U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker defended his vote against two Senate measures on Dec. 4 that would have preserved soon-to-expire tax cuts for individuals reporting less than $200,000 in personal income and for families and business owners making less than $250,000 in taxable income (after expenses). He also voted against extending the tax-cut threshold to $1 million.
"We need to promote a pro-growth environment for businesses that allows job creators to expand and hire. The most important thing we can do right now to help the economy and the millions of people struggling to make ends meet is prevent tax hikes from hitting Americans and small businesses," Wicker stated.
The problem with his statement is that he was voting against extending tax cuts for middle-class individuals and small businesses because the measure did not also extend Bush tax cuts for the top 3 percent of U.S. earners.
Republicans are spreading very misleading language about their attempt to, supposedly, help small businesses by extending tax cuts for the wealthy. Small business owners know it is difficult for the little guy to make $250,000 a year in profits after expenses come out; thus, we would benefit from the middle-class tax cut that Wicker and friends opposed unless millionaires got their break, too.
The GOP warnings about small businesses needing the wealthy tax break cynically rely on the fact that the wealthiest report some of their income as individual business income (such as from speaking fees). But the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that the vast majority of the über-rich make most of their money another way, meaning they are anything but mom-and-pop businesses.
It did not matter that the millionaires got a tax cut on everything they would have made below $1 million in the second measure. The GOP said last week that the wealthy need tax cuts on the entirety of their income—all of it—and that they were willing to let tax cuts expire if they did not get it.
Republicans, including Wicker and U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran, threatened to let unemployment benefits for out-of-work Americans expire this month, despite unemployment creeping up to 9.8 percent—unless they got their tax cuts for people making more than $1 million a year. Merry Christmas, all.
And it's not like tax cuts for their wealthy friends are likely to stimulate business. Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf said that the extension of the tax cuts through 2012 would only reduce the unemployment rate by between 0.1 and 0.3 percentage points and that extending unemployment benefits would better stimulate the economy.
These tricks on behalf of millionaires need to stop. If tax cuts for the wealthy are truly their top priority, they should at least be honest about it. But remember, those tax cuts for the rich helped us get in this mess in the first place.
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