Holding Our Economy Hostage ... For 25 People

By Richard Eskow

Created 06/29/2011 - 8:25pm

Republicans are perpetrating a fraud. They say they're concerned about reducing government deficits. But you don't need to look at how they treat all of the country's biggest corporations (which is extremely well) or even how they kowtow to its richest 400 families, who now have 6900 times as much income as the average household, [1] to know that's a lie.

You only need to look at the way they treat a handful of billionaires. They're holding the entire country's budget hostage because they don't want to raise taxes on the wealthy, and they don't want to eliminate a tax loophole that could be bringing in more than $4 billion each year ... from only 25 people.

The top 25 hedge fund managers in the United States collectively earned $22 billion last year, and yet they have their own cushy set of tax rules. If they operated under the same rules that apply to other people - police officers, for example, or teachers - the country could reduce its national debt by as much as $44 billion in the next ten years.