When Robin Vos Cries Against Taxing Rich People

Lead GOP budget talker Rep. Robin Vos is likely to put his “Protect Rich People” crying towel into overdrive in the coming hours.

In the interest of fairness, here are a couple of things to remember when Vos claims that by opposing the tax boost for the top one percent and closing a portion of the capital gains wealth loophole, he’s lookin’ out for you — “the folks” as sexual harasser O’Reilly would say before being limo’ed home.Fixes likely to pass the budget writing committee in order to close the $6.6 billion budget deficit caused by Vos’s fellow Republicans who ran the Bush administration and ran America into the ground, include:

— A tax increase for those in the top one percent of income earners. Meaning if you as an individual earn less than $225,000 or you and your spouse make less than $300,000 — your income taxes will not be increased.

— An adjustment on capital gains wealth to put the state in line with the rest of the nation. Currently, Wisconsin is one of a handful of states not to treat capital gains as income — and our 60 percent exemption for capital gains is the largest in the nation.

And to be clear: the top one percent of income earners get 64 of the benefit of the current capital gains loophole and 83 percent of the benefit goes to those in the top five percent of income earners — meaning people earning more than $152,000 a year.

The massive redistribution of wealth under the Bush administration (along with the endless war in Iraq and selling off of our government to private corporations) is directly responsible for the economic collapse.

This change in federal tax policy directly affects Wisconsin’s revenue collections. If those at the absolute top of the income ladder have a lower federal tax burden through massive giveaways by Bush and his cronies, this reduces their obligation to the people of Wisconsin.

But if you think the rich didn’t do well enough under Bush, then I encourage you to applaud the spirited Vos Defense of the wealthy.