THE ISSUES

Today I’d like to quickly touch on some of the things my opponents have said about my campaign. You and I have heard a lot of rhetoric and a lot of vague promises recently, for things like “hope” and “hard work” and “a better tomorrow” that obviously everyone is fighting for. But, since it’s impossible to measure who’s the most hopeful or the hardest working, I want to keep things real. I want to stick to the real policy. So let’s talk about the issues a little.

Yesterday, Eva asserted that my policies will benefit “the rich over the poor.” Unfortunately, her statement sacrifices real policy research for vague rhetoric. I think it is worth asking why lowering taxes for everyone will harm anyone. Unless she thinks that returning money to the hardworking people who earned it is a form of harm, which I think all of us can agree it isn’t.

In fact, although Eva may conveniently neglect to address this, she herself advocates for policies that benefit “the rich over the poor.” At the very top of her environmental policy, she proclaims the need for a “regressive tax” on fossil fuels. Rather strange to advocate for, as Oxford Dictionaries can tell us that regressive means “taking a proportionally greater amount from those on lower incomes.” We can at least commend Eva for being honest about this fact. Stanford research has found that under a carbon tax, companies would simply pass the costs to consumers — it’s not the companies paying, it’s the people — and that the burdens of these costs would be twice as high for low income households as high income ones.

Azraf makes a similar claim regarding our policy to lower the corporate tax to 20%. I welcome any attack, from any candidate, regarding our corporate tax policy, because I could not be more convicted of its many benefits. First— the Council of Economic Advisers estimates it would lead to GDP growth of 3 to 5%. That means huge growth for all businesses. But second, this will provide massive benefits to the workers that Azraf claims we are “stabbing in the back.” To the Khan campaign: how is keeping jobs in the United States stabbing workers in the back? How is an 8% increase in wages, which Alan Auerbach of UC Berkeley estimates would come for the average worker under this policy, stabbing workers in the back? The answer is plain and clear: it isn’t.

We’ve seen a lot of baseless attacks this election, and it’s very easy to turn to this kind of tactic. But I want to ask the electorate: do you want a candidate capable of attacking other people or capable of creating and enacting actual policy? If your answer is the second, I’m confident I’ll have your support.