Political Quotes

“I rise in strong support of the Paying a Fair Share Act. I commend Senator Whitehouse for introducing this important legislation. It is absurd that at a time when our country has a $15 trillion national debt and enormous unmet needs, the wealthiest people in this country have an effective tax rate that is lower than many middle-class workers. It makes no sense that the richest 400 people in our country who earned an average of more than $270 million each in 2008 pay an effective tax rate of just 18 percent, which is less than many small businessmen, nurses, teachers, police officers, et cetera. That is wrong from a moral perspective. It is also very bad economic policy. The issue we are debating speaks to a much larger crisis that is taking place in America; that is, that in many important ways the United States is departing from its democratic tradition, which has always included a strong and growing middle class, and is moving rapidly into an oligarchic form of government in which almost all wealth and power resides in the hands of the very richest people in our society--the top 1 percent. That is not what America is supposed to be about. Let me mention a recent study that shows not only why we should pass this Buffett rule but why we should go, in fact, much further.…”