President Obama won’t be the only one hitting the campaign trail to push his deficit plan to avert the fiscal cliff.
House Republicans are planning their own campaign-style events to argue against Obama’s insistence on higher tax rates for the wealthy, Speaker John Boehner’s office said Tuesday.
As they have repeatedly, Republicans are targeting their message to small businesses, arguing that an increase in the marginal income rate over $250,000 a year will hit small-business owners who file as individuals.
Lawmakers will hold events and visit small businesses “to emphasize the threat to jobs posed by Congressional Democrats’ small-business tax hike,” the Speaker’s office said. Party leaders will also present members with a communications plan this week, and aides said the effort would include a coalition representing small businesses.
When you think of small businesses, you aren’t thinking of the guys who make more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. I can practically guarantee that. The small business categorization applies to the number of employees. So these people that Republicans are protecting from paying their fair share aren’t the guy who own the hardware store, the woman who owns the corner bar, the Farmer in the Dell, etc. In fact, a whopping 3% of small business owners would pay more under the increase.
So who are these “small business people?” Well, when Mitt Romney ran Bain Capital, he’d have been one. Ditto for high-power, big money law firms and lobbying shops. Investment capitalists and hedge funds qualify as well. In other words, people who are fabulously well-to-do and wouldn’t at all be hurt by an increase in their tax rates.
Which is why Republicans aren’t naming these “small businesses” directly. These are exactly the people Americans want to raise taxes on. So they just say “small businesses” and let you imagine the lady who owns the shoe store. It’s not exactly a lie, but it’s so weaselly that it might as well be.
