Editorial

Will Upton pay for supporting trickle-down bill redux?

ACHTUNG: This is not a “fair and balanced” story. It is an editorial by the editor.

“So we have met before…”

Will Sixth District Congressman Fred Upton pay a political price for voting in favor of the GOP tax reform plan earlier this month? A student of history will respond with confidence, “probably not.”

A better question would be, “Why do so many people keep electing the same congress members, even after they vote against the interests and welfare of working stiffs and the middle class?”

Fred Upton has “represented” constituents in the Sixth District for 31 years, since 1986, and he’s never faced a serious challenge in his 16 campaigns. Yet it’s really difficult to find anything he’s done in Washington on behalf of the average Joe or average Jane.

Upton sided with his party hack leadership and his rich political benefactors recently in supporting legislation that the vast majority of analysts have agreed would cut taxes for the rich and down the road would once again sock it to the poor and middle class. Even non-Democratic Party observers have admitted this package is just “trickle-down” economics revisited, and even worse, trickle-down on steroids that will add more than a trillion dollars to the national debt. So much for fiscal responsibility.

The Associated Press called trickle-down, “a theory long popular among conservatives: Slash taxes for corporations and rich people, who will then hire, invest and profit — and cause money to trickle into the pockets of ordinary Americans.”

Congressman Fred Upton

The trouble is, it doesn’t find it’s way to the pockets of the middle class and the poor. The rich and corporate officials instead horde it for themselves or send the money to off-shore (paradise) sites, so they don’t have to pay taxes in the United States.

Upton for a long time has touted himself as a Republican moderate during his election campaigns, someone who cares about ordinary citizens. But remember that what he says matters not, it’s how he votes. And he virtually always votes the way GOP leaders and rich corporate donors tell him to. And he’s gotten away with it for a long time.

Trickle-down economics, introduced to the American public in 1981, during the first year of the presidency of Ronald Reagan, has not shown any benefit to working class stiffs, who since then have seen their jobs outsourced overseas, their wages become static and made too many families struggle with finances. Meanwhile, virtually all the data shows rich corporate fat cats getting more in their bloated coffers and shareholders being rewarded handsomely.

This really shouldn’t be news to anyone. It’s been going on for 36 years, even though trickle-down’s chief architect, David Stockman, resigned as Reagan’s budget director in 1984, wrote a book, “The Triumph of Politics,” blasting the whole scheme and asserting it doesn’t work… except for the rich. Trickle-down has given us the widest gap in income in our history, between rich and poor.

The only chance the middle class, the working stiffs and the poor can get any revenge is to term limit Fred Upton at the ballot box in November 2018. Yes, I’m suggesting we throw the rascal out and put an end to this shocking habit of voting against our own financial interests.

3 Comments

  • Freddy is a huge JOKE! Why do we re-Elect this imposter? What does this bag make a year? Plenty I’m thinking. That is why is he still in there. What has Freddy ever done for you? Please tell me. Are there any supporters out there? Dump this bum!

  • Fred Upton will be running for his 16th term. Congressman Upton has been a GOP Congressman so long he’s gone from being a deficit hawk to not caring about the projected deficits that will result in the latest GOP Tax cut proposal.

    He’s a believer in trickle-down but he’s a patient guy. Fred was a 28-year-old working in the Office of Management and Budget when Reagan cut taxes and then raised them. We’ve waited 37 years for Trickle down to work. Just because it did work in Kansas doesn’t mean we can’t wait another 37 years to see if Dr. Laffer still might be correct on a larger scale.

    Its stunning how spending, for example, on infrastructure proposed over the last eight years by the previous administration was a non-starter because it needed to be financed by spending offsets yet billions in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthiest 1% is something that got Fred Upton’s vote even though the deficit will grow by more than one trillion dollars.

    Upton supported the XL Pipeline even after Enbridge pipeline failure in his own district spilled 800,000 to 1,000,000 gallons of unrefined heavy crude from Canada into the Kalamazoo River. But Congressman Upton once stated on multiple occasions he believed global climate change was caused by the increased use of fossil fuels before he started getting major campaign donations from 501c’s that are friends of Big Oil.

    Though I won’t be voting for Congressman Upton (I had voted for him in the past) I suspect he will win because he recently decided to seek re-election rather than face U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow in a statewide race.

    • Debbie Stabenow is even a worse senator than Upton is a representative. She has done zero for this state and never saw a tax she didn’t like and government expansion she didn’t approve. She trots out the “Debbie did this and Debbie did that” commercials every 6 years which are dubious and full of crap. Under her, Michigan has turned into the largest exit state to somewhere else in the nation. Jobs flew out of the state under her “leadership”. To elect her again against any Republican is to keep your head in the sand or up where the sun doesn’t shine.

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