Thursday, October 20, 2011

Congress and The 1%

Or is it The 50%?
Math is hard.
Via I Love Charts:
20111020 Millionaires

From NPR:
Who's Weighing Tax On Rich? Congress' Millionaires
President Obama continued laying what may be more groundwork for his re-election campaign Monday, including a new tax proposal. He calls it the "Buffett rule": a new tax on people making more than $1million a year, who currently pay a much lower rate than an average middle-class American. The president, in fact, proposed this rule to a group of people with a lot of millionaires in it.

The number of Americans who are millionaires is pretty low — about 1 percent of the population. Members of Congress who are millionaires? Nearly 50 percent.

That's according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan watchdog group that tracks money in politics.

Of the 435 members of the House, "244 current members of Congress are millionaires — that's about 46 percent and that includes 138 Republicans and 106 Democrats," says Center for Responsive Politics spokesman Michael Beckel.

Beckel is talking about net worth, the total amount of money and assets lawmakers have, according to their own financial disclosure forms. In fact, there are probably many more millionaires in Congress, since lawmakers don't have to include the value of their family home and other details....MORE
NPR also has a slideshow of the dozen wealthiest members of Congress.
Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) estimated net worth $76,886,611 nudges out former Speaker Pelosi for the last spot. Good on ya, Senator.

OpenSecrets.org has the same list but without pictures, all on one page, showing methodology and expanded to the top 20.
[you forgot to say "Backwards and in heels" -ed]