Democrats party of rich

[hammAR]

Story

Democrats party of rich, study finds
By Donald Lambro
November 23, 2007

Democrats like to define themselves as the party of poor and middle-income Americans, but a new study says they now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts.

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.

"If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said.

A key measure of each district's wealth was the number of single-filer taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year and married couples filing jointly who earn more than $200,000 annually, he said.

But in a broader measurement, the study also showed that of the 167 House districts where the median annual income was higher than the national median of $48,201, a slight majority, 84 districts, were represented by Democrats. Median means that half of all income earners make more than that level and half make less.

Mr. Franc's study also showed that contrary to the Democrats' tendency to define Republicans as the party of the rich, "the vast majority of unabashed conservative House members hail from profoundly middle-income districts."

"I just found the pattern across the board to be very interesting. That pattern shows the likelihood of electing a Democrat to the House is very closely correlated with how many wealthy households are in that district," Mr. Franc said in an interview with The Washington Times.

The shift in the number of wealthier Democratic districts got a significant bounce in the last election.

"A fair number of these districts are represented by freshmen, a lot of the guys who got elected in 2006," he said.

"The demographic reality is that the Democratic Party is the new 'party of the rich.' More and more Democrats represent areas with a high concentration of wealthy households," he wrote on Nov. 5 in the Financial Times of London, in a preview of his study.

In addition, the current Senate tax debate provides an example of how the Democrats' rich constituents are influencing their agenda and have divided House and Senate Democrats.

In the House, for example, Democrats have made elimination of the alternative minimum tax, known as the AMT, the centerpiece of a sweeping tax-revision plan crafted by Rep. Charles B. Rangel of New York, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The AMT law was passed by the Democratic Congress in 1969 to make sure that wealthy taxpayers — some of whom were able to use tax breaks to avoid paying anything — paid at least some taxes.

Over the years, as many middle-class incomes rose, people were increasingly being pushed into higher tax brackets once reserved for only the richest Americans. The largest portion of these taxpayers live predominantly in Northeastern "blue" states dominated by Democrats, who, inundated by constituent complaints, soon began joining their Republican counterparts in pushing to eliminate the AMT.

But the strongest manifestation of the influence that the Democrats' wealthiest constituencies are wielding over party policy came earlier this month as Democratic leaders were considering a proposal to offset revenue losses from AMT repeal by raising taxes on hedge-fund managers, many of whom are major contributors to the Democratic Party.

A "stopgap" bill authored by Mr. Rangel to tax hedge-fund compensation at 35 percent as regular income rather than the current 15 percent capital-gains rate, which passed the House Nov. 9, appears to be going nowhere with Senate Democrats.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has raised tens of millions of dollars from Wall Street financiers and hedge-fund managers, opposes Mr. Rangel's plan. Earlier this month, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee, said the tax increase was a bad idea and could not pass the Senate.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the House Democratic Caucus chairman, also has said he wants a stand-alone fix for the AMT without an offsetting tax increase, fearing that any vote to raise taxes now will hurt vulnerable Democrats in next year's elections. More moderate Blue Dog Democrats in the House have also been among the critics of the tax increase.

Some Democrats acknowledge that moneyed interests are exerting a strong influence on their party's agenda and legislation.

"The fact is that [the Democratic campaign committees] have had large contributions from these hedge-fund folks," said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank.

"As far as the hedge funds and tax breaks go, the Democrats are clearly getting a lot of money from people who are affected by that, and they're responding," Mr. Baker said.

Mr. Franc thinks this turnabout by Democrats, whose campaign mantra has long been to tax the rich more, is only the beginning.

"Increasingly, we will see Democrats responding to the economic demands of this particular upper-income constituency," he said.

"What the data suggests is that there will be a natural limit to how far and how much the Democrats can sock it to the rich, because in doing so, it means they will have to sock it to their own constituents," Mr. Franc said.

[princewally]

I've always found that, anecdotally, the Democrat party consists largely of the guilty rich and the greedy poor.

[brauchma]

I've always found that, anecdotally, the Democrat party consists largely of the guilty rich and the greedy poor.

right on... they get guilty and then take others money and redistribute it to others.

[Pat]

I'm not sure why I wasn't able to find this recent Newsweek article online, other than that vast right wing conspiracy thingy...

