RUSH: It’s time to read the stitches on a fast ball. I have a story here from of all places the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, and why, look at the headline! ‘Wealthiest Taxpayers are Escaping Fair Share at the Nation’s Overall Expense.’ Wow. I wonder why this story happens to appear? Could it possibly be because our infrastructure is falling apart? Could it possibly be because of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis, hmm? ‘Wealthiest Taxpayers are Escaping Fair Share at the Nation’s Overall Expense.’ It’s written by Robyn Blumner, and I assume this is a female because it’s Robin R-o-b-y-n. I’ll give you an excerpt here. It’s an editorial. I think it’s an editorial, maybe a column. ‘The Democrats in Congress need to understand that their party’s future depends not on collecting money from the rich for campaign contributions, but in collecting money from the rich for taxes. The worst thing the Democrats can do is reinforce the view that it doesn’t matter which party is in power, since they are all beholden to the haves.’
How big an ignoramus must this woman be to write this story now? Well, I say this because the government is awash in money. The deficit is lower than it’s ever been, the forecasts. You have tax receipts pouring in, surprising everybody with lower rates on everybody! It’s how you do it. If the focus here is generating revenue for the treasury, ‘For the government, so we can do the precious work saving our infrastructure,’ or whatever the hell else the liberals think is worthwhile, then by golly, realize how you do it! You don’t do it by raising taxes. I don’t know what the corresponding number would be today, but back when I first started studying this tax business in the eighties, at that time, you could confiscate all of the wealth… How did it go now? You could confiscate, not tax, all the wealth from people who earn something over like $750,000 and run government for two weeks. You could take it all, and you could run the government for only two weeks. We’re talking trillions here, folks! Three trillion is the next budget. You are not going to improve anything by taxing a specific group of people; you’re not going to raise any more revenue. You do it by lowering rates. Now, the thrust of this story is Warren Buffett’s claim that he’s the third richest man in the world and he blasted the US tax system because he said he pays a lower rate of taxes than his secretary.
He said without trying to avoid taxes he paid 17.7% on the $46 million he made in 2006 while his secretary, who made $60,000 was taxed at 30%. I can explain this. I’m not going to justify it. But I don’t know how much of this $46 million he earned showed up as earned income. I’ve told you before: the income tax is designed to keep people like his secretary from becoming wealthy! There is no ‘wealth’ tax. So this is a big misnomer. This reporter is clueless. When we talk about raising taxes on the rich, we’re starting with families of four making — what is the Democrat number now? — $200,000 a year. You start raising their taxes, and they’re not going to going to have any savings. They’re never going to be able to get their kids to college without student loans. Even those people aren’t, but they certainly aren’t going to become ‘the rich.’ But people like Buffett and others that have all these gazillions? There’s no tax on their portfolios other than when they sell it, a stock or an asset, and the capital gains rate is 15% which, by the way, has caused a lot of movement in the stock market pro and con, but it’s been very good for business all down the line. But there’s no tax on wealth. There is a tax on income, and the tax on income is designed to keep everybody who is not wealthy from getting there.
I’m talking about genuine wealth, not the way Democrats define ‘rich.’ But, you know, Warren Buffett, for crying out loud! He can do all kinds of things. You know what he does? He scoops up businesses that are inherited by people whose parents have just died, because they can’t afford to pay the death tax, the 55%. Do you know how many businesses the people that inherit them have to sell because they can’t pay the death tax so the business leaves the hands of the family that had it all along. This has happened to some family owned newspapers in fact, and people like Buffett go in and buy these little companies and then make ’em part of the corporate empire, whatever. That’s fine, but this notion that we’re not taxed enough is absurd. We are taxed too much! This story misses the whole point. We take too much. Our government is awash in money: $3 trillion! State governments run surpluses even today as we speak, and the reason that our politicians run around — of all stripes, Republican, Democrat, liberal, communist, socialist, whatever — just goofy and slap happy is because they’ve got all this money to spend. When they talk about raising your taxes it’s an effort to control you. It’s not about generating more money. I would tell Senator McCain and the rest of these clowns that think money is corrupting politics, that what we need to do is not take the money out of politics. We need to take the money out of government.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Let me give you a real-world example on taxes. In North Carolina this past weekend, there was something they do every year: tax-free only on certain items, like back to school stuff, clothing, shoes, notebooks, pencils, even computers. Up to $3500, there was no sales tax on this stuff. It’s the fifth year in a row that the state of North Carolina has done this. I know it. It happens in Florida as well. Guess what? It turns out that lots of people in North Carolina run to the stores! It’s the same thing in Florida. We’re talking about a 7% sales tax in North Carolina, a lot of people say, ‘Ah, nobody’s going to make a special trip to the mall to save 7%!’ BS! The places end up being flooded. This one brief weekend will often serve to make up for a bad weekend at Christmastime for retailers. That’s how much business they do when they get rid of the sales tax in North Carolina, and there’s a lot of promotion and tie-ins to other purchases that they want you to get, buy when you’re there, buying the tax-free items. So, here you’ve got the state of Florida. You’ve gotta exempt Florida because we don’t even have a state income tax here, but let’s look at North Carolina. Five years into this, and it just goes great guns. Now, how is it that the legislators in North Carolina don’t see the real-world application of lower taxes, in this case no taxes, and then incorporate that in other elements of the state budget? Because it’s about control! The real-world evidence is out there, and reporters don’t see it. None of these people who are for high taxes see it, because they’re libs, and their minds are closed. They don’t see real-world examples right in front of them.