What Happens When You Ask 'Patriotic Millionaires' to Donate to the Treasury?

The DC’s Michelle Fields crashed the “Patriotic millionaires” pro-tax party, and asked if they would be willing to put their money where their mouths are and voluntarily donate money to the US Treasury whether Congress increases their taxes or not. She even had an iPad with her so they could donate on the spot. To a man, they declined and treated the whole thing as a joke.

It is a joke, but that’s the point. We could pass a law to confiscate all of the wealth of all of the top 1% and it wouldn’t make a dent in our structural spending addiction. We have a long term deficit problem created by too much spending, not too little revenue. The Tea Party Debt Commission is serious about trying to tackle that problem, so serious that they have come out with a plan that they say cuts $9 trillion in spending and balances the budget in four years. All these millionaires would do with their tax hike is give the government another few billion to burn. That doesn’t change anything. They’re not serious, they just want to do is feel good about themselves and align themselves with a pet cause. And while they’re putting their faces on this call for higher taxes, rest assured that their accountants are busy finding and exploiting every possible tax deduction.

These “patriotic” millionaires could show some seriousness by calling for real spending cuts. They’re not doing that. So they’re just a bunch of jokers, really.