Ryan: Buffett Rule Is ‘Class Warfare’

Well, that didn’t take long. On Fox News Sunday, Republican Paul Ryan went on the offensive when asked about the president’s new tax proposal, the so-called “Buffett Rule” to tax millionaires. Though Obama will officially pitch the tax rate Monday, the House Budget Committee chairman is calling it dead on arrival. “Class warfare, Chris, may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Ryan told host Chris Wallace. “If we tax investment and job creation more, you will get less of it.”

Cain: Millionaire Tax Is a ‘Bad Idea’

2012 hopeful Herman Cain took Paul Ryan’s catchphrase one step further on Fox News Sunday, telling host Chris Wallace that the president’s new tax plan would lead to a “flowering” of the “bad idea.” So, what would a Cain economic plan look like? The pizza magnate fielded questions over the origin of his 9-9-9 plan that would create a 9 percent corporate flat tax, a 9 percent personal flat tax, and a 9 percent national sales tax. “In order to reduce this much on corporate income, personal income, and national sales tax, what should that number be if we equally break up those three buckets,” he said of the calculation.

Conflict Is ‘Good Politics’

Is “pure conflict” an effective political strategy? Bill Clinton thinks so. On the eve of the Clinton Global Initiative, the former president told Christiane Amanpour on This Week that while conflict is an effective method to get elected, it inhibits economic progress. “It's very hard for the people in Washington, who got there based on pure conflict, pure attack, pure ideology, to take it seriously when their same constituents are saying please do something positive. That's not how they got elected,” he said, adding that Americans need to pressure politicians to cooperate with each other.

The ‘Wet Blanket’ on the Economy

It’s no “class warfare,” but on Meet the Press, Republican Mitch McConnell said that current policies and new tax hikes have stifled the economy like “we’ve thrown a big wet blanket over the private sector.” Despite this outlook, however, the Senate minority leader has a positive forecast for entitlement and tax reform, adding that the “window’s not closed” on working with the president. “We’re in the middle now of a process that I think is going to lead to a major bipartisan accomplishment and that’s the joint committee,” McConnell said.

Cheney ‘Satisfied’ with Bush’s Memoir Reaction

Did Dick Cheney expect George W. Bush’s less-than-complimentary reaction to In My Time? On Face the Nation, the former vice president opened up about his relationship with Bush since his tell-all memoir was released. Cheney, who certainly didn’t make any new friends with the book, said he thought W.’s reaction was “appropriate under the circumstances”: “I said some very nice things about President Bush because I thought he was an effective president,” mentioning also that the two haven’t spoken since the book was released.

Graham: Obama Made ‘Everything Worse’

The gloves are off. On State of the Union, Republican Lindsey Graham set the tone for the offensive against the president’s new tax proposal. First calling Warren Buffett’s “rule” to tax millionaires “class warfare”—before Paul Ryan—the South Carolina senator said that the president’s policies have only worsened unemployment. “You could have all the stimulus you want, until you change Obama’s policies that have frozen job hiring that’s made everything worse, we’re going to stay right where we are,” Graham told Candy Crowley.

Sarah Palin: Politician or Celebrity?

Does Sarah Palin have more in common with Kim Kardashian or Mitt Romney? That was the question on Reliable Sources, where the panelists said Joe McGinniss’s salacious tell-all about the politician-turned-reality star should have been vetted. “The trouble is you can’t even denounce the book very easily without retelling the stories inside it. That New York Times review…was very tough. I think appropriately tough on the book, but at the same time it repeats every one of these not terribly well verified stories,” said Bloomberg’s Ramesh Ponnuru. Between rumors of a tryst with NBA player Glen Rice and allegations of cocaine use, we doubt this one will die down anytime soon.