TheDC asked Ferrell, who co-hosted a $35,800 per ticket fundraiser for President Barack Obama in February, for his thoughts on Obama’s proposed elimination of Bush-era tax breaks for individuals making over $200,000 per year.

“I think that – I would actually raise the taxes to about 75 percent,” Ferrell said at the screening in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday night.

“75 percent – you don’t think that would hurt the economy?” TheDC inquired.

“No, no, no,” Ferrell replied.

Obama has made repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for families making more than $250,000 a year the centerpiece of his fiscal policy. We are told ad nauseum that Bush’s tax cuts for the “rich” are a big driver of our current budget deficits. Repealing these cuts are just about the sum total of Obama’s proposals to bring down the deficit. The problem is, though, there just aren’t enough rich people around. Repealing all the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy would only cover about 16% of our projected deficits. 

Late Friday afternoon (see what they did there), the Obama Administration released its latest revisions to its proposed budget. It projected this year’s deficit to be $1.2 trillion and the ten-year baseline of deficits to be just over $8 trillion. In other words, under current policy, the federal government is set to add another $8 trillion to the national debt. 

Obama’s revised budget estimates the impact of repealing all the tax cuts for those making more than $250,000 a year. Over the next ten years, the vaunted tax hike on the “rich” will bring in a total of $1.4 trillion. Not a year. Over the next ten. Keep in mind that tax collections over the next decade will total just over $40 trillion. Heck, over the next ten years, we’ll spend more than $5 trillion just servicing the interest on our debt. Apparently shaking down the rich for more taxes doesn’t really get us very far. 

Let’s set aside the economics of taking another $1.4 trillion out of the private economy. There may perhaps be philosophical reasons to support increased taxes on the wealthy, but it isn’t a serious proposal for bringing down our national debt. Even after this tax hike and some other adjustments, including overly rosy economic predictions, Obama’s revised budget brings the ten year deficit down to $6.6 trillion. So, tax hikes on the rich got us 16% of the way towards a balanced budget. What about the other 84%?  

The whole “tax hike on the rich” isn’t a serious proposal to address deficits. One could argue that it may be “part” of a comprehensive plan to erase the deficit, but where are the other parts? Raising taxes on the “rich” is a campaign and propaganda tool. Its an attempt to explain away the rampant growth of government under Obama and the Democrats. It isn’t that they overspent, mind you, its that “millionaires” are getting some kind of special tax breaks.  Its 16% rhetoric and 84% BS.

conservativebrew:

The Reich flight tax that the Nazis imposed on Jews trying to flee in the 1930s was 25 percent. Democrats want Facebook co-founder, Eduardo Saverin, to pay 30 percent.

Call it the return of the Reichsfluchtsteuer.

The president of Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist, did not use the term. But that is what Mr. Norquist was talking about when he spoke to The Hill newspaper about the legislation proposed by Senator Schumer, the Democrat of New York, to tax at a 30 percent rate the $2 billion capital gains of Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin, who renounced his American citizenship before Facebook’s initial public offering.

“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s and Rhodesia in the ’70s and in South Africa as well,” Mr. Norquist said. “He probably just plagiarized it and translated it from the original German.”

The Reichsfluchsteuer, or Reich flight tax, that the Nazis imposed on Jews trying to flee in the 1930s was 25 percent; Mr. Schumer and his Senate colleague Bob Casey, Democrat of Pennsylvania, want 30 percent. Give Mr. Schumer some credit for creativity, Mr. Norquist; the New Yorker did not just translate, he also raised the rate…

…The left will already be furious about this column for its mention of Nazi Germany in the context of capital gains taxes. Let me conclude by getting the right angry, too, by invoking the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a product of the United Nations. It says, “Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own” and “No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.” What meaning does a right to leave have if the government is going to help itself to 30 percent of the migrant’s property on the way out?

(via chairofbullies)