BRATTLEBORO-The upcoming Democratic primary between Emilie Kornheiser and Amanda Ellis-Thurber is a political travesty.
Praised by her colleagues in the House and Senate as "a tremendous leader" (Rep. Tristan Toleno) who "looks at tax policy in a different way that has eyes strictly on Vermonters and Vermonters' needs" (Rep. Emily Long), Kornheiser chairs the House Ways and Means Committee. She rose to that position of prominence in six short years.
In last year's session she became the voice of a bill to tax those earning over $500,000 a year in order to generate $10 million annually for affordable housing. The bill "roared to victory in the House," as The Commons reported [News, May 8], but senators representing the wealthy minority (less than 2% of Vermonters earn $500,000 a year) stopped it in its tracks.
Now, a faction of the Democratic Party (made up perhaps of Republicans in Democratic clothing?) has fielded a primary candidate to oppose Kornheiser and turn back her leadership for Vermonters and their needs.
Amanda Ellis-Thurber is that candidate. In the campaign kickoff for Ellis-Thurber, supporters made clear their support of a milquetoast version of Ronald Reagan's "trickle-down" theory of economics.
"We need to protect those assets that generate revenue and wealth" so as to "expand economic opportunity and expand our economy," one supporter, Craig Miskovich, told The Commons.
That sounds rosy - just as rosy now as it did to Republicans during the Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump administrations, each of which passed tax cuts for the wealthy on the premise that the wealthy would spread their riches downward.
The record shows just the opposite.
Protecting wealth in the name of economic growth enriches the rich and burdens everyone else. As a 2015 study by the International Monetary Fund demonstrates, increasing the income share of the top 20% results in lower growth, or more bluntly, when the rich get richer, "benefits do not trickle down."
Rather, when top individual and corporate tax rates were at their highest between 1946 and 1980, so too was economic growth ("Tax Rates and Economic Growth," Congressional Research Service, June 2014).
As Matthew Cunningham-Cook suggests in his letter to the editor ["Candidate has financial interest in opposing short-term rental tax," June 19], Amanda Ellis-Thurber appears to be running for office to protect "her own finances as well as the finances of people who are involved with her campaign."
And she's doing so using a time-tested Republican playbook.
Amanda Ellis-Thurber is a Trojan horse competing in the Democratic primary to squash the aspirations of the party to improve the lives of Vermonters.
Nick Biddle
Brattleboro
This letter to the editor was submitted to The Commons.
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