RUSH: A random act of journalism from CNBC, ladies and gentlemen. “According to the CBO’s analysis of the 2010 Census Bureau, the top 40% of wage earners…” This is new. “The top 40% of wage earners in America are paying 106% of all income taxes. The bottom 40% paid a negative 9%.” Now, what does that mean? Well, for those of you in Rio Linda, what that means is that the bottom 60% got back 9% more than they paid in from the government, the EITC and refunds and other things.

They ended up a net gain. They got back 9% of what they were supposed to pay, essentially. “The report shows the lowest-paid Americans earned an average $8100 in 2010 but received nearly $25,000 in government aid. The CBO says that about a quarter of the lowest earning group actually paid negative 15% of all individual income taxes.” Now, you combine that with the combined share of the wealthiest two groups, and it totals more than 100%.

So where does Mitt Romney go to get his reputation back? You know, this 2010 report must have been available to news media for some time. Why has it taken three years for this minor detail to come out? Buried inside a CBO report this week was this nugget. When it comes to individual income taxes, the top 40% of wage earners pay 106% of the taxes. The bottom 40% pay negative nine. You heard right.

One group is paying more than 100% of individual income taxes. The other is paying less than zero, which means they’re net beneficiaries in the tax code, which means they’re being paid while not paying taxes, right there in Table 3, page 13 of the CB report. The numbers are based on 2010 IRS and Census Bureau numbers. In addition, $25,000, an average annual $25,000 in government aid, and yet we continue to hear about how this nation is cold-hearted to the poor.
I mean, if you want to focus on whatever the pope said… Forget what he said about capitalism, the pope implied that nobody’s doing enough for the poor. This country does more for the poor than all the rest of the countries in the world combined. This is one of the things that offends me about all of this. There’s more charitable giving, there’s more income redistribution for the poor in this country than there may have been since the beginning of time, in the rest of the world.