Just hours after President Obama unveiled his tax proposal last night that ask corporations and the rich to their part and stop forcing the middle class to bear the brunt of the burden, Republicans are already wailing about taxes and fear-mongering, claiming the proposals will hurt the middle class, tax cuts for the middle class don’t help the economy (LOL), and the usual cries of liberty (for the rich).
However, there is no legitimate reason why Republicans, who claim to be all about tax cuts, won’t help the President reform the tax code in a way that stops abusing the middle class. Matt O’Brien, who covers economic affairs for the Washington Post, explained in a tweet, “Obama wants to increase taxes on rentiers & heirs, 99 percent of which would come from the top 1 percent.”
In fact, some of Obama’s plan would hit the top .001 percent, according to O’Brien’s calculations in the Washington Post, and it incentivizes work for middle class families.
Obama’s State of the Union, you see, will call for $320 billion of new taxes on rentiers, their heirs, and the big banks to pay for $175 billion of tax credits that will reward work. In other words, it’s fighting a two-front war against a Piketty-style oligarchy where today’s hedge funders become tomorrow’s trust funders. First, it’s trying to slow the seemingly endless accumulation of wealth among the top 1, and really the top 0.1, no actually the top 0.001, percent by raising capital gains taxes on them while they’re living and raising them on their heirs when they’re dead. And second, it’s trying to help the middle help itself by subsidizing work, child care, and education.
Basically, President Obama is trying to reinvigorate the notion this country was founded on — opportunity if you’re willing to work hard. Seems like everything Republicans claim they are for. And in fact, some of Obama’s proposals are ideas Republicans can agree to or have even touted in the past.
But we all know that Republicans won’t give the middle class a break if it involves having corporations/ the rich pay their fair share.
The problem for Republicans is that this is a set up for 2016, and so Republicans can’t very well tell the middle class to get lost.
This is why Republicans’ new argument seems to be heading toward “Only tax cuts for rich people grow the economy.” Republicans have only two other choices: Pushing the flat tax, which unfairly burdens the poor and middle class, or pushing their old tired stand by that when they are in power, “deficits don’t matter”.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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