That explains the waffling:
Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for Montana’s open House seat, stands to get tax cuts worth nearly $800,000 a year if the House health care bill becomes law, according to a new analysis.
The American Health Care Act, as the Republican bill that passed the House of Representatives is known, repeals the two tax hikes on higher earners that the Affordable Care Act used to fund expansion of insurance coverage: a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income and a 0.9 percent increase in the Medicare Hospital Insurance tax. Both taxes apply to individuals making $200,000 a year or more, and married couples making $250,000 a year or more.
Based on Gianforte’s average yearly investment and wage income from 2005 to 2014, his annual tax bill would go down $785,413 if the AHCA passed, according to an analysis released Friday by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Tax March, an organization backed by labor unions and progressive groups.
CAP Action Fund senior fellow Seth Hanlon, a tax attorney who worked for former President Barack Obama, conducted the report.
Hanlon calculated the size of the tax cuts based on the income reported in Gianforte and his wife Susan’s tax returns from 2005 to 2014. Gianforte released them as part of his failed bid for governor of Montana in 2016.
Gianforte, 56, founded two successful software companies, including RightNow Technologies, which he sold to Oracle for $1.5 billion in 2011.
He and his wife made, on average, over $20 million a year in investment income and $1.6 million a year in ordinary wages over the ten-year period for which Gianforte disclosed his earnings. Assuming he continued to maintain this average going forward, he would get a $772,981 annual tax break from repeal of the net investment income tax and another $12,432 from elimination of the Medicare Hospital Insurance surtax.
Rob Quist (D. MT-AL) has been making health care a signature issue in his race against Gianforte by citing the New York Times article catching Gianforte telling GOP donors that he supports the GOP’s health care plan while telling voters he opposes it. Quist has been campaigning on making Medicare For All a reality in Congress and has caused the race to tighten significantly. It’s also been a big factor in helping Quist raise a lot of money for his campaign:
Donations to Rob Quist, the bluegrass legend who won an unlikely bid for the nomination in March, have surpassed $5 million, his campaign announced on Thursday. The contributions averaged less than $25 each and came from roughly 200,000 individuals. For context, donations to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has endorsed Quist, averaged $27 donations during his insurgent bid for the Democratic presidential nomination last year.
Fundraising surged this month after Greg Gianforte, Quist’s multimillionaire Republican opponent, waffled on his support for the controversial health care bill just passed by the House. Gianforte told conservative lobbyists he backed the bill in a private call later published by The New York Times. He walked back the comment days later amid uproar from the more than 70,000 voters whose health insurance could be imperiled if the deeply unpopular American Health Care Act becomes law.
Quist, who supports single-payer health care and legalizing marijuana, has weathered his own history of financial woes, stemming from what he says was a botched gallbladder surgery that for years left him unqualified for affordable insurance.
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