What do Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama have in common? You might not think that much — but a new ad by a pro-Obama group uses the Republican icon’s words to hammer home a point about the GOP’s dedication to tax cuts for the wealthy.
The 30-second Youtube video by Super PAC, Priorities USA features Reagan stating that taxing a bus driver 10 per cent of his salary, while not taxing the “truly wealthy” is “crazy”.
The video opens with a man as a news anchor. “So far the Republicans support taxing the middle class instead of the wealthy; one Republican disagrees.”
Video footage of Ronald Reagan giving a June 6, 1985 speech at Northside High School in Atlanta, Georgia follows. Reagan says in the speech:
We are going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. They sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing when a bus driver was paying 10 per cent of his salary and that’s crazy. Do you think the millionaire ought to pay more taxes than the bus driver?
Priorites USA and Priorities USA Action were formed by Bill Burton, Barack Obama’s former deputy press secretary and Sean Sweeney, a senior adviser to Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff. The SuperPAC which started airing television ads in early July as a response to $20 million SuperPAC Crossroads GPS ads, has fervently criticised GOP candidates on issues such as tax cuts and deregulation.
A statement on their website reads: “At Priorities USA Action, we believe the stakes for protecting our country’s core values have never been higher as the far right pursues an agenda that rewards only the wealthiest few at the expense of middle class families.”
The SuperPAC’s favourite target seems to be Mitt Romney. They have a released a series of ads criticising his policies including: “Mitt Romney’s America“, where they paint a picture of what would happen, in their opinion, if Romney got elected president, and “Portraits“, that criticises the Republican GOP candidates’ ads blaming President Obama for the economy as “politics at its worst”.
The latest video appears to be taking a shot at a recent Romney campaign ad titled “The right answer“, in which he says: “I’m in favour of cutting spending capping federal spending as a percentage of GDP at 20 per cent or less and having a balanced budget, amendment. The right answer for America is to stop the growth of the federal government and to start the growth of the private sector.”
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