G-Dubya? Why are you hiding the TRUTH about your "tax cut"??

[Gimpy]

well here's another "viewpoint"!

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David Lazarus Wednesday, May 28, 2003

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I have a kid at home, so we'll be getting a $400 tax-cut check from the federal government this summer.

Thanks, Mr. President.

I have a kid at home, so he can look forward to being saddled with a budget deficit of as much as $2.7 trillion a decade from now, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

He can look forward to a national government with such onerous debt obligations that it barely has enough money for schools, health care and social programs.

He can look forward to such a huge shortfall in government revenue that the limit on federal debt had to be raised last week by nearly $1 trillion (to $7. 4 trillion) to prevent the United States from defaulting on its loans.

Thanks, Mr. President.

I've written on this subject before and I don't mean to cover old ground. But it's astounding that so little attention is being paid to this potentially catastrophic problem as President Bush and his Republican pals continue hacking away at America's tax base.

The House and Senate approved a $350 billion tax cut last week. That's less than half the amount sought by the White House, but Bush has already signaled he'll be pushing for additional cuts every year for the foreseeable future.

The president, who already has slashed federal taxes by $1.35 trillion, will sign the latest tax cut into law today.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the federal budget deficit will top $300 billion this year -- a record high -- and this doesn't even include the new tax cut.

Experts say that factoring in today's cut will push this year's deficit close to $400 billion. That translates to about 4 percent of the $10.5 trillion U.S. economy, which isn't as worrisome as the almost 5 percent ratio racked up by the first President Bush's $290 billion deficit.

Then again, we've never run shortfalls of this magnitude for such a prolonged period of time.

"We are obviously going to have deficits as far out as the eye can see," said Michael Lehmann, an economics professor at the University of San Francisco. "That means we'll have to keep borrowing funds to pay our debts, and the deficit thus continues to increase."

Bush, of course, sees things differently. The disadvantages of deficits, he says, are far outweighed by the advantages of tax cuts.

"We believe the more money people have in their pockets, the more likely it is somebody is going to be able to find work in America," Bush said last week.

This would be because people go out and spend all their newfound cash, thus increasing demand for goods and services, thus bolstering corporate bottom lines, thus creating more jobs.

That's the idea anyway. The problem here is that Bush's tax cuts overwhelmingly favor the wealthy, who already have little difficulty buying whatever they please.

"If your goal is to boost spending and create jobs, the tax cut doesn't make much sense economically," Lehmann said. "If you really want to boost spending, you give more money to the lower-income folks."

Today's cuts will save average middle-class households just $217, according to the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Those earning $1 million annually will score an average $93,500.

In other words, two-thirds of the tax break will go to the top 10 percent of wage earners.

For the record, Bush reported income last year of $856,056. Vice President Dick Cheney, who cast the tie-breaking vote to pass the tax-cut bill in the Senate, reported income of $1.2 million.

Alan Auerbach, a UC Berkeley economist, said it's too soon to dismiss the stimulative power of Bush's latest tax cut.

"It could have some benefit over the short run," he said. "Over the long run, though, it's going to be very damaging."

Debt payments for runaway budget deficits, Auerbach observed, siphon money away from other uses, such as hiring more teachers for overcrowded public schools or providing health care for the needy. They also drive up interest rates.

No less an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned last week that rising interest rates will harm the economy by making money more expensive for consumers and businesses.

"Deficits do matter," he said. "In any evaluation of a program, what happens to deficits is an integral part of the analysis."

As it stands, Auerbach and other economists believe Bush is deliberately using record deficits as a lever to reduce government spending. By this thinking, congressional leaders will have no choice in the future but to trim expenditures.

"That could be the case," Auerbach said. "But it's going to be very, very painful. We're talking about massive cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Without cutting defense or implementing tax increases, that's the only place the money can come from."

I have a kid at home. This is the future he can look forward to: A staggering debt level and a social safety net so tattered that all but the most financially independent slip through the holes.

"That sounds about right," Auerbach said. "It's a depressing prospect."

Thanks, Mr. President.


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Now THAT'S the REAL "truth"!

[ABNCIB]

Horse hockey. Were the Democrats so concerned when there were deficits in the early 90s and they tried to pass the National Healthcare Plan?

If Democrats weren't able to get behind the tax cuts of 2001 - before the War on Terrorism and when there were surpluses everywhere, when exactly WILL they get behind a tax cut?

The easy answer is; NEVER.

[MM38084]

Gimpy,
Glad to see your still stirring the pot.

Bob

[bbeil]

Well I was a "Bureaucratic Department Head" for many years until I retired. I was under the gun on the "Zero Based Budget" and other brainstorm budgets that are created for political headlines to appease the taxpayer.
What I learned under different administrations - Republican & Democratic - was, spend all that has been appropriated or we can't ask for an increase the next fiscal year and that my friends is the whole truth of the way the system works.

[judyvillecco]

Dem's/Reps- I'm self employed and I pay 15% self employment tax (call it what you want!) plus medicare tax (call it what you want). No one gets off with no tax...let's get that straight! This amount has steadily gone up up and up and I have never made $200,000! If the Dems want to help me out so be it. The Republicans never have! They help their corporate buddies and anybody who is a working stiff who thinks different is fooling themselves! We vote our wallet and they spend it as fast as they can!

