‘It’s Going to Kill Me’: Small Business Owners on Fox Say Bernie’s Policies Are Going to Ruin Them

Fox News hosted a panel of small business owners on Tuesday morning, and all three of them agreed that Sen. Bernie Sanders’s tax plans would hurt them rather than help, despite the candidate’s promise that his platform is built to help the middle class.

The segment began with a clip of  Sanders telling a Minnesota crowd, “Imagine a Democratic party in which working people and young people have a real voice.”

Countering the Senator’s promise, Fox’s Brian Kilmeade and his guests discussed how Sanders’s “vision for America” does not work for their small businesses.

“When you look at Sanders’s tax rate. His 7.5 percent employee tax rate, for payroll, it’s going to kill me. When you look at corporate tax rate going from 21 to 35 percent, how do I invest in my business, how do I hire employees? Socialism failed. It’s just a demotivator. It’ll fail here,” explained one business owner.

The second owner went on to discuss how Sanders’s proposed policies would affect startups and “equity incentivization plans,” stating, “even if you’re just starting out in a start-up and you’re making base wage, if you’re investing equity, you still have to pay taxes on that, whether or not you chose to take that equity when you leave the company.”

It wasn’t all good news for President Donald Trump, though.

In a discussion with the third owner on the panel, Kilmeade reminded her that all of the Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden, plan to raise taxes for those who “benefitted from the Trump tax cut.”

The business owner replied by explaining that she did not benefit, adding, “my business relies on the middle class. The middle class needs more money.”

The segment ended with the business owners discussing their major worries regarding a potential Sanders presidency. One named the senator’s plan to raise taxes, while another focused on his plans for the “healthcare system,” stating, “I feel like if we’re trying to manage what’s going on with coronavirus, we can’t be upheavalling everything up at once.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!