On the recordJune 22, 2010
Two points I would like to make. One is echoing what Senator Brown just said. We always hear about the debt and the pay-for from the other side when it is convenient, when they are trying to stop something the administration wants to do. When it helps regular people who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own, then it becomes an international incident if it is not paid for. But when an estate of $9 billion is allowed to pass tax free because of a loophole, that is OK. That is a $4 billion unpaid-for loss to the government, through its revenues. That is just fine. There is a disconnect there. If you are serious about the deficit, you have to be serious about it when it is billionaires and not just serious about it when it is regular working families. There is a one-sidedness and a convenience for their concern about the deficit. When it is their President in the White House, Katey, bar the door. By my calculation they blew $9 trillion during the Bush administration. Now they suddenly have had an epiphany about debt, but it does not quite extend to billionaires who are allowed to pass their estates through tax free. So much for the debt and the pay-for concern. The other group they are very concerned about all the time is corporations. In this year, corporations have paid less tax compared to humans than ever before, since 1983, where there was a glitch and corporations paid less taxes relative to what humans pay than now.
