While the media have been hyping rich liberals like Ted Turner and Warren Buffett calling on Congress to raise taxes on Americans earning over $250,000 per year, they've failed to inform the public that the nation's top earners already pay a disproportionately large share of the nation's tax burden, NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell told Fox News's Steve Doocy on this morning's "Fox & Friends" [video follows page break]:
The top one percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of all taxes in America. The top five percent pay more than the other 95 percent combined. They are already being killed by taxes. The reason this economy isn't moving is because they're worried that what is about to hit them is, let's get ready for this, the single largest tax increase in the history of the Republic. That's what's going on here.
Bozell made those comments just 12 minutes before the Bureau of Labor Statistics released a bleak unemployment report showing sluggish private sector job growth and a spike in unemployment to 9.8 percent.
[You can access a related story on the unemployment report by NewsBusters contributor Julia Seymour here.]
The Media Research Center founder also argued that Buffett should put his money where his mouth is, cutting a check to the U.S. government for the amount of money he feels undertaxed:
If you don't know where to send it, send it to the Media Research Center, make it out to the federal government, I'll walk it over across the river to them. What's stopping him from doing it?!
Doocy and Bozell also discussed disgraced former governor-turned-CNN host Eliot Spitzer comparing the Senate GOP to hostage-taking terrorists.
"We are hostages, being held hostage by 42 Republican senators," Spitzer griped on the December 1 "Parker-Spitzer" about the Senate GOP's promise to filibuster other legislation until the Bush tax cuts are extended. Spitzer's supposedly conservative co-host Kathleen Parker quipped, "the image of being held hostage by 42 Republicans, talk about a bad date!"
Bozell countered:
Memo to Client #9, the only thing standing between the American people and the single-largest tax increase in the history of this country are those 42 Republican senators. Every American ought to be very, very thankful that they are quote unquote being held hostage by these 42 senators.They're the only ones stopping this tax increase.
But forget the politics. Just look at the policy.
No economist with his mind straight suggests that a tax increase during a recession is anything but devastating! This would be devastating to the economy!
