OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) - In a speech focused on income inequality and tax policy Warren Buffett re-stated his position that America’s top earners should pay more in income taxes. Buffett delivered the remarks at a campaign event for Hillary Clinton in at Sokol Auditorium Wednesday morning.
Buffett told the capacity crowd America’s top 400 earners now make hundreds of millions of dollars more than they did in 1992, when the two first met, and those millionaires pay less in income taxes in 2015 than in 1992. “What’s happened is that despite this incredible bounty millions and millions and millions of Americans have been left behind.”
Buffett has endorsed Hillary Clinton who said if elected she'd support Buffett’s proposal that people making more than $1,000,000 a year should pay an income tax rate of at least 30 percent.
“Because Warren is one hundred percent right, as usual,” Clinton said, eliciting laughs from supporters. “I want to be the president for the struggling, the striving and the successful."
Clinton re-stated her positions on controversial issues like gun control, abortion rights, and climate change, and equal pay for equal work laws, a stance Clinton says Republican often criticize, " I'll tell you what: if advocating for equal pay is playing the gender card: deal me in,” she said to loud cheers.
Clinton’s speech appealed to what her campaign called core Democratic values. Supporters said it was better than they expected.
“I think what it is that stuck with me is that she speaks out to the facts and things that are happening,” said Jane O’Brien, Omaha, who says her son worked for President Bill Clinton.
“It counters the rhetoric that I’ve been hearing which is so scary to me,” said Laurie Whitters-Churchill who drove from Lincoln for the speech. Whitters-Churchill fought her way to the front of the rope line after Clinton’s speech to get a photo with the former Secretary of State. It was a particular thrill for the mother of two who says she and Clinton are both “Stanford Moms”. Clinton’s daughter Chelsea attended the university as did Whitters-Churchill’s two children.
Kenneth Deffenbacher is still deciding whom to vote for between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders (D, VT) but said he’s noticed Clinton’s campaign style and demeanor getting better, “She was a little too wonkish and wooden I think early in the campaign, and she has definitely improved in that regard.”
Clinton touted her experience as Secretary of State as a reason why she’s more qualified for the presidency than anyone else in the presidential field. She chastised recent statements from un-named Republicans that she says alienates Muslim countries the United States needs to help fight terror groups like ISIS. “So a lot of the inflammatory rhetoric and loose talk and all of that you hear coming from the other side is not strategy, it's a slogan, it's a political talking point,” she said.
Buffett also took some understated digs at the GOP field, "I’ve listened to all the Republican debates. I mean, I guess I love Abbott and Costello. Vaudeville was never this good."
Republican spokesman Fred Brown said Clinton’s appearance with Buffett shows she’s out of touch with regular Americans, "Campaigning with the third richest person on the planet is an odd way to communicate that she understands and cares about the needs of millions of Americans still struggling in the weak Obama economy."
Brown also said Clinton’s economic policies amount to a redistribution of wealth.
Clinton left Omaha for events in Iowa City and cities in the eastern part of the state. But she won’t be apart from Buffett for long; he’s slated to appear at a Clinton fundraiser in California in January.
