'Joe the Plumber' for Congress?

RAW STORY Published: Sunday October 26, 2008
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Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher has expressed interest in channeling his newfound fame into a congressional run against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur in 2010, he told Fox News on Saturday.

"Politics is a big part of my life, Wurzelbacher told the network's Neil Cavuto. "I love how American government works."

Wurzelbacher's celebrity began in front of his house in Holland, Ohio on October 12 as Senator Obama toured the neighborhood. "Your new tax plan is gonna tax me more, isn't it?" Wurzelbacher asked. "It's not that I want to punish your success," Obama responded, "I just want to make sure that everybody who is behind you--that they've got a chance at success too...I think that when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody."

"Joe the Plumber" was concerned that were he to go through with the purchase of a plumbing business and make $250,000 a year, he would be taxed more heavily under Obama's proposed plan than that of his opponent Senator McCain. McCain invoked Obama's "spread the wealth around" comment, and "Joe," repeatedly at the third presidential debate and in subsequent campaign speeches. According to the Obama campaign, no family making under $250,000 a year would see an increase in taxes under his plan. No family, it says, will pay higher taxes than it did in the 1990s.

"What worries me," "Joe" said in a live online chat with the Washington Times on Saturday, "is that he is deciding that $250k is rich right now, but what's to stop him from changing his mind?"

"What I essentially said to him," Obama said at the October 15 debate, "was, five years ago, when you were in the position to buy your business, you needed a tax cut then...And what I want to do is to make sure that the plumber, the nurse, the firefighter, the teacher, the young entrepreneur who doesn't yet have money, I want to give them a tax break now."