Tom Harkin is a United States senator from Iowa and the chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.
As we say in the Midwest, you do not fertilize a tree from the top down, you fertilize the roots. The "Buffet rule" reflects that kind of midwestern wisdom and decency.
[See pictures of Americans searching for work.]
It defies common sense that many middle-class Iowans should pay a higher tax rate than the 400 richest Americans, making over $110 million per year and paying only 18 percent in income taxes. Not only does this fly in the face of the common sense standards of a democratic society, but it also undermines the middle class, the backbone of the American economy, by helping to concentrate wealth among a very few rich Americans, and by denying our country the resources to make the investments that have sustained the middle class—everything from education to infrastructure—that has made America the strongest economy in the world.
The Buffet rule tackles this problem head on and levels the playing the field for America's middle class. It is part of legislation I recently introduced—the Rebuild America Act—and it should become law.
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Advertisement Cartoons See cartoons on the GOP 2012 hopefuls. See cartoons on the European debt crisis. See cartoons on Barack Obama. Thomas Jefferson Street BlogWhoever dreamed the phrase "stay-at-home mom" to update "just a housewife" had a passive-aggressive streak.
Mitt Romney's seemingly contradictory statements on motherhood and the "dignity of work" are not as big a deal as Ezra Klein thinks.
It's not healthy to elect presidents who win because they have come out ahead in a mathematical equation that divides the country along gender and racial lines.
Obama's "Buffett rule" would hurt the women he to whom is trying to pander.
What I learned at George Washington's distillery
Subsidiarity is not a synonym for federalism, as Ryan has it, and it should never be conflated with economic libertarianism or individualism.
Invoking the Kochs is a misdirection that allows the campaign to talk about secretive right-wing conspiracies rather than confronting the truth.
Mitt Romney should talk about creating the kind of economic growth that allows all women choice in terms of work-life balance.
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