Republished with edits and a new title.
On Meet the Press this morning what passes for a token moderate in today's radicalized Republican Party signaled his party's complete capitulation to Grover Norquist's rigid ideology of re-making the United States into a naked plutocracy, ruled over by a hereditary economic aristocracy.
Meet the Press August 26th
GREGORY: …whether they should be going up or not. Do you think the Republican Party, if it’s going to help reach a solution on our debt, is going to have to-- to break some of the orthodoxy about raising revenue through eliminating deductions or other loopholes or raising taxes? Will Republicans have to give, do you think at some point, on this?
FMR. GOV. BUSH: I don’t think there are-- there are-- right now I don’t think that there is disagreement about that in terms of the deduction. Raising rates, I think would be foolhardy and Republicans oppose that but, tax reform could yield the opportunity to find common ground on entitlement reform. And…
GREGORY: But you’ve been in favor of being willing, at least, to break-- you-- you said there is too much orthodoxy in the Republican Party. You got to take a serious look at raising revenue.
FMR. GOV. BUSH: I’m saying there’s too much orthodoxy in the political process, that we’re yapping too much instead of trying to find common ground which is why I’m excited that Mitt Romney is our nominee because he is a practical person who’s had life experience based on solving problems.
So will Jeb's Party listen to his advice, stop "yapping" and find common ground? Or will the GOP just try and ram through Mitt' Romney's blueprint for intensifying America's Class Warfare on behalf of the GOP's super wealthy sponsors?
This comes from the Center for American Progress.
Making More, Contributing Less
Millionaires’ Tax Rates Have Declined While Everyone Else Contributes to Deficit Reduction
By Seth Hanlon
Big benefits from the Bush tax cuts
So what’s causing the tax bills of the wealthiest to drop? The average millionaire will pay $136,000 less this year because the Bush tax cuts are still in effect, according to the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 lowered the top marginal rate from the Clinton-era 39.6 percent to 35 percent. They also dropped the rates on capital gains and dividend income to a historically low 15 percent. (Capital gains rates had already been cut from 28 percent to 20 percent in 1997.)
That move was a boon to millionaires because they receive more than 60 percent of all income from long-term capital gains and nearly 40 percent of all income from tax-favored dividends.
And it was a super-boon to mega-millionaires and billionaires. IRS data show that the tax rates of the richest 400 Americans declined from 29.9 percent in 1995 to 18.1 percent in 2008, largely because that exclusive group derives two-thirds of its income from capital gains.
Mounting inequality
To be sure, tax rates on middle-class Americans have also declined. But their incomes have stagnated, which is decidedly not the case for millionaires.
Millionaire Tax Freeloaders like Mitt Romney think they deserve to get more not less preferential treatment from
their government at tax time. Polls consistently show Americans think the wealthy should contribute more, and pay higher taxes. But the GOP only listens to its wealthy sponsors whims, not the American People.