Last month, Wall Street Journal editorial board member Stephen Moore explicitly called for raising taxes on the poorest Americans in order to finance tax cuts for the rich. And he is not the only member of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire that thinks taxes need to be cut for the rich but increased for the poor.

As I noted yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s chief economist, Martin Regalia, said that allowing the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans to expire would be “a bullet in the head for an awful lot of people.” Fox News’ Bill Hemmer decided to run a segment on the comments, where Fox Business’ Eric Bolling agreed that having the rich pay the same rates that they paid under President Clinton would somehow doom the economy. But he then went on to complain that “unfortunately” 47 percent of households “don’t pay a dime in federal income tax”:

HEMMER: A bullet in the head? Is that what tax increases do?

BOLLING: Sure. If we do have an economic recovery from this massive recession we’ve been in, it will be the bullet in the head to the economic recovery because this will be the biggest, by far, tax increase that America’s ever seen, coming at absolutely the worst time. As it is Bill, they’re going to say, ‘well it’s only for the rich.” This will trickle down to every human being who pays taxes. Unfortunately, there’s only about, I don’t know, 53 percent of American households who pay federal income tax, the other 47 percent don’t pay a dime in federal income tax.

Watch it:

If Bolling thinks its unfortunate that so many people have no federal income tax liability, is he calling for raising their taxes? Moments after saying that its “absolutely the worst time” to raise taxes on the rich? And agreeing that tax increases amount to “a bullet in the head?”

The reason that so many people have no federal income tax liability is that “their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability.” 6 out of 10 non-payers have incomes of less than $20,000, and more than two-thirds of those who pay no federal income tax do pay federal payroll taxes. And, of course, they pay state and local taxes, including more regressive local sales taxes.

Plus, the fact that so many have no federal tax liability is a reflection of how much income is concentrated in the hands of the rich. The richest one percent of Americans currently make nearly 25 percent of the country’s income.

Extending the tax cuts for the rich — which costs $830 billion over ten years and $36 billion next year alone — is the least efficient way to boost the economy via tax policy. And as the record of the Bush administration shows, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans do not trickle down to everyone else. So let’s call this segment what it was: shilling for the rich while pushing higher taxes for the poor.

Yesterday, Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO), who is running for Missouri’s open Senate seat, unveiled his jobs plan at an event with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Of course, it’s full of the boiler plate GOP standards about cutting taxes for the rich and eliminating regulations. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch actually dinged the plan as “heavy on Republican goals — extending the key tax cuts — and talking points,” noting that “despite being a plan intended to boost jobs, it mentions the phrase ‘job-killing’ 10 times, mostly in reference to Obama policies.”

But one aspect of the plan, in particular, caught my attention. Blunt spends a lot of time in the document fearmongering about the deficit, saying “we must put a stop to this reckless and embarrassing culture of running up the bill and passing it along to our children and grandchildren.” He even advocates rescinding the stimulus money that has yet to be spent, which amounts to a tax increase on the middle class, as $65 billion in remaining stimulus funds have already been dedicated to middle class tax cuts.

But Blunt’s concern about spending evaporates when it comes to having the federal government subsidize the real estate industry, as he calls for permanently extending the home buyers tax credit, which has mercifully expired:

Recently it was announced that new home purchases had fallen off more than 30%. Clearly people respond to tax incentives and the recently-expired home owners’ tax credit is no exception. Encouraging people who can afford it to purchase homes helps employ homebuilders, real estate workers, bank employees, and keeps liquidity in the market.

The home buyer’s tax credit was enacted as part of the stimulus and then extended a couple of times, and by all accounts it was a complete and total boondoggle, costing taxpayers billions to subsidize activity that was going to happen anyway. And Blunt wants to make it permanent, removing any pretense that it’s a measure to spur economic recovery.

According to the National Association of Realtors — the real estate industry’s own lobbying arm — only 350,000 of the first 2 million credits were claimed by buyers who would not have bought their home anyway, costing “$43,000 for every new homebuyer who would not have bought a house without the tax break” up to that point. Calculated Risk figures that, when all is said and done, the credit “will probably cost taxpayers over $100,000 for each additional home sold.”

Not only that, but millions of dollars in credits were spent inappropriately, including $9 million sent to prison inmates and another $14 million to buyers who weren’t qualified for the program. The credit was even sent to some children.

Even the credit’s staunchest supporters — like Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA) — said that the credit’s “sunsetting is an incentive to drive people to the marketplace” and poo-pooed the notion of extending it forever, which pretty clearly turns it into a permanent subsidy to the real estate industry. But since Blunt has received far more money from the finance/insurance/real estate sector than any other in his career, maybe that’s precisely the point, no matter what it costs.

Last night, Dino Rossi officially became the Republican Senate candidate in Washington. Earlier this week, he tried to portray his desire to repeal the estate tax as a measure that will help small businesses, when in fact, the overwhelming majority of the benefits from repeal would go to the ultra-wealthy. And that’s not the only way in which Rossi is going to bat for the rich.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA) has embraced the Obama administration’s proposal to allow the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, while renewing those for the lower- and middle-class. Rossi, though, wants to extend all of the cuts, saying that allowing those for the rich to expire is a “class warfare program”:

Rossi argued that 2 1/2 million people in Washington benefit from the 2001 Bush tax cuts, the extension of which will be a major issue in Congress this fall. Rossi described as “this class warfare program” the Obama administration’s plan to extend the cuts enjoyed by middle-income taxpayers, while repealing tax cuts for high-income households.

Rossi is very confused about the numbers here or is entirely unclear about what the administration’s proposal is. There are about 6.7 million people in Washington state, so for Rossi’s number to be accurate, he’s either claiming that Obama and Murray want to raise taxes on people that they don’t, or he is claiming that more than one-third of the state’s population is making more than $200,000 per year.

Back in reality, the median income in Washington is about $52,000, according to the state’s Office of Financial Management. According to the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, there are 105,209 households in the state that would be affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts (or about 1.6 percent of the total population). So Rossi inflated his state’s wealthy population by 24 times.

Washington State (where Rossi formerly served in the state senate) also has one of the country’s most regressive tax systems, as it relies very heavily on sales and excise taxes and has no state income tax. The poorest 20 percent of Washington taxpayers pay more than 17 percent of their income in state taxes, while the richest one percent pay less than three percent.

Rossi himself made somewhere between $380,000 and $1.5 million last year, and has investments worth between $4 million and $15 million. So his taxes most certainly would go up if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire. But the same can’t be said for the vast majority of Washington’s residents.