WaPo | Here's what he told Bloomberg Politics in a television interview Wednesday:
"I
would say that the hedge fund people make a lot of money and they pay
very little tax. I'm about the middle class. I want the middle class to
be thriving again. We're losing our middle-class. ... I would let people
that are making hundreds of millions of dollars a year pay some tax,
because right now they're paying very little tax, and I think it's
outrageous. I want to lower taxes for the middle class."
Asked if
he was proposing to raise taxes on himself, Trump replied: "That's
right. That's right. I'm okay with it, ready, willing. And you've seen
my statements. I mean I do very well. I don't mind paying some tax. The
middle class is getting clobbered in this country. The middle class
built this country, not the hedge fund guys. But I know people in hedge
funds, they pay almost nothing, and it's ridiculous, okay?"
That
doesn't sound like a Republican candidate for ... almost anything,
really. It sounds like Warren Buffett, the billionaire who became a
public spokesman for President Obama's efforts to raise taxes on the
rich.
Economic policymaking in the Obama era has been dominated
in part by a knock-down partisan fight over whether couples earning
$450,000 or more should pay a top tax rate
of 35 percent or 39.6 percent. The next Democratic nominee will almost
certainly propose raising that rate even more. The Republican nominee
will almost certainly propose to cut it.
Unless, that is, the GOP nominates the richest candidate in its field.
