On Monday, the eve of Tax Day, Mitt Romney was invited by a local Tea Party organization to speak at their summit held at the Franklin Institute.
Like the last time Romney was in town, Fight for Philly headed to the event, hoping to talk to Mr. 1% himself. We had a lot of questions for him: How could he suggest cutting education and housing in order to give more tax breaks for the rich? Why won’t he release more of his tax history? Why doesn’t he think the 1% should pay their fair share in taxes?
Those questions, unsurprisingly, were never answered. Mitt Romney didn’t want to hear from us, maybe because we all paid a higher tax rate than him (as well as many big corporations and other rich people). We were denied entrance to the event, even though we had tickets.
Romney spoke out against the Buffet Rule. The Buffet Rule would reduce tax inequality amongst America’s richest 1% and the rest of us. The tax plan would apply a minimum 30% income tax rate to individuals earning more than a million dollars a year. This law failed in Congress on the same day. According to CBS news, Romney attacked the President’s tax plan by saying “Raising taxes affects our economic freedom. Regulation. You have to have regulations to make a market place work, but regulations that get too large can overwhelm the enterprises that you’re trying to encourage.”
It’s unfortunate that Mr. Romney is making excuses for Big Business to continue to dodge taxes.
We weren’t alone in our not-so-warm welcome for Romney. Also on Monday, City Controller Alan Butkovitz called out Romney for his desire to give tax breaks to the 1%. He went on further to say “Mitt Romney represents a continuation of the idea that the only people making a contribution to society are rich people who invest money and that it’s not worth it for them to pay taxes because they won’t invest in the economy,” Butkovitz said, calling the idea perpetuated by the Tea Party “myopic and obsessive.”