Presumptive Democratic Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton spent most of last week talking out of both sides of her mouth on illegal immigration.
But her latest illegal immigration whopper was too much even for her cheerleaders over at the Washington Post.
Hillary claimed illegal immigrants paid more in taxes than big corporations.
“In New York, which I know a little bit about because I represented it for eight years and I live there now, our undocumented workers in New York pay more in taxes than some of the biggest corporations in New York,”
Her thinly-sourced jibe was awarded (albeit reluctantly) 4 Pinocchio’s, representing the most egregious of political lying the Post can imagine.
Even if Clinton incorrectly stated her talking point, this is a tendentious argument that is probably made even less relevant by 2014 tax data. (Note how the taxes paid by Verizon and Citicorp increased as the economy began to pick up.) If she is only talking about state and local income taxes, that’s just $186 million, according to the ITEP estimate for New York. Verizon and Citicorp still exceed that number on state and local taxes alone.
But comparing the taxes of hundreds of thousands of people to the tax bill of one corporation is a stretch and fairly misleading. Even the companies that pay little or no federal income taxes end up paying lots of other taxes. So it’s a nonsense comparison.
One wonders: Will Hillary stop her “nonsense comparison” or will she simply lean on the Post to shut up about it.
