SPEAKERS AVAIL ON SEQUESTRATION FIGHT:
WEALTHY AMERICANS SPEAK OUT FOR HIGHER TAXES ON THEMSELVES AND CORPORATIONS TO AVOID DRASTIC CUTS
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Responsible Wealth (RW), a project of United for a Fair Economy, in coordination with Americans for Tax Fairness, is making business owners and wealthy individuals available to the media in the critical days ahead of the “sequester.” Unless Congress acts to avert it by March 1st, $85 billion in arbitrary, automatic federal cuts—called a sequester—will result in the loss of 750,000 jobs nationwide, according to the Congressional Budget Office. For a complete list of immediate cuts visit: http://1.usa.gov/14YOFmd.
AVAIL FOR TELEVISION, RADIO, PRINT, BLOG INTERVIEWS:
–Josh Knauer, Pittsburgh, PA; President and CEO, Rhiza Labs
–Jim Sherblom, Former CFO, Genzyme; Minister, First Parish in Brookline, MA
–Eric Schoenberg, Franklin Lakes, NJ; Chairman, CampusWorks, Inc. and Adjunct Assoc. Professor at Columbia Business School
–Jody Wiser, Portland, OR; inheritor and Director at Tax Fairness Oregon
–Arul Menezes, Sammamish, WA; General Manager, Microsoft Corporation
–Bill Pickens, Escondido, CA; Principal Owner, Pool Covers, Inc., Fairfield, CA
Congress has a clear choice: continue big tax loopholes for millionaires and multinational corporations who are not paying their fair share of taxes; or protect seniors, kids and working families from these damaging cuts in services. About two-thirds of the cuts alone could be prevented if Congress were to enact the “Buffett Rule,” which would require that people who make at least $1 million a year pay a 30% minimum tax – just slightly above the tax rate of millions of middle-class Americans. This would raise $54 billion per year, or nearly two-thirds of the cost of the scheduled across-the-board cuts that begin March 1.
A recent national survey released by Hart Research shows 66% of voters nationwide now say that the richest 2% should pay more in taxes and 64% of voters believe large corporations should pay more in taxes. Congress has already cut $2.50 in spending for every $1 it has raised in new revenues; they have already achieved $2.4 trillion in deficit reduction since 2011, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Of that amount, about $1.5 trillion has come from spending cuts and another $600 billion from new revenues on the richest 1%, with the remainder coming from related interest savings on the debt.
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