Buffett calls Obamacare replacement 'a huge tax cut for guys like me'
Source: Reuters
Sat May 6, 2017 | 7:09pm EDT
By Trevor Hunnicutt
May 6 Berkshire Hathaway Inc Chairman Warren Buffett on Saturday fumed that healthcare costs are eating away at the U.S. economy like "tapeworm" and said the Republican approach to overhaul Obamacare is a tax cut for the rich.
The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday narrowly approved a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare, a victory for Republican President Donald Trump who has called the 2010 law a "disaster."
Speaking at Berkshire's annual shareholders' meeting in Omaha, Buffett said his federal income taxes last year would have gone down 17 percent had the new law been in effect.
"So it is a huge tax cut for guys like me," he said. "And when there's a tax cut, either the deficit goes up or they get the taxes from somebody else."
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/berkshire-buffett-healthcare-idUSL1N1I80MA
C Moon
(12,221 posts)joshdawg
(2,651 posts)Go figure.
CakeGrrl
(10,611 posts)Their mindset?
'These lazy welfare blacks are living off my hard-earned [white working class] tax dollars, eating lobster with food stamps and using their free Obamaphones!'
Logic be damned. This is what they WANT to believe, so they do.
As Malcolm X said:
If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.
Igel
(35,359 posts)Then again, it was a tax that targeted only the rich, which some at the time considered a victory in a class war. Hardly likely that repealing it would provide a tax decrease to anybody else.
Buffet told us that his effective tax rate is around 21-22%, which some find outrageous because their tax rate, they think, is 35 or 38%. The rich pay much lower tax rates than many of us.
My household's effective tax rate last year was under 6%. Including Medicare, perhaps 8.5%. It doesn't include FICA (I don't pay it), but my state pension charges about the same amount. Putting me a whole -8% or so above that absurdly low rate of 22%. Household income's over $100k (not that much higher) and we have one dependent. If you make less or have more kids, you'd pay less.
Minus that 3% or so, his tax rate would only be -5% higher than me. Yet most think he pays a lower percentage.
Most poor and middle-class people don't calculate their effective tax rate. It makes that particular kind of judgment easier.
burrowowl
(17,652 posts)where his mouth is?
joshdawg
(2,651 posts)Buffet is one of the rich "good" guys.
just sayin'
OnDoutside
(19,974 posts)I just wish he would divert a few billion to trying to turn red back to blue.
CrispyQ
(36,527 posts)Take a loss if you have to, but start fighting the right wing message that blankets entire swaths of our country.
OnDoutside
(19,974 posts)democratisphere
(17,235 posts)US penniless and powerless.
Achilleaze
(15,543 posts)c'mon Reuters, call it what it is...
lordsummerisle
(4,651 posts)Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)under the GOP House healthcare bill that passed, he said.
This is outrageous.