Pirate's Cove

Buffett finally comes out and says he is willing to voluntarily pay higher taxes, but, there is a catch

(Time) Warren Buffett is ready to call Republicans’ tax bluff. Last fall, Senator Mitch McConnell said that if Buffett were feeling “guilty” about paying too little in taxes, he should “send in a check.” The jab was in response to Buffett’s August 2011 New York Times op-ed, which made hay of the fact that our tax system is so unbalanced, Buffett (worth about $45 billion) pays a lower tax rate than his secretary. Senator John Thune promptly introduced the “Buffett Rule Act,” an option on tax forms that would allow the rich to donate more in taxes to help pay down the national debt. It was, as Buffett told me for this week’s TIME cover story, “a tax policy only a Republican could come up with.”

So Buffett is going to send a check to the IRS to match his complaints, right? Well, no

Still, he’s willing to take them up on it. “It restores my faith in human nature to think that there are people who have been around Washington all this time and are not yet so cynical as to think that [the deficit] can’t be solved by voluntary contributions,” he says with a chuckle. So Buffett has pledged to match 1 for 1 all such voluntary contributions made by Republican members of Congress. “And I’ll even go 3 for 1 for McConnell,” he says. That could be quite a bill if McConnell takes the challenge; after all, the Senator is worth at least $10 million. As Buffett put it to me, “I’m not worried.”

Basically, like any and every good Liberal, Buffett isn’t willing to suffer alone while matching actions to his rhetoric, so he has to drag others who don’t have the same beliefs into the mix.

Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senator McConnell, provided the following response to Buffett’s remarks:

Sen. McConnell says that Washington should be smaller, rather than taxes getting bigger. And since some, like President Obama and Mr. Buffett, want to pay higher taxes, Congress made it possible for them to call their own bluff and send in a check. So I look forward to Mr. Buffett matching a healthy batch of checks from those who actually want to pay higher taxes, including Congressional Democrats, the President and the DNC.

Now, there’s a much better challenge. Of course, it will never happen, since Liberals always expect Someone Else to pay the piper. Buffett attempted to weasel his way out of the original challenge by yanking Republicans in, knowing full well they would say “nope”.

Don Surber and Zero Hedge have more thoughts on the issue.

Crossed at Right Wing News and Stop The ACLU.