THE ROYCROFT REPORT

September 30, 2011- AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka sounds an awful lot like Obama in an interview with Bret Baier on Fox News talking about Obama’s jobs plan, specifically the tax increases included in the plan, here’s what Trumka had to say …

Trumka: “The rich have been getting away with a lot for a long time.  They haven’t been paying their fair share.  If we’re ever going to get out of hole, if we are ever going to reduce the deficits and create jobs, they have to pay their fair share and now is the time to do that.”

It seems pretty obvious that Trumka gets his marching orders from Obama. We can now assume that the AFL-CIO will be right there in Obama’s corner for re-election campaign to stick it to the evil rich and producers in our country.

For the record,  the top 1% of taxpayers earn about 20% of the income but pay about 38% of all revenues. For the top 10% of taxpayers, they pay around 68% of all federal income taxes. To see exactly how much those evil rich people have paid in taxes over the years, check out these numbers which come from Stephen Moore, a senior economics writer for the WSJ editorial board and a policy analyst for the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation.  He says ..

In the early 1960s, the highest marginal income tax rate was a stunning 91 percent. That top rate fell to 70 percent after the Kennedy-Johnson tax cuts and remained there until 1981. Then Ronald Reagan slashed it to 50 percent and ultimately to 28 percent after the 1986 Tax Reform Act. Although the federal tax rate fell by more than half, total tax receipts in the 1980s doubled from $517 billion in 1981 to $1,030 billion in 1990. The top tax rate rose slightly under George H. W. Bush and then moved to 39.6 percent under Bill Clinton. But under George W. Bush it fell again to 35 percent. So what’s striking is that, even as tax rates have fallen by half over the past quarter-century, taxes paid by the wealthy have increased. Lower tax rates have made the tax system more progressive, not less so. In 1980, for example, the top 5 percent of income earners paid only 37 percent of all income taxes. Today, the top 1 percent pay that proportion, and the top 5 percent pay a whopping 57 percent.

During the Trumka interview, Bret Baier actually proposes these tax figures to Trumka. So here’s how that worked out:

Bret Baier: “Well the IRS says that 1% of households pay 38% in federal income taxes, the top 10% of households pay 70% of federal income taxes.  And then you have the estimate that roughly 47% of households pay zero federal income taxes, so that not paying their fair share?”

Trumka: “Well I think they are paying a less share of them then they have been in the past.  There are more of the loopholes that have been built into this thing, you have corporations that are paying less, you have rich people who are paying less.  Look, they are paying less now then they did when Bill Clinton was creating hundreds of thousands of jobs every month.”

Unfortunately for Trumka, someone needs to remind him that the rich paid less in federal income taxes to the government under Clinton than George Bush!

You can go to the IRS website and add up the numbers for yourself. During the eight years of the Clinton Administration the Federal government collected a total of $5.66 trillion dollars in individual income taxes. During the eight years of the Bush Administration the Federal government collected approximately $7.45 trillion dollars in individual income taxes. The rich – that is, the top 1% of taxpayers – not only forked over a trillion dollars more to Uncle Sam under Bush than under Clinton, their share of the income tax burden increased from 33% to 38%. (Real Clear Politics)

One thing is certain. When dealing with liberals, we are dealing with ignorance. – J Roycroft