“True fairness requires equal opportunity so that all may pursue their American dream.”
Click here to watch Sen. Barrasso’s speech.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate about how the Buffet Tax continues to push President Obama’s distorted definition of "fairness.”
Full Transcript of his remarks are below:
“Mr. President, I’ve risen many times over the past three years to talk about the bad policy choices of the Obama administration and the harmful effects of these policies on our economy and on the American people. In many ways, the President’s decision has made things worse in our country.
“The bill before us today would impose what’s being called the Buffett tax. It’s just one more example, Mr. President, of a policy that will hurt our economy, not help it. This tax will take money from the pockets of small businesses that they would use to create jobs.
“More than a third of all business income reported on individual returns would be hit by this tax increase. Back in September, President Obama said that ‘this tax hike on American families would raise enough money,’ this is the President said this, he said ‘it would raise enough money not only to pay for his increased spending but,’ he said ‘to stabilize our debt and deficits for the next decade.’ He said back then, he said, ‘this is not politics,’ he said, ‘this is math.’
“Well, of course we now know that the Buffett tax is about only one thing: politics. The increased tax revenue would amount to about $5 billion this year, which is about the same amount of money that Washington will borrow over the next day and a half. The President would have to collect his so-called Buffett tax for more than 200 years just to cover the Obama deficit from last year alone. That’s not just my math. That’s the math from the Joint Committee on Taxation.
“The Buffett tax won’t fix Washington’s debt because Washington doesn’t have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem. Even one of President Obama’s top economic advisors finally admits that the Buffett tax will not ‘bring the deficit down and the debt under control.’
“Based on his record, it is clear that the President would not put a single dollar raised by his new tax toward the debt. He will just spend it.
“So the President has now changed his story once again. Now he says that this is no longer a way to pay down the deficit. Now he says it’s just a matter of fairness.
“Well, President Obama has been using the word ‘fair’ in quite a few of his campaign speeches lately. It’s a word of great appeal to most people. Just like hope and change, the buzz words of the 2008 Presidential campaign, people can interpret it to fit their own meaning.
“President Obama’s idea of fairness doesn’t match up with the American people’s idea of fairness. And Senator McConnell made reference to this today in an editorial that I’ve written in ‘Investor’s Business Daily.’
“President Obama thinks it’s fair that our children and grandchildren will be burdened with debt because of Washington’s reckless spending, like borrowing 42 cents of every dollar it spends so far this year.
“President Obama thinks it’s fair to pile another $40,000 of debt on to every household in the United States over the last three years. President Obama thinks it’s fair to use college students as props for his campaign-style rallies without explaining how his bad policies will leave them in debt.
“President Obama thinks it’s fair to force hardworking taxpayers to subsidize a wealthy person’s purchase of a hybrid luxury car because it fits into his idea for American energy.
“ President Obama thinks it’s fair to hand out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to politically connected solar energy companies that then go bankrupt.
“President Obama thinks it’s fair to tell thousands of workers that they won’t have jobs because he’s blocked the Keystone XL Pipeline. Why? To solidify his support with a few far left environmentalists.
“President Obama thinks it’s fair that more than half of his biggest fund-raisers won jobs in his administration. That’s right, more than half. That’s been reported in ‘The Washington Post.’
“President Obama thinks it’s fair to give important jobs to people who fail to pay their own taxes, like his own Treasury Secretary.
“ And apparently President Obama thinks it’s fair that three years of the Obama economy have left us with more people on food stamps, more people in poverty, lower home values, higher gas prices, and higher unemployment.
“There are many ways in which the American people’s understanding of fairness differs from the way that President Obama has been using the word. To the vast majority of Americans, fair means an equal opportunity to succeed. To President Obama, fair requires nothing less than a totally equal outcome, regardless of effort.
“To most Americans, fairness allows for the pursuit of their own dreams. It also recognizes that no man and no government can provide a guarantee of success. The waves of immigrants who’ve come to our shores over generations did so for freedom and for a chance to succeed. They did not come to be taken care of and to have every decision made for them by the government. That’s what many of them were leaving behind.
“When President Obama pushes for equal outcomes instead of equal opportunity, he is trying to pit one American against another. He is telling people that it is not fair that someone else has something that they don’t have.
“Well, that may be a clever campaign tactic but it is not true and it is bad for our country. One person getting more does not mean someone else has to get less. In America, it’s possible for all of us to prosper. That’s what made America different from the very beginning. The prospect that all of us can do better, not at the expense of our neighbors but by our own effort.
