Aaron Cynic writes at Diatribe Media:
According to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the poor and middle class aren’t doing enough to share the economic burden in America. In a speech on the Senate floor, the 77 year old Republican, whose net worth is estimated from $2 to $5 million and takes in a $174,000 per year salary from the Senate, said that the poor “need to share some of the responsibility” of the deficit, and that he preferred the Republican approach of “shared prosperity.”
Hatch went on to say that “51 percent of wage earners, of all households, do not pay income taxes.” He attempted to clarify a few sentences later, saying that payroll taxes were the same thing as social security taxes.
Senator Hatch appears deeply out of touch with exactly what “poor” people endure and where most of the federal budget goes. The richest Americans Hatch felt the need to so quickly defend pay less taxes than the previous generation, and the only people who really pay any taxes are those who earn so little they don’t qualify to pay according to the tax code, or are unemployed. Shall we start shaking out the pockets of Americans in the unemployment line? Perhaps we should start taxing people on the way out of food pantries? At present, America has one of the largest income gaps in the industrialized world, and the gulf between rich and poor hasn’t been so wide since the 1920′s.
Read the full post at Diatribe Media
