Mikey’s Shell Game Exposed

Aside from the Guest Opinion supporting Patrick Murphy, this also appeared in yesterday’s Courier Times…

Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick and other House Republicans voted to pass a bill increasing the minimum wage while slashing the estate tax for the wealthy. The Senate killed the entire bill because of this tax giveaway to the rich.

The minimum wage, frozen at $5.15 since 1997, has been eroded by inflation. Nobody can afford to live on $5.15 an hour. Republicans have blocked Democratic efforts to increase it for several years. But they found a way to appear to support the increase by linking it to an estate tax cut, which doomed the entire bill.

If it had passed, the bill would have eliminated the estate tax entirely for estates under $5 million and would have cut it by more than two-thirds for most estates larger than $5 million. The tax breaks would have cost $268 billion over 10 years – totally irresponsible at a time when our government is already running enormous deficits. Such losses would ultimately have to be paid by us, our children and our grandchildren.

Does Mike Fitzpatrick think that voters can’t see through this? Voters who really want to raise the minimum wage without an enormous giveaway to the wealthy will replace him in November.

Daisy and Don Grubbs
Middletown, PA

I know this issue is dead for now, but still, Dr. Dean's words bear repeating here.