The 48 hour reports on campaign contributions reported on Form 6 filed by U.S. House candidates with the Federal Election Commission can be very interesting. The 4th Congressional District race is no exception:

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-510060

Committee: VICKY HARTZLER FOR CONGRESS

Neil Hirsch

New York, New York

Employer: N/A

Occupation: unemployed

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Neil Hirsch

New York, New York

Employer: N/A

Occupation: unemployed

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Andrea Carlton

Nashville, Tennessee

Employer: N/A

Occupation: unemployed

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 2400.00

Family Research Council Action PAC

Washington, DC

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 5000.00

Waffle House INC Pac

Norcross, Georgia

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 3000.00

Nancy Hunt

Dallas, Texas

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Total Itemized Contributions = [$]13400.00

[emphasis added]

Well, at least IHOP hasn’t weighed in on the race.

Do you think Waffle House has any DoD service contracts? Just asking. If LBJ were president, not anymore.

There’s more:

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-510311

Committee: VICKY HARTZLER FOR CONGRESS

Marianne Kilroy

Kansas City, Missouri

Employer: Kilroy Photography

Occupation: Self-employed

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1500.00

John Holstein

Springfield, Missouri

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

William Bush

St Louis, Missouri

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Keith Acuff

Springfield MO

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

House Conservative Fund

Alexandria, Virginia

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Chien-I Lai

Springfield, Idaho

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Rodney Johnson

Springfield, Missouri

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

David Lockton

Kansas City, Missouri

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

William Darr

Springfield MO

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Virginia Ford

Springfield, Missouri

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Total Itemized Contributions = [$]10500.00

[emphasis added]

Apparently a lot of people work for Information Requested.

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-506584

Committee: VICKY HARTZLER FOR CONGRESS

Eugene Massey

Captiva, Florida

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/19/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

National Pro-Life Pac

Annandale, Virginia 22003

Employer: Information Requested

Occupation: Information Requested

Date Contributed = 10/19/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Total Itemized Contributions = [$]2000.00

And the incumbent? He’s no slouch at fundraising:

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-510331

Committee: IKE SKELTON FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE

Adam Smith for Congress Committee

Federal Way, Washington

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 2000.00

Samuel D. Adcock

Vienna, Virginia 22180

Employer: EADS North America

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Air Line Pilots Association Intl PAC

Washington, DC

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 2500.00

Joseph Ceci

Huntsville, Alabama

Employer: Main Street Strategies

Occupation: President

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Adam Fischer

Sedalia, Missouri

Employer: Self-Employed

Occupation: Business Operator

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1400.00

T. Joseph Lopez

Annandale, Virginia

Occupation: Retired

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 2400.00

James Mathewson

Sedalia, Missouri

Occupation: Retired

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1400.00

James B. Nutter, Jr.

Kansas City, Missouri

Employer: James B. Nutter & Company

Occupation: President

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 2300.00

Sean OKeefe

Arlington, Virginia

Employer: EADS North America

Occupation: CEO

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

William J. Shumake

Sedalia, Missouri 653011056

Employer: Town & Country Motors

Occupation: Owner

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1400.00

Dianne Simon

Cole Camp, Missouri

Employer: Thompson Hills

Occupation: Property Managment

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1350.00

Treece Phillips LLC

Jefferson City, Missouri

Date Contributed = 10/22/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Total Itemized Contributions = [$]18750.00

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-508602

Committee: IKE SKELTON FOR CONGRESS COMMITTEE

AGSH&F Civic Action Committee

Washington, DC

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 1200.00

American Hospital Association PAC

Washington, DC

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 4000.00

FLIR Systems, Inc. Employee PAC

Wilsonville, Oregon

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 2500.00

Alan Franco

New Orleans, Louisiana

Employer: RNDC

Occupation: Executive

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 1500.00

James A. Hayes

Mc Lean, Virginia

Employer: Self-Employed

Occupation: Attorney

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 2400.00

Michael E. Herman

Kansas City, Missouri

Employer: Herman Family Trading Co.

