Obama’s Buffett rule won’t create jobs, either

April 11, 2012, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government President Bill Wilson today issued the following statement on a Senate vote next week to implement the so-called Buffett rule, raising capital gains and income taxes to 30 percent for anyone who makes more than $1 million a year:

“Any fair reporting of Obama’s Buffett rule would reveal it to be a cynical election-year maneuver that bears no resemblance to a sound policy designed to either improve the economy or raise significant revenue to pay down the debt.”

“Obama’s tax-the-rich proposal, which will only collect $4.7 billion on average every year over the next decade according to the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, will cover less than 1 percent of the average $588.9 billion annual net interest owed on the national debt.

“It will not create a single job. Yet the Obama Administration is maintaining that this tax will somehow ‘pay down our deficit and invest in the things that help our economy grow.’

“At a time when more than 27 million people cannot find full-time work — 4.6 million of whom have dropped out of the labor force since Obama took office because they’ve simply given up looking for work — raising taxes on capital creation is exactly the wrong prescription.

“The fact is we’re talking about billions of dollars that could be reinvested in the economy by the private sector, creating tens of thousands of jobs. Instead, Obama wants to give it to the government so it can squander and waste it on more boondoggles. Is that fair to the American people struggling to get ahead in the Obama economy?”

Interview Availability: Please contact Rebekah Rast at (703) 383-0880 or at rrast@getliberty.org to arrange an interview with ALG President Bill Wilson.