BLOOMBERG NEWS: Billionaire Warren Buffett said that rich people should pay more in taxes and that Bush-era tax cuts for top earners should be allowed to expire at the end of December. “If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further,” Buffett said in an interview with ABC’s “This Week With Christiane Amanpour” that is scheduled to air on Nov. 28. “But I think that people at the high end — people like myself — should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we’ve ever had it.” […] “The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we’ll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you,” Buffett, chief executive officer of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., said in the interview. “But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on.” MORE
WASHINGTON POST: President Obama and congressional Republicans have reached a tentative accord on a far-reaching economic package that would preserve George W. Bush administration tax breaks for families at all income levels for two years, extend emergency jobless benefits through 2011 and cut payroll taxes by 2 percent for every American worker through the end of next year. The scope of the agreement, announced by the White House late Monday, was far broader than lawmakers in either party had been expecting. The deal would extend a college tuition tax credit and other breaks for middle-class families that were due to expire New Year’s Eve. And it would revive the inheritance tax after a year-long lapse, imposing a 35 percent rate on estates worth more than $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples. The package would add more than $700 billion to the rising national debt, said congressional sources who were briefed on the deal. MORE
RELATED: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who votes with the Democrats, vowed to filibuster the deal. “I think it is an absolute disaster and an insult to the vast majority of the American people to be talking about giving huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country, driving up our deficit and increasing the growing gap between the very rich and everybody else,” Sanders told MSNBC. Angry progressives slammed Obama over his lack of negotiating skills. “Middle-class Americans need someone to fight for them. They see this deal as punting on third down – it seems the President is not seeing the value of being on offense,” said Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-Brooklyn, Queens). “Deals come after we fight for ideals – let’s do that first.” “I’m not at all happy with this. I want to see all the details before I make some kind of commitment,” Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio told CNN. MORE