Americans Overwhelmingly Believe Republicans Favor The Rich

Pew: 62 Percent View GOP As Party Of The Rich. On February 4, Pew Research Center published the results of a poll conducted from December 8 through 15, 2015, on public perceptions of the economy and Republican and Democratic policy priorities. Pew found 62 percent of respondents viewed Republicans as the party of the rich, compared to only 26 percent who saw Democrats in the same light. Just 2 percent of respondents viewed Republicans as favoring low-income Americans, whereas 31 percent viewed the Democrats as favorable toward that group. The poll also showed that while 61 percent of Americans say the government provides “too much” help to the wealthy, and 59 percent say the government provides “not enough” assistance to the poor, perceptions on how much the government does for the rich, the poor, and the middle class are starkly divided along partisan lines:

[Pew Research Center, 2/4/16]

GOP Policies: Cut Taxes For The Rich, Cut Assistance For The Poor

Krugman: Rubio's Capital Gains Tax Plan Does “Essentially Nothing For The Vast Majority Of Americans.” In a February 4 blog post for The New York Times, Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman underscored how Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio's plan to completely eliminate capital gains taxes “would be a giveaway to the very, very rich.” Krugman noted that data from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center shows that 79.1 percent of Rubio's tax cut would go to the top 1 percent of earners, with 50.5 percent going to ultra high earners in the top 0.1 percent:

[The New York Times, 2/4/16; Tax Policy Center, 10/3/13]

Wash. Post: GOP Policies Focus On “Growth,” Fail To Address Poverty. A February 2 blog by The Washington Post pointed to research from the Brookings Institution demonstrating that increased economic growth has “a weak relationship” to increased economic security for low-income Americans. The blog concluded by arguing that the data undermine a core tenet of Republican economic policy, which fixates on the theory that a so-called “rising tide” can lift Americans out of poverty without the need for government programs specifically directed at improving the circumstances of poor communities. [Media Matters, 2/3/16]

Bernstein: Bush Tax Plan Is Like “Reverse Robin Hood.” In a September 9, 2015 column in The Washington Post, economist Jared Bernstein argued that Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush's tax plan will likely be a major tax break for companies and high-income earners. Bernstein also highlighted how Bush's tax cuts would create a major revenue shortfall, and he said the likeliest way to close the revenue gap would be to cut spending for those in need:

That means you either make up your losses by going after the less well-off, running larger budget deficits, or cutting spending. Re the latter, since Bush is unlikely to cut defense spending, he either goes after entitlements, or more likely, spending on low-income populations. In either case, since social insurance and safety net spending disproportionately help people in need, this is yet another version of RRH tax policy -- Reverse Robin Hood. [The Washington Post, 9/9/15]

MSNBC's Steve Benen: Ryan's Policies Are “Brutal” For the Poor. On May 6, 2015, MSNBC blogger Steve Benen expanded on a Vox rebuttal to Paul Ryan's policy proposals for the poor that would actually hurt those in poverty, stating that Ryan is “focused on poverty” but is proposing legislation that would be “brutal towards those actually in poverty.” Ryan had proposed cutting taxes for the rich while slashing public assistance for the poor, which led Benen to question whether Ryan truly understood the subject matter. [MSNBC.com, The MaddowBlog, 5/6/15]

The New Republic: GOP Has Made “Mobility” Its “New Mantra,” But Republican Policies Undermine Mobility. In a February 19, 2014 essay for The New Republic, Demos' Sean McElwee argued that, for Republicans, "'Mobility' is the party's new mantra--but it's based on a familiar delusion." As McElwee pointed out, Republican proposals are not serious about addressing lagging economic mobility or growing inequality because “being serious about the problem will require doing the one thing that Republicans hate: government spending.” McElwee singled out Ryan as an example of Republican politicians who have pushed harmful policies as supposed solutions to economic insecurity. [The New Republic, 2/19/14]

Paul Ryan's First Anti-Poverty Plan Seemed To Assume “That The Poor Somehow Want To Be Poor.” In July 2014, Ryan, then chairman of the House Budget Committee unveiled a series of proposals intended to expand opportunity and alleviate systemic poverty. His anti-poverty program aimed to hold low-income families accountable to “a contract outlining specific and measurable benchmarks for success.” Ryan's plan was seemingly based on the common right-wing media myth that low-income families live in poverty because they are unwilling or unable to better themselves, and New York's Annie Lowrey called the plan “condescending” because “it presupposes that the poor somehow want to be poor.” [Media Matters, 7/24/14]