Occupation: President

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Woody L. Hunt

El Paso, Texas

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Husch Blackwell Sanders PAC

Kansas City, Missouri

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 4000.00

Universal Asset Management, LLC

Harrisonville, Missouri

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Universal Health Services

Employees Good Govt Fund

King Of Prussia, Pennsylvania

Date Contributed = 10/20/2010

Amount Contributed = 1000.00

Wendys Arbys Group PAC

4288 W. Dublin Granville Road

Dublin, Ohio 43017

Date Contributed = 10/21/2010

Amount Contributed = 2000.00

Total Itemized Contributions = [$]21600.00

Burgers and fries!

Politicians and actors may have some things in common, but as far as Vicky Hartzler is concerned, it’s just a cryin’ shame that politics isn’t more like show business where no publicity is bad publicity. Think Progress looked into Vicky Hartzler’s  background and found that the self-described “lifelong farmer and a small town girl” had received “$774,325 in federal subsidies from 1995 to 2009.” Nothing wrong there – unless, like Hartzler, you tell a conservative radio host that “we just want the government to leave us alone here in Missouri’s 4th.” It seems that Hartzler’s slogan is no government interference except when it comes to taxpayer financed farm subsidies. Isn’t this what they call biting the hand that feeds you?

To her credit, Hartzler, as Think Progress notes, seems to knows that there are some people out there who might consider her stance hypocritical and, consequently, does not mention the subsidies when she discusses agriculture on her Webpage. However, if she did decide to “come out,” she would have plenty of Tea Party and GOP company. It’s hard to count all the Tea Partiers who seem to have their hands out for a hand-out – Joe Miller in Alaska and Sharon Angle in Nevada are two of the more recent cases to come to light. Steve Benen, on the topic of Tea Partiers’ proclivity for government welfare, summed  it up beautifully:

For the right-wing crowd, subsidies for 32 million Americans with no health insurance is outrageous, but subsidies for conservative farmers is not an issue “at all.

Halloween approaches.

The Great Orange Satan has a bone to pick with Senator Claire McCaskill (D):

Dear selfish, big mouth, grandstanding Democrats

by brooklynbadboy

Tue Oct 19, 2010 at 08:56:03 AM PDT

One of the problems with some of you Democrats is that you all must have played ping-pong in high school rather than a team sport. I’d just like to give you a brief description of what a team is and how it is supposed to work…..

….So, Senator McCaskill, just because you don’t like the ads that Jack Conway is running in Kentucky, that is not an opportunity for you to grandstand about how sanctimonious and upright you are….

Yes, me musn’t let any opportunity to practice High Broderism on the Sunday cable talk shows be endangered by hitting the republicans in the forehead with the two by four of their own hypocrisy:

…A fetishistic attachment to bipartisanship for bipartisanship’s sake; reflexive adherence to false equivalencies, regardless of whether what one side says is patently insane…

Only in fiction:

…Because I’m tired of working for candidates who make me think that I should be embarrassed to believe what I believe, Sam! I’m tired of getting them elected! We all need some therapy, because somebody came along and said, “‘Liberal’ means soft on crime, soft on drugs, soft on Communism, soft on defense, and we’re gonna tax you back to the Stone Age because people shouldn’t have to go to work if they don’t want to!” And instead of saying, “Well, excuse me, you right-wing, reactionary, xenophobic, homophobic, anti-education, anti-choice, pro-gun, Leave It To Beaver trip back to the Fifties…!”, we cowered in the corner, and said, “Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me.” No more. I really don’t care who’s right, who’s wrong. We’re both right. We’re both wrong. Let’s have two parties, huh? What do you say?…

It’s their world, we only get to live in it and get to man the phonebanks, and walk door-to-door, and do literature drops, and eat crappy fried food for two months because every freakin’ waking hour during final run up to the presidential election two years ago was devoted to trying to change the freakin’ world so that maybe, just maybe, there would be a little more justice in the world.

