On Sunday, Republicans labeled a new White House tax proposal “class warfare.” President Barack Obama is now calling for a new minimum tax rate on those who make over $1 million a year in conjunction with the bipartisan budget deal that is currently forming in Congress.
The plan is presumably designed to increase pressure on Republicans to concede to raising taxes on the wealthy in exchange for Democrats throwing their support to cuts in Medicare and Medicaid.
More than one politician used this inflammatory phrase in response to Obama’s proposal, and all it seems to be doing is fueling the media fire around partisanship when it remains old news anyway. The news will always have headlines with Republicans staunchly refusing Obama’s proposals for bipartisanship and class cohesion. With the ever-polarizing comments churned out by the GOP and Obama’s desperate cries for the abolishment of politics-as-usual, no room remains in the headlines or the daily agendas for progress.
Phrases like “class warfare” are overly dramatic and only used to drive a stake between parties and strike fear into citizens. If the GOP wishes to discuss the term “class warfare,” it seems only fair to bring Wall Street bankers and their role in the tanking economy into the conversation. Wall Street-ers bringing down America’s middle and lower classes for the sake of their own grossly over-inflated salaries is class warfare. Letting the uninsured pass away because of their lack of medical coverage is class warfare. Creating the middle class and then hand-delivering almost all of the country’s fiscal resources to the rich on a silver platter is class warfare. If the phrase “class warfare” is introduced into the discussion, one has to examine all instances where such a label is deserved.
In fact, such labels should simply never enter into the political syntax. Instead of finger-pointing and name-calling, the Capitol needs to settle down, roll up its sleeves and get to work. When one picks up the headlines of this day and age, it almost seems as though political publicists are getting more work than congressional court reporters. Take note, college students.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
