President Barack Obama has left unanswered a major question about his Buffett Rule tax on millionaires: Just how much money would it raise?
Administration officials are not releasing projected revenues from the much-hyped plan named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett. During the State of the Union address, Obama tied his proposal ? which would tax those earning $1 million at a minimum of 30 percent ? to cutting a deficit estimated to top $1.1 trillion for the fourth straight year.
Continue ReadingBut for the moment, the White House wants to keep the attention focused on Obama?s argument that it?s unfair to tax Buffett?s secretary at a higher rate than her boss.
?I?m not going to give you a schedule of how broad individual tax reform would break down and what impact it would have,? White House press secretary Jay Carney said at the Wednesday briefing. ?The president simply believes that as a matter of principle that unfairness ought to be changed.?
Republican lawmakers ? noting the absence of real numbers ? attacked the plan as a political charade, an attempt to score points in the November election instead of a serious policy to reduce federal debt. One outside analysis by the non-partisan Tax Foundation indicates the rule would generate another $36.7 billion a year in revenue ? far from enough to make a serious dent in a national debt of $15 trillion.
?It?s a smokescreen,? Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) told POLITICO. ?Barack Obama just wants to pit one group against another so he can raise more money to spend on a bloated government.?
Along with Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), Scalise unveiled an alternative to the Buffett Rule in October, sponsoring a measure that would let the wealthiest Americans volunteer to pay more in taxes to specifically lower the deficit.
In the State of the Union, Obama pitted the Buffett Rule against being forced to carve up government funding for education, medical research and the military, saying it was choice between tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and ?investments in everything else.
?If we?re serious about paying down our debt, we can?t do both,? the president said.
Obama would also require closing tax code loopholes for millionaires, and in return has offered to take steps to restrain the bulging costs of Medicare and Medicaid.
The Buffett Rule?s minimum tax could eat into the incomes of as many as 200,000 taxpayers, according to an October study by the Congressional Research Service.
On average, someone hauling in $1 million a year might have fork over another $50,000 to Uncle Sam. That?s a sizable tab for individuals but not a lot for the government, said David Logan, an economist at the Tax Foundation, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
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