Gilbert Gutknecht: “It underscores the real danger of playing this class warfare game. Abraham Lincoln warned many, many years ago that you…”

“It underscores the real danger of playing this class warfare game. Abraham Lincoln warned many, many years ago that you cannot help the poor by hurting the rich. In other words, we are all in the same boat. You cannot sink half of them. When they tried to do it, when they tried the luxury boat tax, it had a net negative revenue consequence. That was bad. But what was worse, over 10,000 honest, hard-working Americans lost their jobs. That is the danger of playing this class warfare game. I think we have to talk in the terms that President Kennedy talked about over 30 years ago. He said a rising tide lifts all boats. When he cut marginal tax rates across-the-board, guess who benefited the most? People with the highest incomes. But in the end who really benefitted in terms of more jobs, more economic activity, and a faster growing economy? It was people who needed the jobs worse. President Kennedy understood the principle of a rising tide lifting all boats. Unfortunately, there are Members of this body today who seem to think that if you cannot pick winners and losers you should not do anything to try to improve the state of everybody. I think that is wrong. I think there are people here who unfortunately have gotten into this game that there always have been to be losers and we must always defend the losers. That is simply not true. We have to talk about expanding the pie for everybody. If we do, the American people understand this.”