Dave Weigel at our sister site, The Washington Independent, attended a luncheon today where Michigan’s Rep. Dave Camp (R-Midland) happened to be holding forth on the economic stimulus package.

The luncheon apparently was disrupted a bit by the news that former Sen. Tom Daschle had withdrawn his name as nominee for Secretary of Health and Human Services due to the mounting distraction of media scrutiny and criticism after income tax problems were revealed. 

“Just the amount he owed was a rich person’s salary, according to them,” said Camp.

“Them,” Weigel interpreted to mean Democrats — but “them” could easily have been people like Camp since Rep. Camp is pretty wealthy by most standards.

Weigel also noted during the luncheon that

• Camp is worried about the “dangerous trend” of tax cuts going to people who don’t pay income taxes. “We’re hearing that this is an age of responsibility. Everyone pull an oar, and start paddling. But this is just a transfer payment.” If there are tax cuts they should go to “every American, not just 95 percent of middle-class Americans.”

One wonders if Rep. Camp realizes most corporations don’t pay income taxes, or that the wealthiest decile has not been paying a proportional amount of taxes when compared to those middle-class Americans he mentioned. One also wonders if he thinks the $700 billion bailout of the financial industry wasn’t a wealth transfer to Wall Street executives from tax payers.

Certainly appears as if Camp is now rubber-stamping conservative talking points without examining more closely the underlying facts.