Media Reports that Hovde says Press Should Stop Writing Sob Stories about Poor People and Thompson says “Who better than me…to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare”
On the heels of Republican Presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s visit to Wisconsin yesterday, the Democratic Party of Wisconsin released a new web video featuring Romney and Republican U.S. Senate hopefuls Eric Hovde and Tommy Thompson.
As the Huffington Post reported yesterday, “Wisconsin U.S. Senate candidate Eric Hovde (R) says he is sick and tired of reading sad stories about people struggling in the recession.”
Hovde, a multi-millionaire hedge fund banker who has spent the last 24 years in Washington D.C., said last week at a campaign stop in Brookfield, “Stop always writing about, ‘Oh, the person couldn’t get, you know, their food stamps or this or that.’ You know, I saw something the other day — it’s like, another sob story.”
Watch the new Democratic Party of Wisconsin video here.
While Hovde has run nearly $2 million in TV and radio ads attacking the connection between Washington and Wall Street, the Associated Press has previously reported on how he has sought to profit from at least 33 banks that received $188 billion in TARP money. To date, Hovde has refused to release his tax returns and has delayed release of his personal financial interests disclosure to the Senate ethics committee.
“Hovde and Thompson are two Washington insiders who will put bankers, lobbyists and corporate special interests ahead of Wisconsin’s middle class,” said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chair Mike Tate. “They both support giving the millionaires, billionaires and corporations more tax cuts and going back to the same failed policies of the past that let Wall Street write their own rules, crashed our economy and devastated the middle class.”
For his own part, Former Bush Administration Cabinet Secretary Tommy Thompson is featured in the new ad appearing at a Tea Party meeting in Waukesha County saying, “And who better than me, who’s already finished one of the entitlement programs, to come up with programs to do away with Medicaid and Medicare.”
After serving in the Bush Administration, Secretary Thompson cashed in and joined one of Washington’s most influential law firms as a million-dollar-a-year consultant, as they lobby on behalf of drug companies, insurance companies and the oil industry. He has been paid millions of dollars for sitting on dozens corporate boards which he continues to join while he runs for U.S. Senate. In fact, it was recently reported that Thompson was lobbying the North Carolina legislature on behalf private equity interests while he has a financial stake in a Wall Street firm.
All of the Republicans support the Ryan budget plan, which would end Medicare as we know it for future generations while giving budget-busting tax breaks to millionaires, billionaires and corporations that would increase the deficit and shift the burden to middle class families, seniors and those who are struggling most. In fact, Hovde has called Ryan’s plan a “first step” and said “We have to go deeper.”
