Hultgren spewing bunk on job creators

On Aug, 18 at a town-hall meeting, I asked Rep. Randy Hultgren to explain the evidence that the millionaires and billionaires in our country, the people who are the recipients of President Bush’s tax cuts, are “job creators.”

The unemployment rate was 6.2 percent when the tax cuts were enacted in 2003 and now in the ninth year of those tax cuts the unemployment rate is 9.1 percent.

Hultgren tried to move on but the crowd wouldn’t let him. He couldn’t answer the question.

I was hoping he would stop his misleading rhetoric about “job creators.” Yet, in the Daily Herald’s Sept, 9 edition, he is quoted as saying: “It is absolutely the wrong time to be raising taxes on Americans that Main Street often calls small business owners, entrepreneurs or job creators.”

Why is it the wrong time? It would not be raising their taxes. It would be returning to the rates they had before the Bush tax cuts. These wealthy individuals own corporations many of which have had the most profitable quarter in history. Over the past 30 years wages have not risen significantly, yet pensions and health benefits have disappeared for the middle class while the rich get richer.

Since jobs are not being created by millionaires and billionaires with the tax cuts, where are they spending the tax cuts they receive? They are investing in emerging markets in India and China, creating jobs overseas and in hedge funds and U.S. Treasury securities, lending the money to the U.S. government.

The taxpayers have to pay back the borrowed money for these affluent people’s tax cuts with interest. When there are so many who have lost their homes, their jobs and everything they’ve worked for, it’s cruel and dishonest to tout empty talking points.

Kaye Gamble

Sleepy Hollow