Tax Day: We Paid Our Fair Share!

This Thursday, April 15 is tax day. The country is in crisis. Officially, the unemployment rate is 9.7 percent but the real number of Americans out of work, under-employed or who have given up looking for work is 16.9 percent, or almost one of every six adult Americans. These people are our friends, our neighbors, our family members. Meanwhile, the wealthiest one percent of Americans - and Wall Street, whose shenanigans created our economic crisis to begin with, aren't paying their fair share. We did. Why won't they?

It is responsible:

To pay for affordable health care, better schools and greater access to higher education for our children.
To revitalize our economy and create many more jobs.
To transform the way we consume energy and reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.
To pay for programs that keep our air, water and food safe and that keep us safe when we are on the job.
To provide for measures which keep our country strong and growing.

It is irresponsible:

To continue giving the wealthiest Americans and corporations a free ride in the form of excessive tax cuts, tax breaks and tax loopholes.
To allow the wealthiest Americans to escape paying their fair share - after all, we did.
To continue the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans - those making more than $250,000 a year, an amount nearly five times the annual income of the median family in America.
To not pass an improved estate tax - a tax that only would affect those with more than $3.5 million in assets to pass on to their heirs, a sliver of America's richest families.
To waste $2.5 trillion. That's the amount of revenue we lost because of the Bush tax cuts.

We pay our fair share. On this day, April 15, it is time that Wall Street and the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share as well. Government is vital to promoting individual opportunity and shared prosperity, and paying for our national priorities. But it doesn't come free.