Jeb Bush Says Mitt Romney’s Taxes Are Incredibly High. We Should Elect Bush President in 2016 So That He Can Rectify That.
Well, last week’s big Jeb Bush news was all about the book he co-wrote last year with Clint Bolick, a five-star general in the rightwing-litigation wars during the past three decades. The book is titled Immigration Wars. In it, Bush, who, pre-Tea Party, had supported a yellow brick road to citizenship for illegal immigrants, reversed that position, making him look sort of like the Wizard of Oz.
This didn’t play well in the news media, or (I suspect) with much of the public, who thought that one Mitt Romney presidential campaign was more than enough, thank you very much.
Not to worry, though. Bush quickly explained that he and Bolick wrote that book last year, and, in light of the new recognition by the political right that, like defense spending cuts, this is not an issue worth losing national elections over, he’s changed his mind again. Slightly. He’s once again okay with a path to citizenship, but only if that path doesn’t reward lawlessness. By which he apparently was referring to crossing the border illegally and remaining here, not, say, mugging or murdering, although he probably doesn’t want to appear to be okay with those things, either. The path he now favors, at least as of yesterday, is shaped like a pretzel, I guess.
The original, twisted ones, not the straight ones. Similar to his own path on immigration issues. Rolled Gold and Snyder’s of Hanover might offer to lend him some sample molds.
And, on at least one of those shows, Face the Nation, as the quote above shows, he claimed both that Obama falsely painted Romney’s 47% comment as indicating that somehow the Republicans don’t care about the large number of people, that Paul Ryan’s and Mitt Romney’s Ayn Rand budget proposals fooled people into thinking that somehow the Republicans don’t care about the large number of people, and that we have incredibly high taxes for high income Americans.
Mitt and Ann Romney’s 13.9% tax rate indeed is incredibly high. And were it not for Obama’s outrageous dividing of the country, a majority of voters would have recognized that and voted for Romney because of his plan to cut income tax rates by 20% across the board. Partly, of course, as a deficit-reduction technique, but also in order to be fairer to the wealthy–whose taxes would have been reduced hugely.
The election, of course, occurred before the Jan. 1 “fiscal cliff” deal that raised income tax rates on regular income above $450,000 for couples, and regular income above $400,000 for individuals, and that raised rates on investment income–capital gains, dividends, interest–from 15% to 20%. So maybe Bush was just saying that taxes on the wealthy are now incredibly high, and that at the time of the election they were only very, very high. As compared with, say, taxes on the wealthy throughout the seven decades before the presidency of his brother. Including during the presidency and the vice presidency of his father. And as compared to taxes on the wealthy in virtually every other modern capitalist democracy in the world. And if you turn the charts and graphs upside-down, that’s clearly the case.
Except for Greece, whose hallmark fiscal policy was the ignoring of tax rates; everyone was entitled, apparently, to pick their own tax rate.
Uh-oh.
Bush did say in that quote above that in order to win future elections, Republicans will have to offer a compelling alternative to the false narrative that a big problem for this country is spiraling income inequality (a.k.a., dividing the country) and that somehow the Republicans don’t care about the large number of people. But luckily, he is offering one: We have incredibly high taxes for high income Americans.
I think it’s going to be a winner! Whew. Compelling.
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Post edited slightly for clarity after initial posting.
“I think the basic part of his campaign was that those that were successful weren’t paying their fair share, even though we have incredibly high taxes for high income Americans,” Bush said on CBS News’ “Face The Nation.”
First, was really hoping for the usual ‘we are to the right of the laffer curve apex’ argument.
Second, really? High taxes on those who are “successful”? Not “high earners”. Does that mean those of us who are not paying top marginal rates aren’t successful? Who the hell is he accusing others of being divisive?
I swear to god I think GOP members like Jeb really want, deep down inside, want to argue that income taxes should not be progressive, should not even be flat, but should be regressive in order to spur people on to work “harder.”
My guess is that Jeb is at heart a moderate but that, like Romney, sees no way to the nomination other than through the Tea Party. But what he apparently is (surprisingly) too stupid to recognize is that while the Tea Party wants, or claims to want, to dismantle the federal government, and most of them want lower taxes for everyone, most of them don’t think that the ultimate in great public policy is protecting the wealthy specifically.
He also apparently doesn’t realize that it won’t come up during the 2016 campaign that taxes on the wealthy are, even after the “fiscal cliff” deal, historically lower than at any time in the last–what?–80 years, except for the last decade. There will be a hotly contested Dem primary at the same time as the Repub primary, and it’s a safe bet that one of the Dem candidates will mention the tax rates on the wealthy during, say, the Eisenhower era, the Reagan era, and the Bush I and the Clinton presidencies. And maybe even the rates in other capitalist democracies.
I think that that comment–that taxes on high-income Americans are incredibly high–will become his Bain/47%. I was really surprised to read that comment. I thought he was supposed to be intelligent.
The tax issue is a GOP dog-whistle. I recognize that, so he is safe vis-a-vis his standing with constituents there, including the Tea Party. I do agree with you though that the Tea Party presents a problem within the GOP regarding fiscal policy now, but I am not sure if that will stand true in four years.
