During an appearance on ABC’s This Week, Koch 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) twisted, turned and ignored reality while trying to blame President Obama and Hillary Clinton for income inequality.
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Transcript via This Week:
STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask you a question about the economy. We saw these new unemployment numbers this week showing the economy has created more than a million jobs in the last three months, the best record in 17 years, a solid forecast for 2015 as well.
What does that do to your party’s strategy going forward in 2016?
Here’s what Kevin Hassett, an economic adviser to John McCain and Mitt Romney, told “The Washington Post” — he said, “When Hillary Clinton runs, she’s going to say, ‘The Republicans gave us a crappy economy twice, and we fixed it twice. Why would you ever trust them again?'”
What’s the answer?
CRUZ: Well, look, if Hillary Clinton wants to run by telling Americans that the economy is doing great and you can credit President Obama and Hillary Clinton for that, I would encourage her to follow that strategy. Because the simple reality is, that’s true for the wealthy.
The top 1 percent under President Obama, the millionaires and billionaires that he constantly demagogued, earned a higher share for our income than any year since 1928. Those with power and influence who walk the corridors of power of the Obama administration have gotten fat and happy under big government.
But I’ll tell you, hardworking men and women across America are hurting. We today have the lowest labor force participation since 1978. Ninety-two million Americans aren’t working, and we’ve seen wages stagnate.
Sen. Cruz was not telling the whole truth. Sen. Cruz wasn’t even telling half of the truth.
A chart from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) illustrates the explosion in income inequality between 1996 and 2006:
According to the CRS, the Bush tax cuts shrunk the margin between the amount of taxes paid by the wealthy and everyone else by cutting the average tax rate for the rich by 25%.
The big secret that Republicans don’t want to have exposed is that their economic policies drive income inequality. Trickle down economics increases income inequality. Cutting taxes for the wealthiest Americans doesn’t grow the economy. What upward economic redistribution does is concentrate wealth at the top.
Here is a chart via Mother Jones that illustrates the change in millionaire tax rates:
Decades of conservative economic policies have fueled the explosion in income inequality.
A study by the Tax Policy Center found that President Obama’s policies have made headway in reducing income inequality in comparison to Republican policies, “Now, consider what it would be like if none of President Obama’s tax policy changes had happened: not the upper-income tax hikes negotiated at the beginning of last year, not the upper-income tax increases imposed by the Affordable Care Act, not the low-income tax credits enacted in the 2009 stimulus and later renewed. In this alternative universe, the average member of the top 1 percent would take home $1.2 million, or 6.5 percent more in income, according to a new analysis. The average member of the bottom 20 percent would bring home $13,100, or 1.2 percent less in income. As a result, the average member of the 1 percent would take home 91 times what the average person in the bottom would bring home.”
A Republican president would have stayed the course and cut more taxes for the wealthy. This would have made income equality worse. Cruz is one of the Republican presidential wannabes who attended the latest secret Koch brothers conference. It is clear that the Republican plan for 2016 is to blame Obama for income inequality while advocating policies that will create more inequality.
Cruz’s less than stellar performance on ABC when asked how Republicans will run against an improving economy is a suggestion that their income inequality talking point is already a failure.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
