Democrats' plan for millionaire surtax intended to soften up GOP

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Hill:

Senate Democrats are using their proposal to raise taxes on millionaires as a stalking-horse to force Republicans to accept other tax increases.

Democratic officials privately acknowledge that raising personal income tax rates on the wealthy has little chance of passing this Congress. However, the politically popular idea is a key part of the Democrats’ strategy to attack the deficit and gain concessions from Republicans.

Democrats are mulling two proposals to include in their budget plan: ending the George W. Bush-era tax cuts for families earning more than $1 million a year or imposing a surtax of 3 percent or 5.4 percent on millionaires and billionaires.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) included a 3 percent surtax in a draft budget plan he circulated last week. That plan also called for a relatively even split of spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the deficit, according to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who described the breakdown as 50-50.

But Democrats say both positions are primarily intended to bolster the party’s negotiating leverage with Republicans. They see the proposed surtax on millionaires as more of a rhetorical weapon than a proposal likely to be included in any broad bipartisan compromise.

“I don’t think it’s realistic that would ever pass; I think we’re trying to find a negotiating point,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) said of a budget proposal with an even ratio of spending cuts to tax increases and a surtax on millionaires.

A Democratic senator on the Finance Committee said Republicans are more likely to agree to ending corporate loopholes than allow a surtax on millionaires.

The senator, who requested anonymity, said that “the politics is going to be difficult” to pass a millionaires surtax. “The Republicans will really fight this. They believe in maintaining low rates for high-income people.”
________

More political theater from the party without actual ideas...