American Millionaires Rewrite Their Own Image

A group called Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength came to Washington this week to ask the debt reduction “Super Committee” to raise taxes on millionaires so that everyone can pay their fair share.

Emphasizing community responsibility over greed, 200 millionaires signed a letter that calls for the Bush-era tax cuts to end for those earning more than a million dollars a year, leaving behind the Clinton-era rate of 39% that coincided with strong job growth and a revenue surplus.

“Private jets shouldn’t have been tax deductible in the first place,” said the group in a statement.

WATCH the group’s leaders make their most salient points (via MSNBC), or continue reading below…

The letter begins: “The United States has a population of around 308 million people. Roughly 400,000 have incomes of over $1 million a year.”

“We want to pay a higher tax rate. And in response to a suggestion from Grover Norquist, Senator Hatch and other conservatives, that we just write an extra check to the IRS, let us clarify our position. We want EVERYONE in the country who is fortunate enough to make more than a million a year to pay a higher tax rate. This ‘everyone’ will include the 50% of congress people and senators who are millionaires. We applaud those millionaire politicians who support higher tax rates on millionaires. And we challenge the millionaire politicians who oppose paying at higher tax rates to consider for a moment how much their country has done for them.

“As one of Americas most beloved leaders once said – Ask Not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country.”

“The country needs the extra revenue and without it, our country will not continue to be the country it has been and the one we want it to continue to be.

“Unemployment is high, inequality is the highest in any developed country– and the rate of inequality is growing faster than any developed nation in the world.

“We have actually undermined the employment gains our economy made in the private sector by firing thousands of workers in the public sector. Just to emphasize this point, we have been firing people who work for us because we are unwilling to ask a few of the more fortunate Americans to pay exactly what they were paying a few years ago.

”Private companies are great – they are critical to our society – most people around me work or worked for private companies.But private companies don’t work for US – they don’t work for the American people as a part of their mission. They work for profit and for their shareholders – and they should. But societies with 308 million participants also need employees who work for the country – people whose job it is to ensure the effective functioning of our society – people who inspect the food we eat to make sure it’s safe, people who land planes, pave roads, build or rebuild bridges so they don’t collapse at rush hour, people who teach our children, put out our fires, people who get in boats to rescue fellow citizens from rooftops when category 5 hurricanes rip their community apart.

“Since some of us made a lot of money using that functioning society – its roads and bridges, its legal system, its patent system, loans from the Small Business Association, people educated at universities, using science research from public institutions – because we made a lot of money from our society – more money from using these functions, we should invest more in maintaining it.

“We ask (the Super Committee) to do something that will affect us and our fellow 0.1 percenters about as much as a dead fly interrupts a picnic. We will ask them to end our tax cuts – the tax cuts that were supposed to be temporary in the first place.”

Learn more, and see the list of millionaires at www.PatrioticMillionaires.org.