CBPP: Ryan's House GOP Budget Plan Would Have Created “More Poverty And Less Opportunity.” When Ryan unveiled his 2014 House GOP budget plan, Robert Greenstein, the president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), noted that under the Ryan budget, “Affluent Americans would do quite well. But for tens of millions of others, the Ryan plan is a path to more adversity.” Greenstein pointed out that the plan would have left millions without health insurance by repealing the Affordable Care Act and implementing changes to Medicaid funding. Greenstein also criticized the budget for its impact on anti-poverty programs, estimating that it would:

• Slash basic food aid provided by SNAP by at least $135 billion and convert the program to a block grant. The Ryan budget includes every major benefit cut in the harsh SNAP bill that the House passed in September, which CBO estimated would end benefits to 3.8 million low-income people in 2014. The budget also would block-grant SNAP in 2019, with further steep funding cuts. States would be left to decide whose benefits to cut -- poor children, working-poor parents, seniors, people with disabilities, or others struggling to make ends meet. They would have no good choices, as SNAP provides an average of only $1.40 per person per meal.

• Make it harder for low-income students to attend college. Ryan proposes to cut Pell Grants by more than $125 billion over the next decade. He would freeze the maximum grant for ten years, even as college tuition costs continue to rise. The maximum Pell Grant already covers less than a third of college costs, compared to more than half in earlier decades. Yet under the Ryan budget, the grant would fall another 24 percent by 2024 in inflation-adjusted dollars. (Some of that reduction is in the budget baseline, but Ryan would substantially enlarge it.) He also would make some moderate-income students who get modest help from Pell Grants today entirely ineligible. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 4/1/14]

Media Often Fall For GOP Anti-Poverty Rhetoric, Ignore Policy

Financial Times Highlights Republicans' Talk About Poverty, Ignores GOP's Harsh Policies. On February 4, Financial Times reported on the Pew poll with an article headlined “Republicans have a problem with poverty.” Despite acknowledging that the public says the Republican Party is overwhelming favorable toward the rich, the Financial Times still focused on Republican politicians who claim to care about “methods of addressing endemic poverty” without acknowledging how their proposed solutions would actually affect low-income Americans:

The notion that the Republican party caters for the needs of the affluent is hardly new, and it dogged the campaign of Mitt Romney during his unsuccessful contest against President Barack Obama in the 2008 election campaign.

But with anxiety about faltering social mobility and stagnating incomes climbing up the political agenda, more Republicans have been scrambling to come up with policy answers. Mr Ryan has for example been seeking to expand the earned income tax credit for childless adults -- a poverty-fighting tool also favoured by Mr Obama.

In South Carolina last month a number of Republican presidential candidates including Jeb Bush, Ben Carson and Mr Rubio gathered for the Jack Kemp Foundation Forum to talk about methods of addressing endemic poverty.

“If you don't talk about what people are going through they think you don't care about people like them, so it begins with acknowledging that we do have a problem in America -- that there are people being left behind,” Mr Rubio said at the event, arguing that America's social safety net was failing to cure poverty. [Financial Times, 2/4/16]

Washington Post: “Paul Ryan Turns The GOP Presidential Race Toward A Forgotten Issue: Poverty.” The Washington Post's Mike DeBonis wrote in a January 9 Post Politics article that the Jack Kemp Foundation's presidential candidate forum, moderated by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), had “turn[ed] the GOP presidential race toward” poverty, an issue he suggested the GOP has “forgotten.” DeBonis asserted that Ryan's summit was a “low-octane discussion of conservative policy that was short on candidate sniping and red-meat applause lines,” but also failed to consider how the policies forwarded by Republican attendees would affect low-income communities. [The Washington Post, Post Politics, 1/9/16]

