Democrats’ message on income inequality appears to have rattled Republicans, as the party clumsily attempts to buck its history by addressing the issue.
After decades of saying that it doesn’t matter–that “trickle-down” economics aren’t bogus, and that relative wealth has no affect on absolute poverty–conservatives are changing their tone on equality of outcome.
In the wake of President Obama’s State of the Union speech last week bemoaning widespread income stagnation amid a strengthening economy, Republican lawmakers are actually talking about the gap between the richest and poorest Americans.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.) on Monday morning tweeted about a New York Times article that detailed how the middle class “has been shrinking for almost half a century.”
“Addressing this issue is a top priority as I begin serving on the Finance Committee,” he said.
Coats didn’t offer many specifics about tax and trade policy—the primary concerns of the Senate Finance Committee–though last week he blasted the President’s annual speech, decrying “tax hikes, increased regulation, more spending and bigger government.”
The Obama administration has proposed financing tax cuts on the middle class by raising levies on the richest Americans.
Coats’ Monday morning observation, however, was less superficial than proclamations issued by some of his higher profile colleagues. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rand Paul (R-Ky.)–discussed inequality on Sunday at a Koch brothers-backed forum before a gaggle of wealthy donors, of all places. They may as well have not even recognized the matter.
“I chuckle every time I hear Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton talk about income inequality, because it’s increased dramatically under their policies,” Cruz said, according to The Washington Post.
Rubio took aim at taxes and regulations, claiming that the solution lies in a market-based solution
“The best cure for poverty is a job, a good paying job, and our economy isn’t producing enough of them,” he said.
But Republicans, in political jockeying, haven’t recognized that this trend started decades ago and has been exacerbated by laissez-faire policies, decreased unionization, and free trade deals with bipartisan-backing. Both Congressional Republicans and the White House are uniting to further this wage-depressing trend in promoting the Trans-Pacific Partnership and renewed fast-track trade negotiation authority for the executive branch.
Leading them in this vapid endeavor is Speaker of the House John Boehner, who also tweeted about the Times’ piece that Coats shared. The top House Republican described it as highlighting “consequences of President Obama’s continuing war on the middle class.”
The article, however, did nothing of the sort. It noted that long-term deindustrialization shared the blame, while Social Security and Medicare “have provided a substantial cushion for them against hard times.”
Nor was it the first time this week Boehner glossed over observable facts in talking economics. In an interview aired by “60 Minutes” on Sunday night—one in which he recycled talking points flogged by Sens. Cruz, Paul, and Rubio–Boehner preached that raising the minimum wage is “a bad idea.”
“I’ve had every kinda rotten job you can imagine growing up and getting myself through school,” he said. “And I wouldn’t have had a chance at half those jobs if the federal government had kept imposing higher minimum wage. You take the bottom rungs off the economic ladder.”
The federal minimum wage in 1970, when Boehner turned 21 years-old, would have been worth $9.76 per hour last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics inflation calculator. The wage floor now currently stands at $7.25–roughly 33 percent lower, in real terms.
Although one must give the Speaker and his colleagues some credit, fact-deficient arguments aside. They’re, at least, inherently giving a nod to the fact that Americans are increasingly perturbed by the stratification of the United States—something they would categorically refuse to do in decades past. Last year, when Boehner discussed the income gap using much of the same language he has employed this week, The New Republic noted that utterances were “for a Republican…pretty unusual.” His colleagues were, at the time, more interested in dismissing concerns in favor of discourse about “opportunity inequality.” On the whole, now, they’re paying attention. Unfortunately for the majority of Americans, this almost certainly will not translate into any material benefit—not under the current Congress, anyway.
