The constant, pernicious lie the left continues to repeat is that “The rich don’t pay their fair share” in taxes. Kamala Harris repeated that lie in her recent “60 Minutes” interview. She said:
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“Well, one thing…I’m going to make sure that the richest among us, who can afford it, pay their fair share in taxes. It is not right that teachers and nurses and firefighters are paying a higher tax rate than billionaires and the biggest corporations. And I plan on making that fair.”
Kamala, in particular, and the left, in general, love to repeat that lie, and when confronted, they use an apples are oranges deflection, claiming they are really referring to capital gains taxes, not earned income. But we all know that they are gaslighting. They want the uninformed (the majority of their base) to think that millionaires and billionaires are somehow in a lower tax bracket. Of course, that is a lie. Their lie is growing long in the tooth.
Twelve years ago, the anointed one, Barack Obama, looked up into the Capitol Congressional gallery to point out a guest named Debbie Bosanek. Ms Bosanek was brought in as a useful idiot, a willing stage prop, for Obama’s push to overhaul the tax code. The camera moved to Ms. Bosanek. The round-faced, bespeckled secretary, looking like a middle school teacher, was wearing a maroon suit coat and smiled as Obama laid claim that poor Ms. Bosanek – she “pays a higher tax rate” than her boss, Warren Buffett. Well, that sounded terrible. But more terrible was the absurdity of that statement.
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Later, she was interviewed on ABC and repeated her “woe is me” story. According to Buffett, she was paying twice the rate of taxes he was. Big, if true — but not in the way the left was shaping it. In 2012, capital gains were taxed at 15 percent. Ms. Bosanek’s federal income tax rate was claimed to be 35.8 percent. Ok. That means she was making more than 90 percent of Americans — in raw income. And she was living in Omaha, Nebraska. Ms. Bosanek wasn’t “middle class”; she was, frankly, “living large.” A Forbes contributing economist reported:
People in Ms. Bosanek’s tax bracket earned an adjusted gross income of $200,000 to $500,000. Therefore Buffett must pay Debbie Bosanek a salary well above two hundred thousand.
In Omaha, by the way. In 2012, I would guess that was like making $500,000 in New York money. Maybe a cool million. You get the point. She was a prop. A useful idiot – and maybe in more ways than just as a political prop.
The top rate was 35 percent, and if she were paying that, she was not in the suggested “middle class” by any stretch. Bosanek is almost certainly retired now, and I would bet my house that she is living off of healthy Berkshire dividends and… capital gains — and the massive amount she could have saved on 200K a year living in Omaha. And ironically, she is paying the lower capital gains tax rate now. The same rate the “rich” pay. Buffett was being disingenuous at best, lying at worst, and I think Obama knew he was comparing apples to walnuts. But that is what Democrats do. They lie about everything.
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The fact remains that the top 1 percent of taxpayers pay about 45 percent of all taxes. The top 50 percent pay about 97 percent of the collected taxes. The bottom 50 percent pay almost no taxes: 2.3 percent. If anything, the bottom 50 percent don’t pay a “fair share.”
I do wish that I was in the same tax bracket as “the rich.” I carry no jealousy for those who pay most of the income taxes. And I am smart enough to know that the rich do pay their “fair share” and more.
Like her boss, Harris will continue to claim that America is broke because the rich don’t pay their “fair share.” It’s a lie, like almost everything that comes out of her mouth. She needs to find a different donkey to flog.