Instead, we get this reality:

Ike Skelton Supports Repealing Health Care Law

POSTED: 7:14 pm CDT October 15, 2010

UPDATED: 7:50 pm CDT October 15, 2010

Missouri Congressman Ike Skelton, who voted against the health care law, tells KMBC’s Mike Mahoney the entire law should be dumped. He is facing a stiff challenge from Vicky Hartzler.

Change we all worked so hard for? Not so much.

Via the Turner Report, from the Federal Election Commission:

FORM 6

CONTRIBUTIONS

FILING FEC-502962

Committee: VICKY HARTZLER FOR CONGRESS

SarahPAC

PO Box 7711

Arlington, Virginia 22207

Date Contributed = 10/16/2010

Amount Contributed = [$]5000.00

[emphasis added]

This says it all, don’t it?

Like a grifter pulling a long con…

More scare tactic campaign mail from an astroturf right wingnut corporatist organization.

Previously: 60 Plus Association – rightwing campaign mail: fear as a tool

This stuff is slick and expensive:

The address side of the mail piece.

Note the scare tactic “IRS Notice.” And then this:

This IRS Notice is NOT real.

That defeats the whole purpose of the mailing, doesn’t it? If it’s not real than you shouldn’t be afraid of it.

The “B” side is just as pathetic:

The back side of the mail piece.

Ah, it’s directed at Representative Ike Skelton (D).

…Social Security….will be bankrupt…

Wrong. They have that much contempt for people in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District – they think voters are stoopid.

Here’s the rich part – this astroturf group isn’t concerned about preserving Social Security. In fact, they have been advocates for privatization.

And as for their scare tactics about Social Security, here are the facts:

Social Security Sense and Nonsense

…Social Security is a well-run, fiscally responsible program.  People earn retirement, survivors, and disability benefits by making payroll tax contributions during their working years…

….Every year since 1984, Social Security has collected more in payroll taxes and other income than it pays in benefits and other expenses.  (The authors of the 1983 Social Security reform law did this on purpose in order to help pre-fund some of the costs of the baby boomers’ retirement.)  These surpluses are invested in U.S. Treasury securities that are every bit as sound as the U.S. government securities held by investors around the globe; investors regard these securities as among the world’s very safest investments.

Investing the trust funds in Treasury securities is perfectly appropriate.  The federal government borrows funds from Social Security to help finance its ongoing operations in the same way that consumers and businesses borrow money deposited in a bank to finance their spending.  In neither case does this represent a “raid” on the funds.  The bank depositor will get his or her money back when needed, and so will the Social Security trust funds.

As far back as 1938, independent advisors to Social Security firmly endorsed the investment of Social Security surpluses in Treasury securities, saying that it does “not involve any misuse of these moneys or endanger the safety of these funds….”

This is the consequence of Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (No. 08-205) – astroturf right wingnut corporatist organizations can spend unlimited amounts of money to pervert our elections, and because obstructionists in the republican minority carry water for them, these organizations don’t have to divulge who is bankrolling them.

GOP candidates have been running their mouths a lot about jobs, mostly in relation to lower taxes for their favored, well-off constituencies. Roy Blunt’s campaign for Senate, for instance, has produced a “Jobs Plan,” that is long on GOP boiler-plate (and equally long on “solutions” that seem designed to play well with the energy and telecom industries who support his political ambitions so generously). Rhetoric aside, what does the current GOP record actually look like when proposals that would really have an impact on employment are put on the table?

A rarely discussed structural problem that contributes to the current jobless recovery is that many of the good-paying, manufacturing jobs have been outsourced over the past decade – good for corporations that can exploit the poor in third world countries with impunity, bad for the U.S. employment picture. Roy Blunt doesn’t even mention this problem in his jobs plan. GOP Senate team-player, Kit Bond, voted just this week to keep a bill from coming up for a vote that would have imposed tax penalties on companies that outsource their production. Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, voted to end debate and permit a vote on the legislation.

