Saturday, August 6, 2011

"Some People Make Too Much Money"

The parties just keep coming for birthday-boy Barack Obama. After a Chicago fund-raiser the night before he turned 50 and a White House party on the big day, a third event is now planned for New York.This time it is high-powered movie mogul Harvey Weinstein who will host the
president at his Big Apple home, reports the New York Post.

And despite being described as "a small dinner and discussion" on the invitation, it will raise $2 million for the president's reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee. According to the NYP, the cost per couple to chow down is $71,600.
 Of course the quote really comes from this article on Eric Cantor:
Somewhat surprisingly, Mr. Cantor was in fact prepared to bargain on about $20 billion in higher taxes on "the shiny balls of the millionaires, billionaires, jet owners and oil companies" that Mr. Obama so often mentioned in public. "If they wanted to be able to claim the win on that," Mr. Cantor says, he wanted net revenue neutrality in return, by lowering the corporate income tax rate or perhaps enacting an even larger tax reform. In effect, he was calling Mr. Obama's bluff on "cheap politics."

In private, however, the debate always returned to the status of the top marginal rate for individuals earning over $200,000 and $250,000 for couples—aka the Bush tax cuts for people who do not own private aircraft. Mr. Cantor argued that some large portion of the income that flows through the top bracket comes from "pass-through entities"—that is, businesses—and "to me, that strikes at the core of what I believe should be the policy, and that is to provide incentives for entrepreneurs to grow."

By contrast, he says, "Never was there ever an underlying economic argument" from Democrats. "It was all about social justice. Honestly, one of them said to me, 'Some people just make too much money.'"

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