Looks like the President is getting on the GOPs nerves by daring to talk about the middle class. Because President Obama has a plan to allow the Bush tax cuts for incomes above $250,000 to expire at the end of the year, Republicans such as Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl have restored the crazy talk that the president is waging “class warfare” against the wealthy.
Speaking on the Senate floor, Kyl claimed that the president’s usage of the phrase “middle class” is “misguided and wrong and even dangerous.” Calling for an end to rhetoric about classes, Kyl blasted Obama for “incessantly” talking about class, “particularly the middle class”:
KYL: Most prominently, we have a president who talks incessantly about class, particularly the middle class. Maybe you’ve noticed that. He defines class strictly by your income. In the president’s narrative, someone who makes $199,000 a year is a member of one class and someone who makes $200,000 belongs to another class. Does that make sense? Indeed, each day the president’s out on the campaign trail championing himself as the great protector of what he calls the middle class and pitting these Americans against their fellow citizens by arguing that the wealthiest class is victimizing them through the tax code.
Watch the ridiculousness below:
Senator Kyl goes on to say:
I just think the whole discussion of class is wrong. It’s not what we do here in America, I don’t think there’s anything called ‘middle class values’ that are different from the values of other people in this country. Tell me what’s different about the values of someone who the president identifies as middle class?
That tells you how out of touch the senator really is. If he doesn’t think middle class values are different from the values of his multi-millionaire donors, it’s time for him to exit stage right. Sen. Kyl, who made a healthy chunk of change as a lawyer-lobbyist for rapacious energy companies before entering politics, has never been and probably doesn’t know many in the middle class. So it’s not too surprising that he doesn’t know their values and thinks that they are the same as the one percenters. That being said…lets try and answer his question about the differences in values for the two. For the most part the people in the middle class
- keep their limited savings in the country
- don’t ship their fellow citizens’ jobs overseas for a quick buck
- think “work” is more than moving digital money around (or inheriting it)
- pay a higher percentage of their earnings to the federal government
- contribute more to charities
- help keep their family and friends secure by joining the military
- contribute to their community by becoming teachers, fire fighters, police, social workers and other jobs that won’t make them a lot of money
- believe in the democratic process, and chip in $25 or $100 to their favorite candidate, rather than try to buy one
Now what’s funny is that the president’s plan to end the tax cuts that benefit only the wealthiest Americans doesn’t amount to class warfare — rather, it still maintains a sizable tax cut for them too. The Obama plan still maintains a tax cut for every single income earner, regardless of how much he or she makes. Every earner still receives the tax cut on income up to $250,000 — only after it passes that threshold will it be subject to a higher tax rate. Someone who makes $250,001, for instance, will pay the higher rate on exactly $1.
Republicans maintain the idea that tax cuts for the wealthy will help middle-income Americans, the last decade has proven that to be utterly false. Many Democrats note that the growing income disparity escalated with the Bush tax cuts, and that job creation under Bush’s presidency was among the weakest in modern history.
