The Associated Press just reported that “the gulf between the richest 1 percent and the rest of America is the widest it’s been since the Roaring ’20s. The very wealthiest Americans earned more than 19 percent of the country’s household income last year — their biggest share since 1928, the year before the stock market crash. If you take into account earnings on USA real money poker sites, these amounts are even higher. And the top 10 percent captured a record 48.2 percent of total earnings last year.”

Despite that tremendous windfall, Congressman Erik Paulsen has voted again and again to protect tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy and taxpayer subsidies for corporate special interests at the expense of America’s middle class. Congressman Paulsen’s budget would give people making more than $1 million per year a $245,000 tax cut according to Brookings-Tax Policy Center - and now House Republicans refuse to end these breaks for the wealthy, even if it means the country fails to pay its bills and our economy shuts down.

“The wealthiest Americans have the biggest share of the income since the 1920’s – right before the stock market collapsed – yet Congressman Paulsen keeps voting to give them even more budget-busting tax breaks and taxpayer-funded corporate subsidies,” said Emily Bittner of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Nearly half of the earnings last year is in the hands of the top 10 percent, but Congressman Paulsen would rather cut Medicare and education than end tax breaks for millionaires and corporate special interests. Minnesota voters want Congressman Paulsen to stop giving handouts to the ultra-wealthy and instead pay the country’s bills and prevent economic shutdown.”

BACKGROUND

Congressman Paulsen Voted to Give Millionaires a $245,000 Tax Break. In 2013, Congressman Erik Paulsen voted for the extreme Republican budget for fiscal year 2014 that would end the Medicare guarantee – by converting the program into voucher-based system – and pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans on the backs of working families. According to an analysis of the Ryan Budget conducted by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “If policymakers enacted the same extremely ambitious reductions in tax expenditures for filers with incomes above $200,000 that TPC assumed when it analyzed Romney’s tax plan, filers with incomes of $1 million or more would lose tax breaks totaling about $90,000 on average — still leaving them with an average net tax cut of about $245,000. Households with incomes above $200,000 would get a net cut of about $16,000.” The bill passed, 221-207. [HCR 25, Vote #88, 3/21/13; Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/17/13]

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