CBS And ABC Failed To Question Speaker Ryan On His Opposition To Paid Family Leave. On November 1, 2015, Ryan appeared on CBS' Face The Nation and ABC's This Week to discuss policy prospects following his elevation to speaker of the House. Neither outlet questioned the new speaker on paid family leave, a policy Ryan has long opposed. Before agreeing to become a candidate for the open speakership, Ryan had stated he would not “give up [his] family” to fulfill the scheduling obligations of outgoing Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), asserting that he must be able to take time for family matters. In light of these statements, multiple advocacy organizations criticized Ryan for wanting paid leave for himself and not others. EMILY's List stated that Ryan is “totally in favor of family-friendly workplace policies for Speakers of the House named Paul Ryan,” but not for other hardworking Americans. To their credit, NBC's Meet The Press, Fox Broadcasting's Fox News Sunday, and CNN's State Of The Union did ask the speaker about his opposition to paid family leave. [Media Matters, 11/1/15]

New York Times: “Populist” Bush Plan Challenges Conservative Tax Policy. In a September 9, 2015 article, The New York Times called Republican presidential hopeful Jeb Bush's tax reform proposal “a populist plan,” and claimed it challenges conservative policy on taxes and the economy:

Former Gov. Jeb Bush is challenging some long-held tenets of conservative tax policy with a populist plan that targets valuable deductions that benefit the wealthy and the “carried interest” loophole that has enriched hedge fund managers for years.

[...]

The plan is intended to spur the economy to grow at an annual rate of 4 percent by giving companies incentives to invest domestically and by easing the tax burdens on low and middle-income families. [The New York Times, 9/9/15]

Politico: Bush Tax Plan “Hits Wall Street.” In a September 8, 2015 article titled “Jeb Bush tax plan hits Wall Street,” Politico described the Republican's proposal to close the so-called “carried interest loophole,” which allows some high earners to pay the lower capital gains tax rate on large chunks of income, as a “populist move”:

His plan would also cut rates on capital gains and dividends to 20 percent with one notable exception: carried interest. His plan targets the tax provision that allows some private equity and hedge fund managers to characterize earnings as capital gains, allowing them to pay much lower rates than if it was considered ordinary income.

That's a populist move that comes after rival Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump also complained about the provision, saying the tax code allows hedge fund managers to “get away with murder.” [Politico, 9/8/15]

WSJ Highlighted Ryan's Work For Benefits Program, While Failing To Ask What Happens To Those Who Cannot Find Work. On July 24, 2014, The Wall Street Journal reported on Ryan's plan to consolidate 11 federal government assistance programs into block grants to the states. Ryan's plan for the grants would attach even more stringent work requirements to benefit programs. The Journal highlighted Ryan's proposals, but failed to question what would happen to those who could not find work or fell short of the new work requirements, instead focusing on what it perceived as token liberal opposition to lumping federal assistance programs into so-called “block grants” to states:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan is proposing to consolidate up to 11 federal antipoverty programs into a single funding stream for states, a plan he says will include new work requirements and create more accountability and efficiency in assisting low-income Americans.

[...]

Mr. Ryan believes the current set of federal antipoverty programs creates a disincentive for people to work, as families fear they will lose benefits if their income rises above certain thresholds. Many of his ideas would transfer federal decision-making to state leaders, who he believes are best equipped to tailor programs to help residents.

The plan, outlined in a 73-page proposal called “Expanding Opportunity in America,” would challenge decades of federal antipoverty strategy. Many anti-poverty programs, such as food stamps, Medicaid and Supplemental Security Income, exist as hybrid designs that require cooperation and administrative involvement from states and the federal government.

[...]

Liberal groups are likely to describe Mr. Ryan's proposal as a way of transforming federal assistance into “block grants'' to states, something they have long resisted. Many say states are less capable than the federal government of ensuring the delivery of benefits to low-income families. They have said these services should not depend on the political decisions of governors, some of whom rejected an expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. [The Wall Street Journal, 7/24/14]

Fox News, National Review Online Defended Ryan Poor-Shaming Of Kids Who Receive Free Lunch. Right-wing media came to the defense of Ryan when he was poor-shaming children who receive free lunch at school. Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference on March 6, 2014, Ryan claimed that the government gives people “a full stomach and an empty soul” and that students receiving subsidized lunches through their schools had lower self-esteem as a result. A headline from the National Review Online called Ryan's remarks “moving,” and Fox correspondent Carl Cameron claimed Ryan's speech had taken a “middle-of-the-road tone.” [Media Matters, 3/6/14]