Patriotic Millionaires launches district campaign against Paul Ryan and his tax plan

The Patriotic Millionaires this week revealed the first of a series of billboards taking aim at House Speaker Paul Ryan and the GOP tax bill he's championing.

The billboard went up in the Republican's district in Wisconsin.

“Ryan’s agenda is economic suicide for the middle class,” Patriotic Millionaire chair Morris Pearl, a former Blackrock managing director, said in a news release. “The idea that this tax plan will help working Americans is patently absurd.”

The first billboard states: “When millionaires get a tax break, the middle class pays. Does Paul Ryan not know or not care?”

The billboard is located in the congressman's his hometown of Janesville.

Patriotic Millionaires said other billboards will go up across the district.

“Paul Ryan was elected to represent the people of Wisconsin’s first district, not the millionaires and billionaires filling his campaign coffers,” stated Leonard Sobczak, a Wisconsin-based member of the Patriotic Millionaires and also the CEO of Wisconsin Gazette. “Under Ryan, this district has seen too many factories shut down and jobs shipped away. But instead of focusing on bringing good jobs back to his district, Ryan’s single-mindedly focused on cutting taxes for people like me, who don’t need it. These billboards will remind voters of how the speaker’s blind adherence to a disproved economic philosophy has failed his district and working Americans across the country.

Ryan, elected to Congress in 1998, represents southeastern Wisconsin, which has seen major manufacturers like General Motors, Chrysler, and Case shutter operations in Janesville, Kenosha and Racine respectively.

Patriotic Millionaires said under Ryan’s watch the state has lost more than 125,000 manufacturing jobs since 2000.

Meanwhile, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, the Tax Cut and Jobs Act will hand large cuts to the wealthiest while raising taxes on those earning between $10,000 and $75,000 over the next decade.

Louis Fortis, an economist, former Wisconsin Assembly member and current member of the national economic justice organization, Patriotic Millionaires stated, “The simple fact is that whenever politicians cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations, it’s the middle-class that ends up paying for it every time. The country can’t take another round of this nonsense.”