Brit Hume was positively fuming over the Obama tax increases on this morning's Fox News Sunday. For once Juan Williams was actually the voice of reason.
Hume: Well it's just so dishonest because the top what, 2% of tax payers in this country pay something on the order of 40% of the taxes already. The top 5% pay 60% of the taxes already, income taxes. And the top 50% pay all but, you know they pay like 95% of the taxes. So most of the people in this country, most of the people pay almost, either no income taxes at all or almost none. That's like half the income brackets. So the idea that the playing field is somehow tilted in favor of the few is bosh!
And the idea that you're going to be able to squeeze out of the rich, who will move their money around and invest in such a way to avoid it as much as they can, this much money in tax receipts is crazy. There's only one way to get a big gusher of tax receipts out of the wealthy and everybody else and that is with an extraordinarily booming economy. And normally what happens is you get that when tax rates, which he proposes to allow to increase here go down. Not up.
Williams: Let me give you an alternative point of view. An alternative point of view is that 40% that you're talking about, those people earn about half of all the money that's earned in America. They're blessed to be in this country and to have the opportunity and why shouldn't they be responsible and pay their fair share of taxes?
After Williams makes some other good points about what type of things our tax dollars pay for Hume isn't quite finished with expressing his concern for the have-more's.
Hume: Juan we agree with that but remember this. The share of income taxes paid by the higher income people over the years has not gotten smaller under the Republicans. It's gotten larger. Why do you...
Williams: And why is that Brit? Because they're earning more money.
Hume: Well I know what Juan but the fact of the matter is that's what you want isn't it? Don't you want...I mean I often feel that people like Democrats and liberals would rather have everybody equally poor rather than unequally rich!
Yeah that's it Brit. You figured out the liberals' evil plan. We want all the rich people living in squalor and increasing tax rates for income above $250,000 a year is going to put them there. You know Brit we've had much higher tax rates in the past but I don't ever remember them making the rich people go away and suddenly turn into poor people.
