Obama's Buffett Rule Denounced By Buffett

In his tax-the-rich/debt-reduction speech a couple of weeks ago, President Obama introduced what he called the "Buffett Rule" whereby the rich could no longer avoid paying high tax rates. In Obama's own words, he said the rich would have to pay "their fair share." Then, once again, he defined the rich as being those singles making $200,000 a year and any couples making more than $250,000.

In outlining the Buffett Rule, he implied that Warren Buffett, himself, actually authored that rule. But as I had previously indicated in my blog entry titled Obama's Rich and Warren Buffett's Rich Are Two Different Animals, Warren Buffett was only talking about the super rich who were being "coddled" by certain aspects of our tax codes. Yet, Obama continues to invoke Buffett's name in his socialist-minded justification for taxing people who aren't even millionaires or billionaires.

Yesterday morning, in a CNBC interview, Warren Buffett put the so-called Buffett Rule into its proper context. Instead of calling for increasing taxes on all of Obama's supposed rich, he explained that he only wants taxes increased on those 50,000, or so, super rich who pay less taxes than they should. He adamantly included himself in that category. In fact, he specifically said that a ballplayer making $50 million dollars "should not" have their taxes increased. That hardly sounds like a ringing endorsement for raising taxes on a person only making $200,000 or a family with income above $250,000. (Click here to See the Buffett Interview)

Once again, we find another serious "distortion of the facts" by Barack Obama. I just wish that, in that same interview, Buffett would have directly denounced the $200,000/$250,000 tax increase. Instead, he just danced around and avoided answering that direct question. Of course, that was to be expected since Buffett is an ideological supporter of Obama. But, I think, what he did say and how he said it and what he avoided saying was damaging enough.