Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Schumer: Wealthy Must Pay Share of Taxes

A top Senate Democrat on Tuesday called for scrapping a tax reform model of lowering tax rates for all Americans that has been the rule since Ronald Reagan was president, and instead said the rich should pay more to help pare federal deficits.

With less than a month before presidential elections where taxes have been among the most hotly debated issues, Senator Charles Schumer, the third most senior Democrat in the Senate, sought to redouble Democrats’ stance that top rates for the wealthy should rise when they expire on Dec. 31.

In a bit of tax policy blasphemy, Schumer said the approach to taxes that has held since last major overhaul in the 1980s was outdated and would hurt inevitably the middle-class who would lose valuable tax breaks.

He also criticized a deficit reduction plan known as Simpson-Bowles for taking the same approach.

Both President Barack Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, say the tax code is broken and needs a major overhaul. The last time that occurred was 1986, when Reagan worked with a divided Congress to lower rates for all Americans and cut loopholes and deductions.

“But a 1986-style approach that promises upfront rate cuts to the wealthy is almost guaranteed to give middle-income earners the short end of the stick,” Schumer said in remarks prepared for delivery in a speech at the National Press Club.

In exchange, Schumer said, Democrats should be prepared to make hard choices about revamping so-called entitlement programs such as Medicare, the health plan for the elderly.

Republicans favor major changes to these programs, including raising the age when benefits kick in, to curb deficits. Schumer, in excerpts released before his speech, did not specify policies in this area.

Across-the-board tax increases of about $500 billion loom at the end of the year if Congress fails to take action preventing low tax rates from expiring.

That threat and about $100 billion in automatic federal spending cuts comprise the so-called “fiscal cliff” that could push the U.S. economy into a recession if Congress fails to act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has estimated.

With Congress out of town until the Nov. 6 elections, actions to address these threats are on hold, giving lawmakers just about a month to deal with the major fiscal challenge.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.