In her first speech to a Democratic National Convention, Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren took Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan, to task while characterizing the dismal economy as a game meant to squeeze the middle class.
“People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here’s the painful part: they’re right. The system is rigged,” she said. “Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries.” Warren twice alluded to Warren Buffett’s secretary, echoing a theme President Obama first sounded in his January State of the Union speech.
The President blamed the deficit on the government’s failure to collect taxes from the wealthiest Americans and claimed, “Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.” The complexity of tax rates applied to different forms of income and assets make the issue much more black and white than the numbers show. Democrats have long used the case of Warren Buffett and his secretary, Debbie Bosanek, to call for more punishing tax rates, casting her as a typical case when in fact, in terms of taxation, she is not. The Atlantic discussed the comparison between Buffett’s and Bosanek’s tax rates in detail, concluding the comparison was “beyond bizarre.” Warren, who was the first Democrat claim“you built that with help” and “no one gets rich on their own,” tried to shore up her middle class credentials by explaining she frequently spoke with the entrepreneurs she denigrates.
“I talk to small business owners all across Massachusetts,” she said. “Not one of them—not one—made big bucks from the risky Wall Street bets that brought down our economy. I talk to nurses and programmers, salespeople and firefighters—people who bust their tails every day.”
Warren also made an indirect but clear reference to Mitt Romney’s wealth, caricaturing the Republican nominee as a robber baron determined to evade taxes.
“Not one of them—not one—stashes their money in the Cayman Islands to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
Romney, however, released his 2010 tax returns and an estimate of his 2011 returns. In an interview with National Review, he explained his offshore investments funneled foreign money into the U.S. economy rather than standing as tax shelters:
“The so-called offshore account in the Cayman Islands, for instance, is an account established by a U.S. firm to allow foreign investors to invest in U.S. enterprises and not be subject to taxes outside of their own jurisdiction. So in many instances, the investments in something of that nature are brought back into the United States,” Romney said. “The world of finance is not as simple as some would have you believe.”
Warren took her claims a step further, insinuating Romney would rob the poor and middle class to benefit the rich and preserve the “rigged game” by delivering Democratic talking points rapidly:
“He wants to give tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires. But for middle-class families who are hanging on by their fingernails? His plans will hammer them with a new tax hike of up to 2,000 dollars. Mitt Romney wants to give billions in breaks to big corporations—but he and Paul Ryan would pulverize financial reform, voucher-ize Medicare, and vaporize Obamacare.”
Two of her last three claims stand in stark comparison to Romney’s strenuous criticism of President Obama’s cronyism and Paul Ryan’s insistence that Obamacare is the greatest threat Medicare. She also conflates Ryan’s 2011 Medicare proposal with his 2012 plan, whose details clearly vary in light of the ever-changing political environment.
As for the $2,000 tax hike on the middle class, Warren pulled that figure from a study conducted by the Tax Policy Center and Brookings Institute that is not a direct analysis of Romney’s tax plan, according to Newsbusters.
The authors of the study themselves deny Warren’s tax hike claim.
“I don’t interpret this as evidence that Governor Romney wants to increase taxes on the middle class in order to cut taxes for the rich, as an Obama campaign ad claimed,” Donald Marron said in a Tax Policy Center blog post.
Warren’s speech revealed the Democratic propensity to play fast and loose with the facts when their ideology inflicts real harm on working Americans. Unfortunately, in the media echo chamber, the facts are frequently drowned out by misinformation.
But perhaps most concerning is that Warren seems to be the face of where the Democratic party is headed – in a recent straw poll, she won the top spot for a 2016 Democratic ticket.
If Warren is any indication for where the future Democratic Party is headed, America better buckle up for a very hard Left turn ahead.