Small business owners often cite tight credit that discourages expansion to explain their failure to hire new workers. However, Republicans, who talk endlessly about the importance of small businesses for recovery, have for months stonewalled legislation designed to address just that issue.

The long-stalled small business lending legislation was passed in the Senate only recently with the help of two Republican Senators who plan to retire at the end of their current terms, which means that they no longer need fear repercussions from the NO party’s leadership or its Tea Party-addled base. However, Missouri’s retiring Republican Senator, Kit Bond, good GOP soldier that he is, kept faith and continued to march in lockstep with the Party of NO (jobs).

On the House side, Roy Blunt was so busy out on the campaign trail running his mouth about jobs creation that he couldn’t manage to even vote on the Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010. But Blaine Luetkemeyer, Jo Ann Emerson, Sam Graves, and Todd Akin made up for Roy’s indisposition, and handily voted against the interests of the small businesses they love to talk up as the real job creators. You want to know how Missouri Democratic Reps. Carnahan, Cleaver, Clay, and Skelton voted? If you even have to ask, just click on their names and learn who really stands with the middle class.

There are lots of clichés that reflect how strongly Americans feel abut personal integrity: walking the walk, talking out of both sides of your mouth, putting up or shutting up – you can probably supply many more. Today’s question is, when it comes to jobs for ordinary, middle class Americans, as opposed to more moolah for the GOP’s corporate sugar daddies, how many Republicans can you point to who walk the walk, talk straight, and put up when push comes to shove. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see too many in our Missouri GOP congressional delegation.

Missouri will likely lose a House seat according to a new estimate based on 2010 Census data. The loss will significantly affect Missouri’s overall impact on national issues; the state would will lose an electoral college vote, for instance, and each district would will be somewhat larger, permitting less representative granularity. The most immediate impact, however, would will be the shape of Missouri’s House delegation. The process of reapportionment should be especially interesting given that Missouri has a Democratic governor and a Republican controlled legislature, a situation that is likely to persist for awhile at least.

In April, Nathaniel90 at the Swing State Project offered a speculative map showing how Missouri’s political environment, coupled with the loss of a House seat,  might affect reapportionment. I found myself, as a current resident in Rep. Akin’s 2nd district, very interested the first point he made:

The real question for me was which districts to combine. With power balanced between the parties, it was obvious that one Republican and one Democrat had to face off in a “fair fight” district, leading to an obvious solution: a suburban St. Louis seat forcing Todd Akin (R) and Russ Carnahan (D) together. […] the legislature won’t draw anything too friendly for Carnahan’s south-of-the-city base, and that Gov. Nixon would balk at a map too heavy in Akin’s northern suburbs.

Were this to happen, it could give us at least some chance of finally getting rid of the egregious embarrassment that is Todd Akin. It also puts Carnahan’s Democratic seat at risk (assuming that Carnahan holds it this November), but it might be worth it. I am one of the few who believes that if the Missouri Democratic party had been willing to put more energy into Akin’s district over the past few years, he would be a lot more vulnerable right now, even without redistricting. A new competitive district might be just the ticket.

The second biggie that Nathaniel90 struggled with is the outlook for Ike Skelton’s rather strange 4th district:

The other problem in Missouri was what to do with Ike Skelton’s (D) heavily Republican district spanning the rural areas between Kansas City and Columbia. I figured that a bipartisan plan means incumbent protection, and the Democrats know Skelton will be 81 when the 113th Congress convenes and is not far from retirement. I thus drew a swing district stretching from the close-in Kansas City suburbs to college town Columbia that would not only easily reelect Skelton, but provide a future Dem with a decent shot at holding the 4th District.