THE LAST WORD
Anna Ouindlen
0 NE OF THE MOST MAJESTIC DINING rooms in New York City is in the Church of the Holy Apostles. After the landmark building was nearly destroyed by fire in 1990, the Episcopal parish made the decision not to replace the pews so that the nave could become a place of various uses. There are traditional Sunday services, of course, and the gay and lesbian synagogue on Friday
evenings. And every weekday more than a thousand people eat lunch at round tables beneath 12-foot stained-glass windows and a priceless Dutch pipe organ.
"You can't get more Biblical than feeding the hungry," says the Rev. William Greenlavv, the rector.
Holy Apostles has fed the hungry for 25 years now without
There are many reasons why. An agriculture bill that would have increased aid and the food-stamp allotment has been knocking around Congress, where no one ever goes hungry. Donations from a federal program that buys excess crops from farmers and gives them to food banks has shrunk alarmingly. Even the environment and corporate efficiency have contributed to empty pantries: more farmers are producing corn for ethanol, and more companies have conquered quality control, cutting down on those irregular cans and battered boxes that once went to the needy.
What hasn't shrunk is the size of the human stomach. At lunchtime at Holy Apostles, Ernest is hungry, his hand bandaged because he got in a fight, even though he is sober now and has his own place in the Bronx. Janice is hungry, too, she of the beautiful manners and carefully knotted headscarf, who sleeps on the train on winter nights and walks with a cane since being hit by a car. There are the two veterans, both Marines, with the raddled faces and slightly unfocused eyes of those who sleep outdoors, which
Blessed Is the Full Plate
A terrible shortage of food for the poor grips the country.
Where is the political will to do the right thing for the hungry?
missing a single weekday, including the morning after the fire, when the church lay in ruins, still smoldering, and 943 meals were served by candlelight. There's a queue on Ninth Avenue by midmorning; sometimes tourists think there's a wait for some exclusive New York happening until they notice the shabby clothes, piles of shopping bags and unshaven faces that are the small unmistakable markers of poverty.
The poor could be forgiven for feeling somewhat poorer nowadays. The share of the nation's income going to the top 1 percent of its citizens is at its highest level since 1928, just before the big boom went bust. But poverty is not a subject that's been discussed much by the current administration, who were wild to bring freedom to the Iraqis but not bread to the South Bronx. "Hunger is hard for us as a nation to admit," says Clyde Kuemmerle, who oversees the volunteers at Holy Apostles. "That makes it hard to talk about and impossible to run on."
At Holy Apostles the issue is measured in mouthfuls. Pasta, collard greens, bread, cling peaches. But in this anniversary year the storage shelves are less full, the pipeline less predictable. The worst emergency food shortage in years is plaguing charities from Maine to California, even while the number of those who need help grows. The director of City Harvest in New York, Jilly Stephens, has told her staff they have to find another million pounds of food over the next few months to make up the shortfall. "Half as many pantry bags" is the mantra heard now that the city receives half the amount of emergency food than it once did from the Feds. In Los Angeles 24 million pounds of food in 2002 became 15 million in 2006; in Oregon 13 million pounds dwindled to six. It's a cockamamie new math that denies the reality of hunger amid affluence.
98 NEWSWEEK i NOVEMBER 26, 2007
means mostly always being half-awake, and that group of Chinese women who don't speak English, and the Muslim couple who sit alone. Mostly it's single men at Holy Apostles. Some are mentally and some are addicts, and to repair their lives would take a lot of help. But at the moment they have an immediate problem with an immediate answer: pasta, collard greens, bread, cling peaches.
This place is a blessing, and an outrage. "We call these people our guests," says the rector. "They are the children of God." That's real God talk. The political arena has been lousy with the talk-show variety in recent years: worrying about whether children could pray in school instead of whether they'd eaten before they got there, obsessing about the beginning of life instead of the end of poverty, concerned with private behavior instead of public generosity.
There's a miracle in which an enormous crowd comes to hear Jesus and he feeds them all by turning a bit of bread and fish into enough to serve the multitudes. The truth is that America is so rich that political leaders could actually produce some variant of that miracle if they had the will. And, I suppose, if they thought there were votes in it. Enough with the pious sanctimony about gay marriage and abortion. If elected officials want to bring God talk into public life, let it be the bedrock stuff, about charity and mercy and the least of our brethren. Instead of the performance art of the presidential debate, the candidates should come to Holy Apostles and do what good people, people of faith, do there every day—feed the hungry, comfort the weary, soothe the afflicted. And wipe down the tables after each seating. Here's a prayer for every politician: pasta, collard greens, bread, cling peaches. Amen.

[Pat]

P.S.

I ain't never were so good at that OCR stuff...