Surprise! Guess Which Party Really Represents the Rich?

By Rick Moran

According to a study by the Heritage Foundation, the Democratic party might want to re-examine some of it's populist rhetoric.

It seems that a majority of the richest congressional districts in the country are represented not by conservative Republicans but by liberal Democrats:

In a state-by-state, district-by-district comparison of wealth concentrations based on Internal Revenue Service income data, Michael Franc, vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation, found that the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional jurisdictions were represented by Democrats.

He also found that more than half of the wealthiest households were concentrated in the 18 states where Democrats hold both Senate seats.

"If you take the wealthiest one-third of the 435 congressional districts, we found that the Democrats represent about 58 percent of those jurisdictions," Mr. Franc said.

A key measure of each district's wealth was the number of single-filer taxpayers earning more than $100,000 a year and married couples filing jointly who earn more than $200,000 annually, he said.

Not that it will stop Democrats from claiming to the the party that champions the poor. And it's not like this study will be headline news in too many places.

But it certainly is an intruiging study. And if nothing else, reveals the Democrats to be hypocritical about who their true supporters really are.