Rep. King: Pres. Obama inciting ‘class envy’ over tax cuts; Americans not in workforce ‘should do their fair share’
On Starting Point this morning, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) asserts that President Obama’s plan to cut taxes only for those making less than $250,000 a year is promoting ‘class envy’and many non-working Americans are shirking their responsibility by not doing their fair share to contribute to the United States GDP.
Rep. King says, “I think this is just another one of the class envy pieces that the President done. He’s been dividing people down along whatever lines he can demographically to try to win an election.”
When asked to clarify his “class envy” comments, he adds, “If you demonize the people that are [make] over $250,000 a year and you say they aren’t paying their fair share, if you go back around and ask these American people what is a fair share, they’ll know the people over [$250,000] are paying a lot more than people making less than [$250,000] think they are. That’s the class envy piece. And you can always make the argument that you want to raise the taxes on somebody else, well the President doesn’t think he gets a lot of votes out of that group. It’s a small demographic group. He thinks he gets more energy and more from his base if he simply targets people making over $250,000 but that’s where the jobs are created.”
When presented with a CNN ORC poll asking Americans if people making over $250,000 per year should have increased taxes, he says, “There are more and more people that are looking at others saying they shouldn’t be making that much money because I’m not. And they don’t feel as much guilt about the 72 different means tested welfare programs that we have…. Today, it’s almost a government guarantee of a middle income standard of living from all these programs that we have. I like an America where people look around and they feel some guilt about that and they want to step up and help and carry their fair share of their work. We have too many Americans not contributing to the gross domestic product of the United States today.”
He continues, “If they’re not going to work, and there’s a number approaching 100 million Americans of working age that are simply not in the workforce, and that includes the 13 million that are unemployed, some can’t do anything about that, some aren’t willing to do anything about that. When you add that all up, roughly a third of Americans of working age are not contributing to the gross domestic product of the United States. They should do their fair share.”
Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien airs weekday mornings from 7-9am ET on CNN.