Joe Biden says the wealthiest 1% of the taxpayers are the most patriotic Americans. Really:

Biden was asked by ABC News’ Kate Snow in an interview aired Thursday morning on “Good Morning America” if people earning more than $250,000 a year would have to pay more taxes under an Obama-Biden administration.
“You got it,” Biden replied. “It’s time to be patriotic, Kate. Time to jump in, time to be part of the deal, time to help America out of the rut, and the way to do that is they’re still gonna pay less taxes than they did under Reagan.”

If paying taxes is patriotic, those earning more than $250,000 are the most patriotic:

… both the tax share and AGI share of the top 1 percent reached all-time highs in 2005. In 2005, the top 1 percent of tax returns earned 21.2 percent of adjusted gross income and paid 39.4 percent of the nation’s federal individual income taxes. This indicates that the federal individual income tax is highly progressive as under a purely proportional system, the two shares would be identical.
Furthermore, in 2005, the top 1 percent of tax returns paid nearly the same amount in federal individual income taxes as the bottom 95 percent of tax returns, a group which was responsible for 40.4 percent of the federal individual income taxes paid.

So by linking paying taxes to patriotism, Senator Biden is impugning the patriotism of everybody who makes less than $153,542 – the bottom 95% of taxpayers. Is that a wise electoral strategy?

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