With a hard-hitting new video ad, the anti-Trump conservative group known as The Lincoln Project went after Republicans ahead of the midterm elections over a set of policy proposals released by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), who chairs the arm of the national GOP that deals with U.S. Senate races. Scott’s plan pushes the prospect of raising taxes on over half of Americans — “All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax,” it says, as quoted by Fox’s John Roberts.
Although Senate GOP leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) expressed opposition to elements of Scott’s plan, the Florida Republican is relatively prominent among Senate GOP’ers. Should Republicans regain control of the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, there will be a danger of something like Scott’s plan getting put into place. The plan also threatens critical federal support programs like Medicare and Social Security. As quoted by Roberts, the plan also outlines a scenario in which all “federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again” — suggesting Republicans, if they went along with Scott’s proposals, would threaten the continuance of those federal initiatives rather than leaving them alone. A narrator says as follows in the new video from The Lincoln Project:
‘This election is a simple choice. Last time Republicans were in power, they helped billionaires pay less taxes than you. This time, it’s even worse. The Republican plan will raise taxes on over half the country. Democrats have a different plan: raise taxes on billionaires, so you pay less taxes. A simple choice. Republicans: you’ll pay more in taxes. Democrats: billionaires pay more.’
Who do you think should pay more? pic.twitter.com/c6H7HHaXiv
— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 6, 2022
The midterm elections seem likely to be decided by relatively close margins in key respects. Currently, the Senate is split 50-50, with Democrats in control just because of Vice President Kamala Harris’s role as a tiebreaker, and in the House, Republicans currently hold or may soon again hold not even a dozen seats fewer than Democrats, without even factoring redistricting into things. In one critical Senate race — the Georgia contest for the seat currently held by Democrat Raphael Warnock — a recent poll showed the incumbent Democrat five percent ahead of likely Republican challenger Herschel Walker, although five percent of respondents in the survey were undecided. Warnock originally won the seat last year with a leading margin of some two percent, and the upcoming results there this November could be similarly close. In the meantime, Warnock recently raised what his campaign stated was the highest first-quarter total for a U.S. Senate candidate in an election year ever.
Today, we learned that the economy created 428,000 jobs in April — bringing the total number of jobs created since I took office to 8.3 million.
That’s record setting job creation in my first 15 months in office.
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 6, 2022
