"Soaking The Wealthy"?

(This is a re-post of a letter written by Dave Girves.  You can always find his blog in Buster's Links.  Dave regularly writes some great letters to the editor, but our weenie newspaper rarely has the nerve to print them.  I particularly like this one, so here it is.  Well said, Dave!)

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Letters to the Editor

Columbus Dispatch

In his Friday letter, “Soaking the wealthy won’t eliminate the debt”, Michael Rice objects to the term "obstructionists" when referring to congressional Republicans. He asks “What major piece of legislation [did] President Obama want that he failed to have passed?”

In August, 2011 he proposed The American Jobs Act to put more people back to work, even though his policies had already generated tens of thousands of new jobs every month for more than 30 straight months. That piece of legislation failed to pass. Because of obstructionist congressional Republicans that piece of legislation hasn’t even been discussed. The Republican head of the Senate even admitted, out loud, that their primary objective was to limit Obama to one term, not to do something about jobs.

During the debate last year to allow our country to pay its bills, the obstructionist congressional Republicans refused to consider asking millionaires to pay one cent more in taxes, causing our country’s credit rating to be reduced for the first time in history, leading to the impending fiscal cliff. The President wasn’t proposing to soak the wealthy then and he isn’t now. All he wants is to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, just as President Bush had intended them to.

The wealthy would see their top marginal rate, the rate they pay just on the income they earn over $250,000, return to 39.6%. That was the rate they paid under Clinton and they weren’t complaining about being soaked then. Under Republican President Eisenhower, with full employment and a good economy, the top marginal tax rate was 91%, well over twice what Obama is proposing, and no one was complaining about being soaked then either.

Dave Girves