The Buffett Initiative: What you Need to Know

Today President Obama unveiled his grand plan which he submitted to the new Catfood Commission with a blueprint to cut the deficit nearly $4 trillion dollars over the next decade.  This plan reflects the popular public sentiment that a sense of shared sacrifice with both an increase in taxes on our highest earners coupled with some cuts in government spending with a pledge to achieve the savings without massive cuts to our social safety net. This notion of taxing the wealthiest among us at a higher rate is something that billionaire financier Warren Buffett has preached for many years.  Predictably, Koch/Murdoch fueled noise machine began to attach these proposals.  Here is the truth, and it does not support their claims.

     One of the popular myths that has been paraded around over the last couple years is that raising the rates on top earners would hurt job creation.  Facts don't lie, in recent memory our greatest period of economic expansion occurred after Bill Clinton raised taxes and the worst period of job loss occurred after George W. Bush passed his 2 tax cuts.  There is no correlation between low taxes and private sector job growth.  We see job growth when our citizens are working and earning good wages.  When they work they spend their wages in the marketplace fueling demand and thus creating more jobs.  Since the President's jobs proposal includes infrastructure spending which will put people back to work, this initiative will help boost jobs. (Though by most accounts the $50 billion must be considered simply a down payment since by most estimates we have $1 trillion in needed infrastructure work to be done.)
    
     So now it us up to us, the people to let our elected representatives know that we stand with Warren Buffett and that the wealthiest among us should be asked to bear a greater responsibility that comes with their higher station.  This is the ethic that the great Eunice Shriver instilled in the Kennedy clan, and an ethic that pays homage to the notion that America is the land of opportunity.  Aside from the squires and well born, many Americans who make it to the highest levels in our society benefited from the type of social spending that the right proposes to cut.  Many used student loans and grants to attend colleges, many of which were established with public money, just two of the programs which some would sacrifice to continue the Bush era cuts on the wealthiest among us.  Keep the pressure up on the likes of Ben Nelson, Eric Cantor, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell.