Sen. Ted Cruz takes aim at the link between Wall Street and Washington in a new ad released Friday, in some of the more populist terms he has used so far.
“As Washington pads Wall Street’s pockets, hardworking Americans get left behind,” the Texas senator and presidential candidate says in the 30-second ad touting his tax plan.
“When the playing field is level, American workers win,” Cruz adds, after a brief montage advertising his plan to institute a 10-percent flat tax.
The ad is not the first time Cruz has engaged in rhetoric targeting big banks or top earners, groups that generally are more likely to be criticized by Democrats than Republicans.
Last year, Cruz drew notice for saying at a conference that “those with power and influence who walk the corridors of power of the Obama administration have gotten fat and happy under big government” and saying that the top 1 percent of earners are doing better relative to others than at any time since the Roaring ’20s.
The ad says “working families” would see a $10,000 tax cut under Cruz’s plan, which would reshape the entire tax system.
That number appears to be higher than outside groups have placed it.
The Tax Policy Center, a nonprofit think tank in Washington, said in its analysis of Cruz’s plan that people earning in the middle of the income distribution would pay $1,783 less in taxes annually in 2017. The top 0.1 percent of earners, however, would get a $2 million tax cut.
That analysis, however, does not account for the surge in economic growth that Cruz has said his tax plan is designed to spur. Yet one report that attempted to quantify that growth, from the nonprofit Tax Foundation, found that after-tax incomes for the middle class would rise 14 percent to 18 percent — less than $10,000.
