Chris Rock says he’s willing to pay higher taxes

Jesus would support taxing the rich, said President Barack Obama at this week’s national prayer breakfast. The president said, “For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.”

Joining him in the spirit if not the letter of this sentiment was actor and comedian Chris Rock, who while at the Sundance Film Festival said he’s willing to pay higher taxes. ‘”I’ll pay higher taxes. I look at it this way I can pay higher taxes and people can have jobs or I can pay lower taxes and I have my kid’s teacher asking me for a loan, which is true” Rock told the Associated Press.

Rock went on to compare President Obama to a father and parental figure for the country, saying that all he hoped for was “reassurance.”

He criticized President Bush for going to war. “‘Let’s go to war … let’s bomb a country that didn’t bomb us.’ I never understood that one,” said Rock.

President Obama in his State of the Union speech called for implementing the “Buffet rule,” in which the very wealthy would pay a 30 percent tax rate like working class Americans.

The president’s demand is fiercely opposed by the Republican Party.

Rock joins a growing group of entertainers who have called for supporting greater fairness in tax policy. in 2011 singer John Legend said ,””People fought to give me – a millionaire – a tax cut this year. I didn’t need it. And all the other millionaires didn’t need it either.”

Actor Matt Damon holds similar views, says the Washington Post: “Recently, the ‘Contagion’ star waded into the tax debate, telling interviewer Nicholas Ballasy that our current tax structure is “criminal” in the benefits that it provides for the wealthy.

Rock has also taken on the anti-tax-the-rich tea party, comparing them to racist children.  Rock told Esquire, “Kids always act up the most before they go to sleep. And when I see the tea party and all this stuff, it actually feels like racism’s almost over. Because this is the last – this is the act-up before the sleep. They’re going crazy. They’re insane. You want to get rid of them – and the next thing you know, they’re fucking knocked out. And that’s what’s going on in the country right now.”

Photo: keegstra // CC 2.0