Some DEMS Anti-Tax Hike for Rich: Why

The Green, Green Grass of Home

Some people say: : "One-percent of Americans are millionaires." PolitiFact checked that out:

A millionaire is a person whose net worth is $1 million or more. Net worth is cash, home value, stocks, bonds and other property minus any debts owed.

The Federal Reserve Board conducts a Survey of Consumer Finances every three years. Its last survey was in 2007, with an update in 2009. The Economic Policy Institute analyzed that data and determined that the average wealth of the top 1 percent was close to $14 million in 2009, down from $19.2 million in 2007 (in part because of a decline in housing values). Still, many in the top 1 percent clearly were multimillionaires.

A 2011 study by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services estimated there are around 10.5 million households in the U.S. in 2011 with net worth of more than $1 million. So, that is around 9 percent of all households, which is far larger than 1 percent.

Now, about our Congress:

Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are paid $174,000 annually, with leadership positions paid slightly more. But many members of Congress were wealthy before they arrived and have substantial net worth. Members of the House and Senate are required to file financial disclosures that include their assets and liabilities, and the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics compiles (CRP) those disclosures. (Note: Representatives and Senators are not required to disclose precisely how much they are worth, but they do have to indicate a range of amounts for their assets and liabilities).

The CRP calculates the midpoint between these high and low estimates, then uses that midpoint to rank-order lawmakers from richest to least rich. According to the center’s most recent analysis, 183 members of the House had a midpoint net worth estimate of at least $1 million, and they calculated that 67 senators had a midpoint net worth estimate of $1 million or higher for calendar year 2010.

Could they be resisting a tax increase for people making over $250,000 we wonder — the one President Obama is now proposing?

Mr. Obama, drawing a contrast with what he called Republican trickle-down economics, called for temporarily extending the Bush-era tax cuts for people making less than $250,000 while letting the taxes of the wealthiest go up (to the Clinton-era rates) to pump up the economy. Leading Republicans promptly rejected that approach, saying that it would be a mistake to raise any one's taxes when the economy was so weak.

Stay tuned.