Remember, dear Senators, Represenative and President Obama.

[JDPriestly]

For most of their working lives, the people over 65 whose Social Security you want to cut via the chained CPI, paid the "high" tax rates that the Bush administration changed.

We were expected to save for retirement AND pay those higher tax rates.

Why in the world would you cut Social Security on generations that faithfully paid taxes at rates higher than those being paid by Americans now working?

How is that fair?

What is the reasoning behind this?

We sacrificed when we paid those high rates. Let those earning mega-salaries today pay us back.

[daleanime]

1. Fair is not a concern...

if it was SS would never had been put on the table.

[zaj]

2. "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall ...

... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Everyone has the same tax rates applied to them. Rich people don't get taxed at a different rate than middle income or poor people. We all get taxed at exactly the same rates. Equal protection under the law.

If I earn $1000/year I face the same tax rates as if I earn $100,000,000/year.

That's the key here. We can't tax one generation of people in one way, and another in a different way. No matter what the tax payment history.

All people must face the exact same tax policies equally.

[JDPriestly]

3. A special amendment allows the income tax.

Amendment XVI

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi

2. Sixteenth Amendment. More importantly, in 1909 Congress passed the Sixteenth Amendment, which would do away with the apportionment requirement of the Constitution if enacted. This amendment reads as follows:

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.[11]

By 1913, the required three-fourths of the states ratified the Sixteenth Amendment, thus adding the amendment to the constitution.[12]

Congress almost immediately enacted the Revenue Act of 1913. The tax ranged from 1% on income exceeding $3,000 to 7% on incomes exceeding $500,000. In effect, this statute introduced for the first time the notion of a progressive tax rate structure; the tax rate increases as the base, income in this case, increases.

Subsequently, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1916 upheld the progressive income tax as constitutional in Brushaber v. Union Pacific Railroad Company, 240 U.S. 1 (1916). The Supreme Court indicated that the amendment did not expand the federal government's existing power to tax income (meaning profit or gain from any source) but rather removed the possibility of classifying an income tax as a direct tax on the basis of the source of the income. The Amendment removed the need for the income tax to be apportioned among the states on the basis of population. Income taxes are required, however, to abide by the law of geographical uniformity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history_of_income_tax_in_the_United_States#Modern_income_tax