Jeff Sessions: Saying Millionaires Should Share Pain Is 'Rather Pathetic'

WASHINGTON -- Having the Senate declare that millionaires should share more of the pain involved in putting America's financial house in order is "rather pathetic," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) declared Tuesday.

The top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee made that pronouncement after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) bowed to GOP pressure and yanked from the floor a resolution on U.S. military action in Libya in favor of moving to budget issues.

Reid's first measure in that direction is a non-binding resolution that states: "It is the sense of the Senate that any agreement to reduce the budget deficit should require that those earning $1,000,000 or more per year make a more meaningful contribution to the deficit reduction effort."

The measure describes how well the wealthy have done lately, citing statistics that say the median income of S&P 500 companies chief financial officers jumped $2.9 million last year alone, even though the "median family income has declined by more than $2,500" in the last 10 years.

The resolution also notes that 20 percent all income goes to the top 1 percent, and 80 percent of the nation's income growth over the last quarter century has also gone to the top 1 percent.

Sessions and his colleagues found expression of such ideas of little use, and said it only delays getting around to major cuts.

"It's a sense of the Senate," Sessions scoffed. "We're supposed to have legislation in place by Aug. 2 to deal with raising the debt limit -- and that's got to be real numbers and real figures."

"So I guess we can say we're beginning to talk about something with this rather pathetic response from the majority leader," he said. "I'm not happy about that."

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn) was equally unimpressed, but suggested it was a sign Democrats were getting ready to listen to the GOP.

"While today, obviously, we're not going to have anything really serious to talk about -- it's just a sense of the Senate -- my sense is that very quickly we're going to have something before us that actually is real," Corker said.

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Source: Huffington