$700 billion? That's less money than Warren Buffett's cleaning lady pulls out of his shower drain every week.

CHRIS EDWARDS, CATO INSTITUTE (10/11/2010): The President wants to raise the top two income tax rates, which would raise about $700 billion dollars over 10 years. You know what? That's only a tiny fraction of the federal government's deficit.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FL ( 6/30/2011 ): The idea that if we raise taxes, as the President said, on millionaires and billionaires, raise taxes on oil companies, raise taxes on owners of private jets, that that somehow is going to make a difference....

By the way, not only is closing corporate loopholes and raising the marginal tax rate class warfare, it totally wouldn't even work.

( audience starts laughing at graphic ) You are a nerd crowd! There is no doubt in my mind.

And by the way, not only is closing corporate loopholes....

Ahh! In your face, Uruguay, Jamaica, and Uganda! Uganda? Yeah, Uganda. Keep trying, Rwanda. Wow.

... where we rank... ( list scrolls down ) blabliddyblabliddyblabliddy... worse than the Ivory Coast, worse than Cameroon... 64th!

It's true, because the United States of America is not a third world country by any measure, except, perhaps, income inequality...

SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FL ( 6/30/2011 ): It's disappointing, it's class warfare, and it's the kind of language that you would expect from a leader of a third world country, not the President of the United States.

ANDREW NAPOLITANO (4/19/2011): ... demonizing the rich as evil, as lazy, as inheritors of their wealth ...

So closing a few corporate tax loopholes and returning the top marginal tax rate to the '90s economic boom time levels is class warfare. And if there's one thing the rich have learned, is that class warfare is hell.

Is Warren Buffett a socialist?? You really have no fucking clue what socialism is, do you? "Hey, that George Clooney, always banging different broads, what a queer!"

NEIL CAVUTO (8/15/2011): More class warfare from an affable billionaire, who should stop assuming the rich are all billionaires.

Warren Buffett's op-ed was a thoughtful treatise on the advantages the super-wealthy currently enjoy at the hands of the tax code, or, to put that another way....

Though to be fair, Warren Buffett's cleaning lady is also a billionaire.

WARREN BUFFETT (1/21/2010): I pay a lower tax rate on much of my income than my cleaning lady does.

SARAH PALIN (3/10/2011): National Endowment for the Arts, National Endowment for the Humanities, all those kind of frivolous things ... those should all be on the chopping block. CHARLIE GASPARINO (10/16/2010): Federal employees don't pay for parking, so if they just set up parking for that, that'd get 'em $140 million. SEAN HANNITY (8/15/2011): He doesn't have to waste your tax dollars and travel around in a $1.1 million dollar luxury liner. FOX BUSINESS CHANNEL MAN (8/9/2010): Why are we spending $6 million dollars? Why are we spending $1 million dollars on the First Lady? ANDREA TANTAROS (1/4/2011): You gotta start somewhere. Even when we talk about NPR, a million dollars here, that's a million dollars!

Oh! So when you cut it, it's a million dollars, but when you tax it, it's meh, $700 billion. I mean, all we'd have to do to raise $700 billion dollars is cut 700,000 NPRs! It's almost too easy. But if it's revenue you want, there does happen to be another place, instead of the rich, that you can look for it.

NEIL CAVUTO (8/15/2011): Warren Buffett, writing how the rich should pay more taxes, but saying not a word about the half of American households that pay no income taxes at all. STUART VARNEY (8/18/2011): Is that fair, when half the population pays absolutely nothing? SEN. JOHN CORNYN, R-TX (7/7/2011): 51%, that's a majority of American households, paid no income tax in 2009. Zero. Zip. Nada. NEAL BOORTZ (6/1/2011): Many of them get so much money in tax credits ... that it wipes out any Social Security taxes or Medicare taxes they're paying. They are absolutely on a free ride.

Ya hear that, poors? The free ride esta over. So it looks like you'll be walking to work, assuming you have a job. Chances are you probably don't have a job. So, why are you asking us for a ride?

So, the solution to our economic problem isn't taxing the rich, it's....

SPEAKER JOHN BOEHNER (7/11/2011): ... broaden the tax base ... MICHELE BACHMANN (7/11/2011): Everyone needs to pay something. NEIL CAVUTO (8/6/2011): Before you start demanding one group pay more, maybe get everyone to put skin in the game.

That's the problem with poor people. They still have some of their skin. But you know what? Maybe they're right. Maybe Fox is right. Maybe the bottom 50% of Americans, while they already pay excise and payroll and Medicare taxes, do need to pay more. I mean, they can spare it.

After all, they control 2.5% of our nation's wealth. Oh, you know what? Actually, this is a pretty easy calculation, we can do this, the bottom 50%, it's just simple math. In dollar figures, the bottom 50% of this country have $1.45 trillion dollars in everything they own on this Earth. So let's see, they have $1.45 trillion dollars, what do you say we take, I don't know, half of that. That'd be... oh look at this, $700 billion dollars.

(audience applause)

Why does that figure sound so familiar to me?

CHRIS EDWARDS, CATO INSTITUTE (10/11/2010): The President wants to raise the top two income tax rates, which would raise about $700 billion dollars over 10 years. You know what? That's only a tiny fraction of the federal government's deficit.

So raising tax rates on the top 2% of earners would raise $700 billion dollars. But taking half of everything the bottom 50% have in this country would do the same. I see the problem here. We need to take all of what the bottom 50% have. All of it! It's the only way to make a significant dent! Now we're up to $1.4 trillion! And if you're worried about the poors, don't! Because they're defined by the Census as a family of four making less than $22,350 a year. Four! $22,350 a year! They'll be fine!

7/19/2011: STUART VARNEY: Poor families in the United States are not what they used to be.

....

ROBERT RECTOR, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: When you look at the actual living conditions of the 43 million people that the Census says are poor, you see that in fact they have all these modern conveniences.

....

STUART VARNEY: 99% of them have a refrigerator.

99% have refrigerators! You food-chilling motherfuckers! How dare you! That's why it makes complete sense! That's why it makes complete sense that the word "poor" in that graphic is in quotations.

These people aren't poor! They're "poor". I'm sure the other 1% of those people who don't have refrigerators don't have them, not because they don't have food, because they're always ordering room service. These "poor" people are living like they just won a Showcase Showdown!

STUART VARNEY (7/19/2011): 81% have a microwave; 78% have air conditioning; 63% have cable TV; 54% have cell phones; 48% have a coffee maker; ... 25% have a dishwasher.

25% have a dishwasher?!? Although to be fair, after a 12-hour shift of washing dishes, the last thing you want is to bring your work home with you.

So you see, the problem with increasing the marginal tax rate on the rich and closing some corporate tax loopholes, isn't that it engages in class warfare. It's that it's fighting on the wrong side of the war.

NEAL BOORTZ (7/6/2011): It is all-out war on the productive class in our society for the benefit of the moocher class. JOHN STOSSEL (10/12/2010): The makers, and the takers. BILL O'REILLY (10/12/2010): They want to take it from somebody else. LAURA INGRAHAM (6/29/2011): Everyone's jumping in the wagon, no one wants to pull. NEAL BOORTZ (6/22/2011): ... parasites we have out there depending on government ... NEBRASKA ATTY. GEN. JON BRUNING (8/18/2011): The raccoons, they're not stupid, they're going to do the easy way if we make it easy for them, just like welfare recipients all across America. ANN COULTER (8/15/2011): Welfare will create generations of utterly irresponsible animals.

Yeah! Fuck those people... the poor. We'll be right back.