Poll after poll after poll shows that anywhere from two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans now favor tax increases on the wealthy.
I believe every Democrat running for Congress in 2012, as well as the President, must make increasing taxes on the rich a prominent litmus test. This is imperative. Every Republican who favors the rich over the will of the people must be identified and called to task at every turn. It must be featured in advertising, speeches, and at the grassroots. That message must be driven home again and again -- Congressman Smith wants to help the rich and the expense of ordinary Americans like you and me.
The GOP and, particularly, the Tea Baggers like to paint themselves as somehow more responsive to "ordinary" Americans. However, their unwavering support for the wealthy at the expense of our national future and security, when it's clear Americans don't want such a policy by a sizable majority, must be exposed again and again and again.
We are in the present fiscal mess in significant part because of the 2003 Bush tax giveaway to the wealthy. Ten Nobel Prize-winning economists, joined by 450 other prominent economists, warned eight years ago that this "welfare for the rich" would be disastrous. Their forecast has come true and then some.
(To refresh your memory, these were the cuts that gave a $50 "reduction" in incomes taxes to someone making $25,000 a year but a $12,500 cut to someone earning $350,000. That means someone earning $25,000 got a .2 percent tax cut while the person earning $350,000 landed a 3.6 percent tax cut.)
More than 25 percent of the existing national debt directly resulted from reducing the taxes on the wealthy. All of us are now paying for this welfare for the rich. It's time it stopped. Why should 97 percent of Americans carry water for the 3 percent at the top of the financial heap?
Make raising taxes on the rich a primary 2012 campaign issue.
