How Much Longer Will Republicans Keep The Wealthy From Paying Their Fair Share? Let's Ask Multimillionaire Congressman Fred Upton (R-MI)

Hard to imagine the congressional Republicans are clueless enough-- just on a political survival level-- to force payroll taxes up for millions of Americans-- taking money out of the pockets of people who spend it. Even Boehner and McConnell are starting to realize how insane and out of control their respective caucuses are. That's what the radical Republicans who are now running the asylum are going to force to happen on December 31. Boehner says he'll get his psychos under control in time. But when McConnell tried last week, he failed-- twice. It amounts to $119.6 billion but the Republicans are determined to use it as a bargaining chip to keep the wealthy from paying their fair share of taxes. Even a confused airhead like John Thune (R-SD) was arguing on the floor for the extension one minute and then voting against it the next.

Most of the Republicans who oppose the payroll tax cut extension-- for every working family in America-- say they're against it because the Democrats want to pay for it with a tiny surtax (tiny and getting tinier by the day as the Democrats bend over backwards to compromise with the party of the 1%) on income over a million dollars a year. In other words, if your net income is a million dollars, you pay nothing. If your net income is $1.1 million, you pay the tiny tax only on the $100,000. Al Hunt cornered GOP rat Fred Upton (MI), the heir to the Whirlpool outsourcing fortune and one of the SuperCommittee saboteurs, and asked him to explain why he keeps falsely insisting that
taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question:

HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know...

HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can-- I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job-– we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.

Upton has never had a serious opponent and he's treated his congressional district as though his grandfather's hard work and good luck entitles him to a feudal estate. He sits in Congress protecting the entitlements of heirs to great wealth, like himself. This cycle he'll have to contend with a real populist Democratic candidate who isn't about to give him any slack, Afghanistan and Iraq war vet John Waltz. This morning Waltz sent me a quote from William Jennings Bryan-- "If the people perform their civic duties, there will be no plutocracy ruling in the name of the dollar." And, more than many candidates, "plutocracy" is exactly what Waltz is facing in his campaign. If you'd like to make sure he has that shot needed to rid the country of useless waste like Upton, please consider contributing through ActBlue.