Nathaniel90’s final conclusion about the best of all possible outcomes (note the emphasis on “possible”):

So there would be four safe Republican seats, two safe Democratic seats, and two swing seats (one of them safe for an incumbent Democrat as long as he chooses to run). Believe it or not, this is probably the closest thing to a Dem-friendly map one could get from today’s Missouri legislature.

I don’t have the experience or background with Missouri’s political map that would allow me to comment knowledgeably about the overall state picture. Does anyone think the situation will roll out differently?

Heh. You get to turn left at the Missouri sign.

Announcer: After thirty-three years in Washington Ike Skelton’s gotten lost. Instead of voting for Missouri, Skelton’s voting Pelosi’s party line, for Obama’s failed stimulus, for Nancy Pelosi’s irresponsible budget, for the death tax, even for a new job killing energy tax that could devastate Missouri’s farmers and cost over twenty thousand jobs. Ike Skelton, voting with Washington, costing Missouri. The National Republican Congressional Committee is responsible for the content of this advertising.

Well, apparently Vicky Hartzler (r) is running against Nancy Pelosi twice.

A question for the NRCC, is Roy Blunt (r-lobbyists) a Washington insider? Just asking.

A piece of campaign mail, directed at older voters in the 4th Congressional District, was sent by the 60 Plus Association:

The 60 Plus Association: A Corporate Assault in “Good-for-Seniors” Clothing

The 60 Plus Association, a pharmaceutical industry front group, claims it is a “nonpartisan senior advocacy group,” but it really operates counter to elderly citizens’ best interests. 60 Plus advocates positions on issues that benefit big corporations but that stand to harm seniors….

A Scary Primer on the 60-Plus Association

The “60-Plus Association” was AstroTurf before AstroTurf was cool. These kinds of right wing phony groups are a dime a dozen now. 60-Plus is a DC outfit mostly made up of longtime Republican operatives that pretend to be concerned about senior issues. In reality they appear to exist for little more than to help Republicans win elections and to scare the elderly….

….The 60-Plus Association fancies itself as a right-wing version of the AARP but its IRS filings show that it derives zero dollars from actual membership dues, even though it lists over $1.8 million in revenues. So if they are not getting their money from their nonexistent “membership” then how are they paying to scare… seniors? [60-Plus Association 2008 IRS Form 990]

Some of that question was answered when AARP hired an independent investigator to thoroughly research the phony group and they found that the pharmaceutical industry is actually paying a lot of the bills. The report revealed that in 2001 alone, 60-Plus got hundreds of thousands of dollars from some of the following: the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA); drug companies like Merck, Pfizer and Wyeth-Ayerst, and even from Hanwha International Corp.; which is the U.S. subsidiary of a Korean conglomerate with chemical and pharmaceutical interests. For this reason a Public Citizen report described 60-Plus as being part of “PhRMA’s Stealth PACS” [pdf]. [AARP Bulletin Today, “Pulling Strings from Afar”, 2003]….

The mailing text (on the “B side”):

The irresponsible bureaucrats and politicians in Washington are bankrupting our Social Security, our Medicare, and our nation at a record speed.

The consequences of this reckless and uncontrolled spending spree are clear: An economy handcuffed by uncertainty, millions of lost jobs, ruined pensions, unaffordable and rationed health care, thousands of failed businesses, a worthless dollar, and a future America without liberty and prosperity….

….call your United States Representative, Ike Skelton, right now….and demand he vote to repeal “ObamaCare”, to ban eramarks, bailouts, and “stimulus” boondoggles….

…It’s Our Country, Our Health Care and Our Prosperity….

Really, they claim to be defenders of Social Security?

The 60 Plus Association, Proud Supporters of Social Security Privatization

David Weigel 11/12/09 5:28 PM

One important fact about the 60 Plus Association’s move into the health care debate is that from 1995 through really the end of the Bush administration, its big cause was support for Social Security privatization. It did a lot of blocking and tackling when President Bush pushed for privatization in 2005, and it kept on message long after he dropped the campaign…

How’s that privatization thing working out for you? You know, investing it in the stock market so people running high risk schemes can bankrupt you.