GOP members have broken their tax pledge, GOP governors are lining up to get their piece of the Obamacare pie, and to some extent are ebbing toward the middle on fiscal issues–although they are not grabbing a soap box to announce it.
Beverly
at the great risk of being misunderstood
EVERYBODY thinks their taxes are too high. that is human nature.
If I were paying 14% of a million dollars in taxes.. about 140k, i’d be thinking about what i could buy with that 140k and resenting paying for “welfare.”
you have to try to remember that people do not think the way you do. not that they are right and you are wrong. but that you will be wrong if you expect them to see the “obvious.”
as for “successful”… well, when you’ve got more money than you can possibly spend… except on keeping it… then you call yourself successful.
you see, they are not any smarter about how you see yourself than you are about how they see themselves.
“as for “successful”… well, when you’ve got more money than you can possibly spend… except on keeping it… then you call yourself successful”
Okay, but JB is making an exclusive statement that those who are successful are defined as having been accused of not paying their fair share, and those who were accused are high income earners. In essence, he is equating success with high income earning, which would exclude non-high income earners from what he considers “successful.”
The point is, he is deriding the president for being divisive, and then doing the same thing. I am not offering an opinion on success, what is defined as such, and where income earnings relate in that definition. I am simply noting that JB is doing what he is deriding, and perpetuating the perception that the GOP does not care about the bottom half, ala Romney’s 47% remark. You can call one group successful without excluding another. That’s the problem.
However, I will add that JB has encapsulated, in a couple of sentences, a lot of the GOP sentiment vis-a-vis income being earned vs fortune, and as a result, if you have nothing, that’s what you have earned. This thinking is the bedrock of their economic modeling/theories/regulatory schemes that have not been, shall we say, successful.
irrational
can’t argue with that. but two points:
he actually believes it.
so do 47% of the voters. (not that 47%.. speaking of which, Romney may have been right, despite the howling. Remember the 47% didn’t turn against him. They were already against him, as he said. His problem is that he lost the 6% who might or might not have voted for him.
As for the 47%, I used to think the working people did NOT see themselves as victims nor refuse to take responsibility for themselves. Since then I have come to feel that “progressives,” at least, DO see the workers as victims and don’t want them to have to take responsibility for themselves. This is where Romney’s 47%, the one’s who voted for him anyway, come from. They really don’t like the sound of “progressive” rhetoric.
The I love about Republicans is that they have a tendency of proving Einstein’s maxim, of trying the same thing over and over expecting different results. Pandering to the lunatic fringe, 27% of the population, will have the same result for Jeb Bush or any other potential nominee in 2016, as it did for Romney in 2012.
Should have read: The thing I love…
I’d like to know why, these days, seeing yourself as a victim is presumed to equal not taking, or not wanting to take, responsibility for yourself, Dale. These don’t strike me as mutually exclusive. You can actually be a victim, and see yourself as one, and want to take, and even take, responsibility for yourself.
I know it’s the “in” thing these days to say “they see themselves as victims and don’t take responsibility for themselves” and implying a “therefore” inserted between the “and” and the “don’t.” I guess it’s one of those rightwing truisms. but it’s nonsense. Like all the other rightwing truisms.
Beverly
unfortunately you are wrong about this.
in the first place, i still don’t believe most workers see themselves as victims or want to not take responsibility for themselves.
i do believe that YOU see most workers as victims and don’t want them to have to take responsibility for themselves.
i don’t know about the “implied therefore.” that seems to come from you.
and do try to understand that I “believe in” welfare, unemployment insurance, and social security and medicare, and universal health care.
and i don’t vote Republican.
but Romney did not offer his 47% remark as a “truism.” I think he was just taking the progressives at their word.
many words, actually. but what got me started down this line of thinking was when i proposed that workers just pay the extra eighty cents per week needed to pay for Social Security’s increased costs… and got called a shill for the rich.
OK, I think this was about doing the Bush family again. I’m against it, just because.
AnnaLee
so am I. for the same reason.
contrary to what Beverly thinks, I don’t like any Bush or Romney
but I don’t think it helps us to be silly about what they say either.
The progressives say that seniors living mainly on Social Security don’t take responsibility for themselves? And that people working two jobs don’t take responsibilty for themselves? And young people going to school while working part-time at McDonald’s don’t take responsibility for themselves? Really, Dale? Really?
You’ve just proved yourself surprisingly gullible, and surprisingly susceptible to rightwing slogans.
no, beverly,
i have just proved myself surprisingly unable to get you to be sensible.
try again: i support Social Security and I believe it works because “people take responsibility for themselves” with a little help from the government… which is what government is for. but when I suggest that people can continue to take responsibility for their own SS, the progressives call me a shill for the rich.
i can’t recall i ever said anything about kids working at McD.
You have a very common thinking-problem… the tendency to fill in the blanks with your own fantasies and then accuse your opponent of being the one who “believes” what you said.
so one more time: I SAID I believe that workers do, and want to, take responsibility for themselves. It is “progressives” who want them to see themselves as victims and not to take responsibility for themselves.
this “insight” came about when I proposed that workers just pay for their own increased cost of SS by raising their tax eighty cents per week, and the “progressives” all said, “no, no, we can’t have that, we need to raise taxes on the rich to pay for (my?) SS.”