EDITORIAL: Colorado Democrat Jared Polis Would “Soak” The Middle Class With Higher Taxes

Democrat gubernatorial nominee Jared Polis is making it clear that he’s not looking out for Colorado’s middle class – and wants to force them to pay higher taxes.

As a recent editorial for The Colorado Gazette notes, Polis “wants to soak the middle class with taxes more than any other Washington politician” to pay for his radical far-left agenda of a complete government takeover of healthcare and an unaffordable energy mandate.

Polis’s plans to “soak” the middle-class are nothing new. In Congress, Polis has sponsored tax-hiking legislation that is “more extreme than anything proposed by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.”

Colorado’s working families can’t afford to pay the costs of Jared Polis’s extremism.

Colorado Gazette editorial:

“Jared Polis wants to soak the middle class with taxes more than any other Washington politician.

The super-rich Boulder congressman and Democratic nominee for governor pitches free health care for all. He proposes student loan relief, 100 percent renewable energy, and a slate of other government giveaways the middle class would pay for with soaring utility rates and larger withholdings from paychecks.

While wage earners cannot escape taxes, the same is not true of Rep. Polis.

Polis doubled his net worth during the past 10 years in Congress. The Center for Responsive Politics estimates his net worth close to $400 million.

When Polis first ran for Congress in 2008, the Boulder Daily Camera reported he had paid no taxes for five years.

Reporters asked the congressman Tuesday whether he had paid taxes every year of his congressional career.

‘Polis deflected,’ writes Colorado Politics reporter Ernest Luning.

The Colorado Sun’s John Frank, a former Denver Post political reporter, writes this week: ‘Jared Polis demanded that Donald Trump release his tax returns and helped lead an attempt in Congress to force the Republican candidate to do so. Now, Polis won’t release his own tax returns as the Democratic nominee for governor in Colorado.’

Stupendously wealthy politicians have lawful options to get around taxes, so we have no reason to suspect Polis cheated. No one should blame him for minimizing tax liabilities with business investments that create wealth. The Polis tax drama only highlights how the politician lives a different reality than Coloradans who work for wages and pay their taxes before receiving take-home pay. They never get a five-year tax reprieve.

People who pay taxes the old fashioned way will lose substantial income if Polis gets his way.

Polis in May became the first member of Congress to introduce a bill to repeal the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. The tax cuts mean more take-home pay for wage earners and have led to rising incomes. Polis seems to oppose these middle-class benefits, probably because he doesn’t know firsthand how much they mean to average households.

‘It is the first piece of legislation that would entirely reverse the tax cuts passed last year,’ reported The Hill in Washington, just before Polis introduced his proposed tax increase.

The Polis tax bill was more extreme than anything proposed by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Unlike Polis, they proposed undoing tax cuts for only the top 1 percent of wage earners.

Unlike Polis, Republican gubernatorial nominee Walker Stapleton defends middle-class incomes. As Colorado treasurer, Stapleton led the defeat of a billion-dollar tax increase known as Amendment 66. He led a campaign to trounce a single-payer health care proposal, saving wage earners from a 10 percent state income tax.”