And, as if dubya’s administration didn’t exist from 2001 to 2009? Let’s see the TARP bailout occurred under which president? Uh, dubya.

Nope, it’s the corporations’ country, it’s the insurance companies’ health care, and it’s the top one percent’s prosperity. The rest of us only get to live here.

Last week I noted that no members of the Missouri Democratic House delegation had signed onto a letter to Speaker Pelosi from Blue-Dog Democrats in the House who are in favor of extending all of BuschCo’s upper bracket tax cuts. As far as I know, this is still the truth – a list maintained on Politico has not been updated to show any of their names. Nor, as of Sept. 18th, had Claire McCaskill’s name been added to the list of six Democratic Senators known to be in favor of extending the Bush goodies for the upper crust.

While this is good news, it could be even better. Today, via DailyKos, we learn that 36 House Democrats have signed onto a letter written by House Progressive Caucus members Mary Jo Kilroy, Alan Grayson, and Raul Grijalva, which calls calls for a vote, “before Congress adjourns in October on repealing the tax cuts for the top two percent, and making the middle class tax cuts permanent.” Wouldn’t it be wonderful if some of our Missouri reps signed on?

Can we convince our Missouri Democrats to stand up and act like leaders? Leaders don’t resort to protective camouflage – or at least smart ones don’t when there’s no reason for them to hide. Letting tax cuts for those with incomes in the top 2% expire is not only the right thing to do, it’s a politically smart strategy.

The text of the letter and the signatories over the fold:

Dear Madam Speaker:

Last decade, President Bush rammed through Congress a multi-billion dollar give-away for the wealthiest Americans on the backs of our nation’s middle-class. In the process, the aforementioned Bush tax cuts eviscerated an unprecedented budget surplus and weakened our nation’s fiscal health. As the Bush tax cuts are set to expire, we respectfully urge you to bring to the floor, before Congress adjourns in October, a vote on President Obama’s recently proposed tax plan: permanent tax cuts for the middle-class while allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, using any additional revenue to close our budget deficit.

We must show the American people that our Democratic Majority stands for them — people who have worked hard, played by the rules and depend on these tax breaks to make ends meet. We also need to get serious about cutting our budget deficit by allowing the Bush tax cuts for the rich to expire.

Some have argued that the Bush tax cuts help to stimulate the economy, or that allowing these cuts to expire would hurt our nation’s small businesses. This is flat out wrong. According to a recent report by the Center for American Progress, the economy boasted 132 million jobs in June 2001, the month that the first of the Bush tax cuts was signed into law. By June 2004, there were just 131.4 million jobs — a decrease of 600,000 jobs. Furthermore, a recent report from the Tax Policy Center states that, “Roughly 97 percent of small businesses would not be affected at all by increases in the top two tax rates.”

Rather, extending the Bush tax cuts will result in an $830 billion give-away for the nation’s wealthiest Americans, significantly increasing government debt, the interest on which will be paid by our nation’s middle-class for years to come. This astronomical sum could instead be used to close our budget deficit.

It is critical that we pass the Obama middle-class tax cuts — not providing an even greater lift for the wealthiest Americans who don’t need it.

Tammy Baldwin

Robert Brady

Michael Capuano

Andre Carson

Steve Cohen

John Conyers

Donna Edwards

Elliot Engel

Keith Ellison

Bob Filner

Marcia Fudge

Raul Grijalva

AlanGrayson

Phil Hare

Alcee L. Hastings

Maurice Hinchey

Mazie Hirono

Mike Honda

Mary Jo Kilroy

Barbara Lee

Sheila Jackson Lee

Jim McDermott

Jim McGovern

Kendrick Meek

Gwen Moore

Tim Ryan

Jan Schakowsky

Carol Shea-Porter

Jackie Speier

Betty Sutton

Peter Welch

Lynn Woolsey

David Wu