Tax on Millionaires Likely to Fail
BLITZER: Let's go to Capitol Hill right now. The Senate expected to reject a bill that would impose a 30 percent tax on millionaires. This despite a new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll that shows 72 percent of Americans right now actually favor the tax hike, 27 percent oppose. Let's bring in CNN's Erin Burnett from "</s>ERIN BURNETT: OUTFRONT." Erin, why are Democrats pushing this so hard, the so-called Buffett Rule, if they already know it's going to fail.</s>ERIN BURNETT, ANCHOR, OUTFRONT: Well, I guess as you would say, Wolf, it's a political football and this obviously politically, you just showed the poll, really seems to favor the Democrats' point of view. So it would seem to them, actually, if they lose, they even have more fodder to say that Republicans are standing in the way of fairness and what the American people want. When you look at the numbers, though it's interesting. What the Democrats try to say it's fat cats, they're not paying their fair share. You know CNN.com has a very interesting analysis. People that make between $30,000 and $50,000 a year in this country pay an average tax rate of about 6.4 percent at the federal level. Millionaires pay about 24.6 percent. So those pushing back on this will say, well, in terms of the fairness arguments, millionaires already pay a whole lot more than everybody else. Millionaires earn 10 percent of the income in this country and pay 20 percent of the taxes, according to the Tax Foundation. But on the other side, the Republicans who try to say, well, this is -- this is ridiculous, this is not a fair argument by the Democrats. They try to say it's going to hurt small businesses. But when you look at the numbers ,the Republicans are wrong on that. Only 1 percent of small businesses actually have enough money to fall into that million-dollar plus level. So there is a lot of obfuscations and fact smearing over by both sides on this, Wolf. But I think the bottom line is politically it's a victory for the Democrats and perhaps even more of a victory when it doesn't pass. So we're going to talk to a man tonight who is a billionaire, is in the category that would be affected by this, John Paul DeJoria of Petron, and also Paul Mitchell, he's got some very strong points of view on it. He'll be our special guests "OUTFRONT" tonight.</s>BLITZER: Yes, I'm going to look closely at some senators who are insensitive re-election campaigns right now, whether a Republican. I stop round in Massachusetts to see where he votes on this, how that could impact his bid for re-election.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BLITZER: Or a Claire McCaskill, a Democrat from Missouri, to see how she votes. It's going to be fascinating to see.</s>BURNETT: Yes.</s>BLITZER: Who votes which way. You'll have much more, 7:00 p.m. Eastern, Erin, as you always do. Thank you. Coming up in our next hour, there's new fallout from the Secret Service prostitution scandal. We're just learning 11 Secret Services employees have had their security clearances revoked. And the gun controversy swirling around Prince William's sister-in- law, Pippa.