Republicans have long been smeared by Democrats as the party of the rich, even though all of Hollywood, all of Silicon Valley and all of Wall Street are in their pockets. It’s a cheap and long-debunked tactic, and now we have another piece of evidence to corroborate the obvious fact that Democrats are the party of rich white men.
According to a study conducted by the Center for Responsive Politics, financial disclosure forms reveal that out of the ten richest members of Congress, a whopping total of seven are Democrats.
Collectively, the total wealth of the seven richest Democrats in Congress amounts to $1.1 billion.
To be fair, however, the richest member of Congress has an R next to his name, Rep. Darrell Issa, whose wealth totals $330,050,015. The other two Republicans, Rep. Dave Trott of Michigan and Rep. Vernon Buchanan, rank at number 5 and 6.
Four of the 10 richest members (Issa, Pelosi, Peters, Feinstein) hail from California.
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The Center for Responsive Politics gathered their numbers by the following method:
Net worth was calculated by summing the filer’s assets and then subtracting any listed liabilities. Filers report the amount of each of their assets, transactions and liabilities as falling within one of several ranges. The minimum possible values for each asset were added together as were the maximum possible values. Likewise, minimum and maximum liability amounts were summed. The maximum debt figure was then subtracted from the minimum asset figure and the minimum debt figure was subtracted from the maximum asset figure. The resulting range represents the extremes of how much a filer could be worth, and his or her actual net worth should fall somewhere within that range. The midpoint or average of the two limits was also calculated and used for purposes of ranking the filers by wealth.