Teabagger Representative John Fleming (R-LA) appeared on MSNBC today to protest President Obama's "Buffet Tax" and while doing so he inadvertently provided us with a shinning example of the economic disconnect between most members of congress and average Americans.
“In my own case, I own LLCs,” Fleming told MSNBC’s Chris Jansing. “The income flows to my personal tax return and whatever is left over after taxes are paid, I feed my family on the one hand and on the other hand, I reinvest in my business.”
“With all due respect, The Wall Street Journal estimated that your businesses, which I believe are Subway sandwich shops and UPS stores — very successful — brought you last year, over $6 million,” Jansing noted.
“Yeah, that’s before you pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment and food,” Fleming agreed. “Since my net income — and again, that’s the individual rate that I told you about — the amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like $600,000 of that $6.3 million. And so by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over to invest in new locations, upgrade my locations, buy more equipment.”
After taking home $600,000 dollars, he is left with only $400,000 after feeding his family? Woe is me!
Does he spend $200,000 per year on food? Even if you included the cost of education, transportation, and clothing in your "feed the family" figure, that's four times the national average salary in America, and he still has $400,000 leftover not including his congressional salary of $174,000.
By the way, John Fleming does not employ 500 people, unless he's only paying them about $11,000 per year each.
If we ensure John Fleming pays as high of a percentage rate in taxes as his paid-in-peanuts employees, the terrorists socialists win.