Conventional wisdom tells us that this week — with April 15, it’s Tax Week — should be a problem for Dems. People associate Dems with taxes, many Americans are rushing to meet Friday’s deadline, and the media will soon be awash with foolish stories about so-called “tax freedom day.” It sounds like a week in which Dems should try and change the subject.<\/p>\n
I’m pleased to report, however, that House Dems are hoping to turn that conventional wisdom on its head<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tired of being painted as tax-and-spend liberals, House Democrats today will launch what they say is a long-term political offensive to highlight how GOP policies have hurt the middle class and put the nation deeper in the red. <\/p>\n Led by Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), House Democrats will use tax-filing week as the kickoff for their latest initiative. Hoyer said Tuesday that Democrats will attempt to show in the coming days and months that they are the true “party of reform” and that, despite the GOP rhetoric, Republicans have only made the tax system more complicated and unjust.<\/p>\n “Democrats can talk about taxes in a way that will connect with people [so] they will know that Democrats really are talking about making it fairer and simpler for them and their families,” Hoyer said. “We’re going to keep hitting the facts that the government is bigger under Republicans and deficits have soared as a result of their tax policies and spending policies.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is so obvious, it’s amazing the Dems haven’t gone on the offensive before. The average American knows<\/a> the existing tax system is unfair, knows GOP tax cuts disproportionately go to the very wealthy, and consistently says<\/a> they prefer lower deficits and investments in domestic programs to Republican tax cut policies. This should be easy<\/i> for the Dems. The analysis, prepared by Ways and Means Committee Democrats, focuses on “greater unfairness” in the tax code, an “exploding national debt,” “increased complexity” in the system, an expansion of the reach of the Alternative Minimum Tax and the emergence of “more losers than winners” in the estate tax repeal. <\/p>\n “Republicans have done the opposite of what they said they would do,” said Dan Maffei, spokesman for Ways and Means ranking member Charlie Rangel (N.Y.). “They are resting on withered laurels in terms of reducing taxes on working American families.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The idea, in part, is to start making headway on taking the tax issue away from the GOP. <\/p>\n “Just like they’ve tried to turn our traditional issues on us, we’re trying to turn one of their traditional issues on them,” said one Democratic leadership aide.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n With a generation of nonsensical “tax-and-spend” rhetoric, that won’t happen over night. Having said that, at least the Dems have the facts on their side and a sensible approach to help change people’s thinking on the issue. Stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Conventional wisdom tells us that this week — with April 15, it’s Tax Week — should be a problem for Dems. People associate Dems with taxes, many Americans are rushing to meet Friday’s deadline, and the media will soon be awash with foolish stories about so-called “tax freedom day.” It sounds like a week in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nThis afternoon, Hoyer will release a report highlighting the five major failures of recent Republican tax policies.<\/p>\n