not paying enough taxes,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.). “It was interesting to see someone who is such an aggressive capitalist, who believes so much in our capitalist system, saying we’ve got the scales way too heavily toward people who are very, very wealthy.”

Buffett told lawmakers that because of the cuts to the capital gains tax passed under former President George W. Bush, he pays taxes at a lower rate than some of his company’s employees.

It is an argument the investor has made before. Buffett said he paid a 16.5 percent tax rate on all his income because the tax rate on investment dividends and long-term capital gains is only 15 percent.

Warren Buffet is less an adviser for Democrats than he is a walking talking point.  Challenge the Democrats on their plans to try and make a small percentage of the population pay for almost all the government and they immediately jabbering about Buffet.  “He’s a capitalist,” they say.  “He likes big taxes, why don’t the Republicans get on board?”

The problem, first of all, is that Buffet is no capitalist.  He’s a rent-seeker who made his fortune exploiting the tax code as leverage for his take overs.

The second problem is that our government doesn’t suffer from a paucity of funding.  Our government suffers from a spending addiction.  We don’t need to increase revenues to the government.  We need to decrease expenditures.

We simply cannot afford more government.  Our economy cannot afford the taxes Buffet and his fellow liberals want us to pay (remember that “the rich” the want to pay more taxes are often the very business owners we also want to start hiring people again).  We cannot afford to take more money out of the economy and put it into the government.  We cannot afford more government, period.

The intent here in using Buffet is to play the class warfare game.  The Democrats want to raise taxes without inciting a public backlash, so why not raise them on the rich?  After all, there’s nobody more unsympathetic than some rich guy, right?  The problem is that every dollar the government takes out of the economy, whether it comes from “the rich” or “the poor,” is one less dollar that could go toward the sort of economic activity that generates prosperity and puts people to work.