During a radio interview Wednesday morning, Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) made a startlingly candid statement about taxpayers and the wealth they earn and produce. It was her Joe the Plumber moment in that it broke the Democratic playbook rule about revealing the left’s true intentions.

She was interviewed on Chicago radio station WLS 890 AM by hosts Don Wade and Roma. You can listen to the entire interview here, but the part about taxes comes in around the 13:50 point.

Don Wade played a question that was posed to the GOP candidates at the recent Tea Party Debate in Florida. A young man at the debate asked a simple enough question: “Out of every dollar that I earn, how much do you think that I deserve to keep?”

Her response?


“I’ll put it this way. You don’t deserve to keep all of it and it’s not a question of deserving because what government is, is those things that we decide to do together. And there are many things that we decide to do together like have our national security. Like have police and fire. What about the people that work at the National Institutes of Health who are looking for a cure for cancer?”

No one disputes that government needs some level of taxpayer revenue to function. The problem is with Schakowsky’s response and what it reveals about the left.

First, there’s an attitudinal rub. The word “deserve” implies some kind of government entitlement to what the private sector generates. It smacks of the typical backward perspective liberals have about taxpayer money: that it belongs to government first, and government will determine how much you get to keep. It’s the same kind of mentality that is in play whenever progressives say tax cuts will “cost” the government, as if the money originates with government, and is later given to the taxpayer.

These are the roots of class warfare which the Democrats use to scold the wealth producers for failing to pay their “fair share.”

Second, the things Schakowsky cited as necessary for government functioning are fine for the most part. Few would dispute their necessity. But if only government were so small! The issue is that government never stops with just these kinds of things. Federal, state, and local governments are bloated beyond recognition due to excessive spending, unnecessary bureaucracy, fraud, waste and mismanagement (Solyndra?).

Ours is not a tax problem. Ours is a spending problem.

When it comes to wealth generation, liberals promote a hefty confiscatory and redistributionist approach, but they usually try to disguise the real nature of their objectives when they speak publicly. In this interview, Congresswoman Schakowsky had her Joe the Plumber moment.

During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, then-Senator Barack Obama lifted the veil in his response to a question from Ohio plumber Joe Wurzelbacher about raising taxes. Obama responded with: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.” Obama’s reply was a rare, let-your-guard-down moment in which he acknowledged the left’s redistributionist zeal (likely causing the mainstream media to cringe because they use the same playbook as the Democrats).

Jan Schakowsky’s candid – no doubt an oops! moment – was an atypical acknowledgement of the left’s confiscatory views on taxpayer wealth.

The problem the Democrats (and the media) have, however, is that everyone knows what the left is all about. Thanks to President Obama and his rush to stomp big government’s big shoes all across the country, Americans have awakened to the progressives and their true goals…and we don’t like it. What we earn in the private sector is ours, and we will determine what we give to government.

Follow Mike Angley on Twitter: @MikeAngley and on FaceBook: mike.angley.