Elizabeth Warren's new web ad emphasizing her support for all of us, including small businesses.
Elizabeth Warren has an answer for Mitt Romney and Scott Brown, who are distorting her and President's Obama message about making it in America, and the
concern trolls masquerading as Democrats who think she sounds like too much of a populist. In an op-ed in Politico, a rousing defense of small business, she says straight out
"I meant what I said."
I stood before a group of voters in Massachusetts last year and talked about what it would take to move forward as a nation. I laid out how we all needed to invest in our country, to build a strong foundation for our families today and make sure the next kid with the great idea has the chance to succeed. [...]
When small businesses grow and flourish, we should applaud their success, and the companies should benefit from their hard work and clever ideas. But here’s my point: If a business makes it big, the reward shouldn’t be the ability to rig the system to stop the next guy. [...]
If a business takes its profits to the Cayman Islands, ships its jobs overseas or finds a loophole to avoid paying its fair share of taxes, then that business now has a leg up over every small business and start up that can’t take advantage of those loopholes. Sometimes the big can get bigger not because they are better but because they can work the system better. That’s bad for every small business in America.
Asked recently about news that Mitt Romney had money in offshore tax havens, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said, “It’s really American to avoid paying taxes, legally…. It’s a game we play. … I see nothing wrong with playing the game because we set it up to be a game.”
Graham is right about one thing—it’s a game for some. It’s a rigged game that benefits big corporations and billionaires who can deploy armies of lobbyists and lawyers to create those tax loopholes and then exploit them.
But for the tens of millions of working families and small businesses left holding the bag—it’s not a game. For the small businesses that can’t spend millions of dollars to hire lobbyists who get them special deals or hire armies of lawyers to move their money overseas or restructure their operations to take advantage of every loophole, it isn’t a game.
Politics, governing, war, the world economy and our household economy—it's all a game for Republicans, just like Lindsey Graham admitted. Worse for America, it's a zero-sum game. They've got to win it all, and they're not winning it for the benefit of the vast majority of Americans.
Neither Elizabeth Warren nor Barack Obama have been attacking small business or our nation's entrepreneurs. What they're talking about, and are going to continue to talk about, is giving the same chance that created every successful business in this country to anyone with a good idea and the drive to try to create something out of it. There's not much that's more apple pie American than that. No matter how much Mitt Romney and Scott Brown try to twist their words.
Thank Elizabeth Warren for standing by her words and send her $3 on ActBlue.