As I view the struggle heat up over the President’s American Jobs Act, I see the continual cacophony of the Republican side chanting the same chorus, any increase in revenues is a “non-starter,” the deficit is the real problem, we need to keep cutting in order to improve the economy, and of course, my favorite: “if we cut taxes even further, we’ll encourage job creation.”
One of the voices we haven’t heard lately is that of Eric Cantor, my opponent next year. He’s still recovering from his latest gaffe in August when he promised aid to hurricane and earthquake victims, but, “we must make cuts elsewhere.” He’s taken a break from his race to 3rd world status that he and his cronies seek for our country; you know the “land of the free, home of the brave.” He’s hoping that everyone will forget that, while he ignores the needs of his constituents, and promotes the wants of the wealthiest, most privileged, the economy and the rate of unemployment stagnate. But he always has his buddy John Boehner to carry the standard. Yesterday he called the President’s plan “class warfare.” The President called his proposal to establish a millionaire tax rate and his effort to close various loopholes, “math.” The President is right. But let’s assume that Boehner is correct. Let’s take one aspect of the “class warfare.”
One of the little publicized loopholes that Cantor champions is the 15% long term capital gains rate that hedge fund managers pay for money they make from money t heir clients make. They’re not taxed like the rest of us. Hum, sounds like class warfare to me, but not from the bottom to the top, but the top to the bottom. Let’s not consider that Cantor’s wife was a vice president of Goldman Sachs, or that the investment and hedge fund industry invests millions in contributing to Cantor’s campaign war chest so they can keep their obscenely low tax rate. Cantor’s their favorite puppet. I can’t wait to hear when he does come out of the closet to give his input to the conflict…probably something along the lines of, “while the President wants to tax the ‘job creators’ I want to protect those job creators so that they will hire more employees in the economy that the President has harmed with his bad policies.” Oh really.
The real class warfare is the warfare waged by the wealthiest elites, those sponsors of Cantor, the 1% who control 20% of the wealth of this country, those who want to keep buying their villas, yachts, and private jets while 14 million of the unemployed continue to seek unemployment benefits that Cantor wants to cut. No, we need to fairly tax the elites now, and the government needs to take that revenue to initiate a national rebuilding campaign which will re-employ the people of this country, now. That’s what I’ll work to do when I replace Cantor next year.