Yes, according to a new CNN poll, Americans are overwhelmingly in support of returning the tax rates for the very wealthy to their pre-Bush levels. It found that a whopping 51% of Americans feel that these tax cuts should end for the wealthy. In addition, it found another 18% that thought that the Bush tax cuts should end altogether for everyone. Only 31% of Americans feel that the tax cuts for the very wealthy should continue to add to the deficit:
http://i2.cdn.turner.com/...
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich summed up why extending these tax cuts for the wealthy is such idiocy at this point in our history:
A final reason for allowing the Bush tax cut to expire for people at the top is the most basic of all. Although Wall Street’s excesses were the proximate cause of the Great Recession, its fundamental cause lay in the nation’s widening inequality. For many years, most of the gains of economic growth in America have been going to the top—leaving the nation’s vast middle class with a shrinking portion of total income. (In the 1970s, the top 1 percent received 8 to 9 percent of total income, but thereafter income concentrated so rapidly that by 2007 the top received 23.5 percent of the total.)
The only way most Americans could continue to buy most of what they produced was by borrowing. But now that the debt bubble has burst—as it inevitably would—the underlying problem has reemerged.
http://blog.aflcio.org/...
You see, the very people who have shrunk wages, decimated the middle-class and crashed the economy are at it again. Every year they take a bigger piece of the pie from working America and expect us to reward them for it. They refuse to pay higher wages to allow everyone to contribute to the economy and instead demand more money they can horde at the top and make the rest of us suffer. Now, they want to slop at the trough some more and run up our deficit yet again on the backs of working America. Yes, they are indeed the greediest and least patriotic among us and they feel everyone should sacrifice for their greed except them.
What is really disgusting is the number of Democrats either in office or running for it who are taking the side of the wealthy over the working by supporting these cuts for the wealthy to be extended. With so many Americans favoring the cuts to be ended this can be explained in only two ways. Either they are completely cowardly and are pandering to the wealthy and will represent them, not us when elected, or they are really in bed with these folks and honestly believe the working class should suffer all the loss while the wealthy once again skate away scot-free with yet another no-risk investment for them. Hell, working America will always be asked to bail them out.
With our majorities in the House and Senate it is time for Democratic politicians to draw a line in the sand and step on one side or the other. Either you stand with the majority of the American people, and with the working class or you stand with those who have caused all the problems in our economy and expect a reward for it. It cannot be both ways. So the question we need to be asking of members of BOTH parties is do you stand with the American people, or do you stand with the Bush legacy of debt, deficit, deregulation and idiocy that has caused so much pain for so many?
Of course, except for the very wealthy...
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