Patrick shuns wealth tax, will be advertising in NH soon

Dec. 23--MANCHESTER -- Democratic presidential candidate Deval Patrick opposes a new tax on the super wealthy and instead said the focus should be on policies that don't reward "greed."

"The wealth tax has been tried other places; it's record of success is not good but honestly I don't think the issue is wealth. The issue is greed," Patrick said during a Union Leader interview.

Patrick, the 63-year-old former Massachusetts governor, will be featured at the Presidential Candidate Forum on the Health and Growth of the New Hampshire Economy on Friday, Jan. 10 at 11 a.m. at Nashua Community College.

The New Hampshire Union Leader, the Community College System of New Hampshire, and Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses are cosponsors of the series.

Patrick said he doesn't like the appearance of raising taxes only on those who have achieved the most financial success.

"We want exploration; we want people to live the American dream. What we want is for people to not be able to horde all the benefits for a few on the discredited theory that all those benefits will then trickle down to everyone else," Patrick said.

"We need a pathway to economic mobility and that path needs to be open to everybody, it needs to be fair and the role of government I think is to help enable people to get onto that pathway.

"To me that includes education at all levels, including training and it's also about innovation and how we harness innovation and make the nation the master of that economy and that is something that can be done everywhere across the country."

Democratic primary rivals Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have both proposed wealth taxes.

Warren's tax would be 2% on all assets above $50 million and 6% on those assets of more than $1 billion.

She proposed using the proceeds to help finance her domestic agenda that includes eliminating student debt for the middle class and a single-payer, Medicare for All health insurance system.

Patrick unveiled his policy agenda last week that included raising the corporate income tax rate from 21 to 25%.

The federal tax cut President Trump got passed and signed in 2017 lowered what had been a 35% corporate tax rate.

Speaking at the close of a three-day campaign visit, Patrick also revealed that he'll soon have ads airing on digital platforms with the possibility of buying commercial TV time as well in the last month before the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire.

"We will be up on digital ads in the next week or so, a little bit of TV, I think we are trying to sort that out mostly because I think digital ads are more impactful," Patrick said. "The most impactful thing is the town halls and the forums and house parties and I am prepared to do as many of those as people will allow me to do."

Patrick has only been in this race for about five weeks and remains hopeful there's enough time for him to break through with an impressive showing in New Hampshire and then in the nation's second primary in South Carolina.

He's yet to have qualified to take part in a presidential debate and believes voters would get much more out of them if they were run differently.

"There will be be opportunities for me to broadcast my message," Patrick said.

"I think the best thing they could do is change the format so that it was more a forum, so we could have more of a long-form expression of what we are about and have some interaction with voters instead of focusing on the tiniest differences between ourselves on parts of our policy agenda."

Patrick said one such example was last week's debate in which many of the headlines were about Warren's criticism of primary opponent Pete Buttigieg for hosting a fundraiser with wealthy donors in a California "wine cave."

"They are already long enough at three hours, I get that but it's so interesting how the debates have become an end in and of themselves, an endgame, they aren't that to me," Patrick said.

"The endgame is winning the vote and winning the vote has to be about more than getting on a stage where the opportunity to communicate is impaired. It has to be the opportunity to communicate with and listen to voters and that's why I much more enjoy that."

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