Analysis: GOP Senators Represent More Than Four Times As Many Unemployed People As Wealthy Households

Our guest blogger is Tony Carrk, Policy Director for Progressive Media.

Last week, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) admitted on the Senate floor that a proposal to extend tax cuts for families with incomes below $1 million would entail a tax increase for “just a small number of people, most of whom live on Wall Street and in New York.” This bout of honesty made it painstakingly clear that President Obama was correct yesterday when he called tax cuts for the wealthy the “holy grail” of conservative economic theory

In striking a tax deal with Obama, Republicans insisted that the price of extending middle-class tax cuts and unemployment benefits for middle-class families (along other initiatives to boost the economy) would be extending the Bush tax cuts for the rich and slashing the estate tax. As Pat Garofalo and Michael Linden noted yesterday, the GOP’s priorities would cost $133 billion to benefit fewer than 5 million people, whereas the Democratic priorities cost $214 billion, but would help 156 million people.

The chart below highlights these lopsided priorities. On average, states represented by Republican Senators have more than four times the number of unemployed people as they do households earning more than $200,000. (And under President Obama’s plan to extend tax cuts only for those making less than $250,000 per year, some of these households would have still avoided a tax increase.) Yet, Republicans held unemployment benefits hostage to tax cuts for the wealthy:

This chart does not include Ohio, as Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH) has said that he will vote against any bill that extends any of the Bush tax cuts without paying for them. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) predicted yesterday that the “vast majority” of the Senate Republican caucus will ultimately support the tax deal.