DENVER (AP) – In the traffic jam that is the Republican presidential race, Sen. Marco Rubio stands out – and not just for his youth and blue-collar, Cuban-American biography.
Rubio has issued the most detailed economic agenda to aid the middle class, anchored by a book on countering the wage stagnation that has exacerbated inequality between the rich and the rest. Rivals Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and others have similarly decried the growing gap between the haves and have-nots, signaling that Republicans are eager to address a traditionally Democratic issue after seven years of disappointing economic growth.
But the party’s challenges in doing so are laid bare by Rubio’s single biggest economic proposal – a massive tax cut bound to drive up the debt by as much s $4 trillion over the first decade.
That approach is in keeping with right-leaning economic thinking, that the best way to spark growth and increase wages is to reduce the tax burden on businesses, the wealthy and investors. But that has exposed Republicans to Democratic criticism that they favor the rich. Rubio is not exempt from that, despite presenting himself as a champion of the middle class.
“What he says he wants to do and what he actually does are two very different things,” said Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Institute, who has studied the outline put forward by Rubio and Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee. The institute is a research organization of the centrist Brookings Institution and liberal Urban Institute.