Well, I suppose that would depend on how we define “rich” and who the secretary is — for instance, the President has defined “millionaires and billionaires” as anyone making over $200K, or a family bringing in $250K, and is using as an instance of a “secretary” the personal assistant to one of the US’s wealthiest men — but I’ll bite. from the AP:

President Barack Obama makes it sound as if there are millionaires all over America paying taxes at lower rates than their secretaries.

“Middle-class families shouldn’t pay higher taxes than millionaires and billionaires,” Obama said Monday. “That’s pretty straightforward. It’s hard to argue against that.”

The data tell a different story. On average, the wealthiest people in America pay a lot more taxes than the middle class or the poor, according to private and government data. They pay at a higher rate, and as a group, they contribute a much larger share of the overall taxes collected by the federal government.

There may be individual millionaires who pay taxes at rates lower than middle-income workers. In 2009, 1,470 households filed tax returns with incomes above $1 million yet paid no federal income tax, according to the Internal Revenue Service. That, however, was less than 1 percent of the nearly 237,000 returns with incomes above $1 million.

Leaving aside that income tax is by design a higher percentage tax than the kinds of risk-promoting capital gains taxes being marshaled by the President as proof of a baldly dishonest argument (manufactured out of a baldly dishonest and intentionally misleading premise), and leaving aside the fact that the “Buffett Rule” is calling on the supposed counsel of an actual billionaire whose company is disputing its own tax bill and is almost a decade in arrears — what is most offensive here is Obama’s attempt to take ownership of words like “fair” and “middle class.”

I’ve suggested this before, but allow me to repeat myself: the best way to rob the Democrats of this cynical attempt at egalitarianism is to agree to the premise: the GOP leadership, represented by both Boehner and McConnell, should call a joint press conference and announce that the President has it exactly right in theory, but in practice, his plan misses the mark. They should then quote from this article and from available tax data, informing the American people of the actual breakdown, by percentage, of federal income taxes paid, by whom, and as a percentage of their wealth (which in the US is the highest in the industrialized world).

Then they should offer a counter plan to the President’s that marks their willingness to work with him to make sure all Americans, including the wealthiest, are paying their “fair share”: announce plans to introduce a flat tax bill. Call on the President and the Democrats to join you in passing such legislation. Note that such a bill would meet all the criteria the President is appealing to, and then some: not only would the flat tax rid the tax code of “loopholes” “exploited” by “the rich” (actually, these are legal provisions available to everyone, but why nitpick?), but it would command EVERY AMERICAN pay his “fair share” — and best of all, afford the President his constantly articulated wish that everyone “have skin in the game.”

Now, naturally, a Marxist like Obama has no desire for anything like a flat tax, nor is he interested in anything other than the usurpation of the private sector by a centralized big government through which all commerce and all money flows, a condition that can only come to pass by destroying the small business sector and co-opting larger corporations in a crony capitalist / corporatist model — a liberal fascism model — that I’ve long argued is the bridge to a socialist state (and a bridge that is seldom ever crossed, once the Utopians in charge of taking us to the promised land realize the power and wealth available to them in the Worker’s Paradise staging area).

By taking away “fairness”, “fair share,” and “skin in the game” from Obama — with the added benefit of informing those voters not yet aware of the yawning gap (another favorite description of Obama’s that the GO should borrow and revise) between the percentages of federal income taxes paid by Obama’s “rich” (something on the order of 70% of all federal income taxes) and by those Americans who pay no federal income tax (closing in on 50%) and in some instances receive earned income credits — tax welfare — to boot.

Finish by noting that a flat tax would still be a kind of “progressive tax” inasmuch as it would still not demand much of the less fortunate; but it is a more fundamentally “fair” and American tax inasmuch as it requires every working American have at least a partial stake in the government, and so in how the government spends the tax dollars of the citizens required to fund it.

Concluding by flipping Obama the finger is then optional.