“There’s something that threatens to keep all of us from success. It is the thing that threatens to keep us all from passing on to our children the hope for their own prosperity. It is the crushing debt, the debt that this administration has been forcing on to the backs of American workers. It is the mountain of bureaucracy that stifles American opportunity.
“The old maxim says that a rising tide lifts all boats. President Obama seems to think it’s better to put holes in all of the boats as long as that means that they’re all equal in the end. That’s what he seemed to be saying in 2008 during one of the Democrat Presidential debates. Moderator Charles Gibson asked then-Senator Obama why he favored raising taxes on capital gains. Our history clearly showed that when the tax rate has gone up, government revenues actually went down. Senator Obama said that he wanted to raise taxes anyway, he said ‘for purposes of fairness.’
“In the name of achieving what he considers to be fair, the President was willing to hurt millions of hardworking families who already paid taxes on their income, families who invested some of that income and now would have to pay higher taxes again when they decide to sell some of those investments.
“The President didn’t even care if Washington ended up with less money as a result of his efforts to punish success. The only important thing was that he thought it would be more fair. Now, that’s a pretty extreme definition of what "fair" means and it’s not one that the American people share.
“In any fair society, doing better should be a consequence of one’s efforts. To President Obama, fairness means getting something for nothing. The American dream is about people using ingenuity, ambition and hard work. It’s about overcoming obstacles. Americans admire the inventor who works long hours in the garage building and failing and trying again and again until this inventor succeeds.
“Americans speak with pride about having worked their way through college washing dishes, pouring concrete, flipping hamburgers, whatever it took for them to reach their goal. Most Americans don’t speak with pride about being bailed out by Washington or cashing a government check.
“The idea of people earning their success has been a vital part of our nation’s character since our founding. It does not come from government, it cannot be redistributed. The more government tries to redistribute success, the more strings it attaches. Because a handout from Washington always comes with strings attached.
“The President’s health care law is a perfect example. It’s built on shifting millions of people on to Medicaid, a program designed to take care of low-income Americans. Putting more people on Medicaid is not the same as giving them access to the medical care that they need.
“Giving people unemployment benefits and funding short-term stimulus jobs is not the same as freeing up employers to hire more workers and provide long-term jobs and actual careers. Handing out benefits from Washington may provide a safety net in the short run, when the short run turns permanent; it robs people of the tools and incentives they need to succeed.
“It does even greater damage to our economy when President Obama pays for it by piling more debt on the backs of American taxpayers. We all recognize the value of this social safety net. None of us, I repeat, none of us, want to eliminate that protection.
“To be true to this country’s greatest traditions, it must be a real safety net to catch people from falling. It must never become a net to entangle those so that they cannot rise, nor a comfortable hammock on which they choose to recline.
“Somewhere along the way, Washington twisted the honorable American impulse to care for the least fortunate among us. That shift now threatens to produce a culture of dependency, a culture that weakens our society and hurts the people it was meant to help.
“A half century ago, John F. Kennedy appealed to the great spirit of America when he said, ‘ask not what your country can do for you,’ he said, ‘ask what you can do for your country.
“Today, the Obama administration is trying to make Washington irreplaceable in the lives of Americans. The great irony, the great tragedy is that no one is more trapped by this failed redistribution than the poorest—the people that the President so often claims to be trying to help.
“That’s part of the downside to the culture of dependency. It’s why Washington can never provide for people as well as people could and should provide for themselves. President Obama is focusing on fixing all the faults he sees in the American people.
“Republicans are focusing on giving the American people the opportunity to succeed using their talents and their hard work. When Washington tells people, ‘don’t worry, your government will take care of all your needs,’ it does them no service. It only deprives people of their freedoms, their freedoms to make their own choices, to stand on their own two feet, and to earn their success. The American people don’t want Washington to pick winners and losers. They want a fair chance to win on their own.
“That’s why asking for a clear and a limited set of rules and the assurance that those rules apply to all of us, even those who donate to President Obama’s reelection campaign. They’re asking that the rules not change on the whims of some unelected bureaucrat in Washington. They want to know that they will have the right to control people’s own choices.
“President Obama says it’s fair for Washington to make the decisions so that everyone is equal in the end. He says it’s fair to take more money from hardworking families and small businesses through the so-called Buffett tax that we’re debating today.
“Mr. President, tax increases won’t help our fragile economy, and they won’t put the brakes on Washington’s out-of-control spending.
“Republicans want to promote economic growth for everyone, not equality of outcome at everyone’s expense. Despite what President Obama may believe, America is not an unfair place. True fairness requires equal opportunity so that all may pursue their American dream. That is what America was founded on, and that is the philosophy that must be allowed to lead to us a more prosperous future for all.
“Thank you, Mr. President. I yield the floor.”
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