When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) went to the floor on Monday to call for the extension of all Bush tax cuts, he pointed to small business owners making more than $250,000 per year, and referred to his proposals’ beneficiaries as those “who’ve been hit the hardest by this recession.”
“We can’t let the people who’ve been hit the hardest by this recession, and who need to create the jobs that will get us out of it, foot the bill for the Democrats’ two-year adventure in expanded government,” McConnell said. “We can’t allow America’s job-creators to pay for Democrats’ out-of-control spending over the past two years any more than we can allow Main Street to pay for the greed of Wall Street. Wall Street pays for its own excesses — so should the administration and Democratic leaders.”
As Media Matters pointed out:
McConnell was referring specifically to small business owners, and there’s no doubt they have been hit hard by the downturn. However, the expiration of the Bush tax cuts would only affect roughly 3 percent of small business owners — a fact that Boehner conceded yesterday — and McConnell has been blocking a bill to help small business owners since July. Meanwhile, it’s tough to defend the notion that anyone earning more than $250,000 per year has been hit harder than the millions of working Americans who will benefit from Obama’s proposed tax cuts, which McConnell has vowed to fight at any cost.