[1IDVET]

Originally posted by Gimpy But YOUR arguement doesn't "wash"!

If you don't think that a "tax" break would help someone who makes less than $27,000 (barely above the poverty level for a family of three or four) a lot more than someone making $100,000 a year then you must be one of the folks that met with G-dubya and the republican congressional leadership when arriving at their "closed door" comprimise! Try and "explain" that "paltry" sum of taxes these folks are paying and see if THEY will accept that kind of "reasoning" or "logic" when it comes to what they are NOT going to receive compared to those who will get a tax break!

Typical republican nonsense!

I was going to respond to this, but it seems as if ABNCIB and MORTARDUDE, have already given the answer.
So much for the typical liberal nonsense!

[blues clues]

I for one just don't understand some of the people around here, they say only the rich pay the taxes if this is so why don't the rupblicans who are in control of both houses of government repeal the payroll with wholding tax that would put more money into every body's hands! I'll tell you why if they did away with this tax people would find out just who is paying what.
But to those who think it alright to spent their kids/ grandkid future with an over powering debt,then I for one don't understand your logic.

razz

[the humper]

to subside a discussion of this nature, is to vote the local "village idiot" (congress or senate) OUT!!!!!!
SF
NC

[Gimpy]

what you're talking about!!!

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For the needy, a poor excuse


Cynthia Tucker---Atlanta Journal & Constitution


It is unfashionable to be poor in America. Even workers just a paycheck away from being poverty-stricken themselves -- an illness, a layoff, a car accident away from having the electricity turned off -- are contemptuous of those just beneath them on the socioeconomic ladder.

The Horatio Alger myth is so powerful that one's fortune is either in the bank or in the near future. Hard times are just a temporary condition -- or so people believe. A Time-CNN poll during the 2000 presidential elections asked voters whether they were in the top 1 percent of income earners. Nineteen percent responded that they were, a statistical impossibility. Who said it's lonely at the top?

Perhaps that explains why it has been remarkably easy for the GOP to launch an all-out assault on the poor. With little opposition, the Bush administration and hard-right Republicans in Congress are squeezing or eliminating essential programs that assist the poor -- from the HOPE VI program, which has razed slums and rebuilt them as mixed-income communities, to Medicaid, which provides health care.

Now, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research group, Congress has excluded millions of families earning just above minimum wage from the increased child tax credit in the new $350 billion tax cut bill.

President Bush's second tax cut, like his first, mostly benefits the rich; the president didn't bother to extend the increased child tax credit, from $600 to $1,000, to families earning minimum wage, though more affluent families will receive it. The Senate, however, included minimum wage families in their version of the bill. That tax break was among the few provisions in the gargantuan tax cut bill that even resembled economic stimulus, since working families are more likely than the rich to spend the money right away on necessities.

But in the last-minute negotiations between ultra-conservative Republicans and their moderate counterparts, millions of families earning between $10,500 and $26,625 annually were once again cut out of the increased child tax credit. In other words, the refund checks, which will average $400 per child, will not go to those who need it most. (Families earning less than $10,500 a year were not eligible for the tax credits because they pay no federal income taxes.) It was a deeply cynical maneuver.

Let's be clear: The families denied the child tax credit work for a living. Still, they barely earn enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. It's difficult to pay the bills when you earn little more than $5.15 an hour.

Yet, those workers do essential jobs: They feed, bathe and change the elderly in nursing homes; they dig ditches for construction sites; they clean bathrooms in airports and school buildings; they scrub floors in hotels; they cut poultry and pork on grueling assembly lines. They are hardly layabouts.

Their labor was once considered honorable. Hardworking men and women who earned a living with their hands and their backs were celebrated as the heart and soul of the American economy. But that was before Ronald Reagan changed the terms of political debate, castigating the poor as lazy, un-American louts responsible for their own sorry lot. It was the most dramatic refashioning of political thought since FDR's New Deal delivered working Americans to the Democratic Party.

Senate negotiators claimed they couldn't extend the increase in child tax credits to minimum-wage families, which would have cost an additional $3.5 billion, because they had to hold the tax cut package to $350 billion. These are the same people who, this year, will spend $300 billion they don't have -- the largest budget deficit in history. It's ironic that the Monopoly money won't stretch all the way to the hands that really need it.

But that was never seriously considered. Not in America -- where, if the myth is to be believed, those poor families just need to dig a few more ditches to earn their own stock dividends.

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Maybe NOW you'll "understand" what the REAL truth is about those so-called "compassionate conservatives"!!!

[1IDVET]

Yes, it benefits the "rich", the top 5% who pay 56.47% of all income taxes; the top 10% who pay 67.33% of all income taxes; the top 25% who pay 84.01% of all income taxes. And last but certainly not least the top 50% who pay 96.09% of all income taxes.
Those folks that are not in the top 50%, pay how much tax?
3.81%.
So, 50% of the population pays 3.81% of the nations taxes, and I am supposed to feel sorry for them, because they aren't getting the largest cut?
The reason they use percentages vs. hard numbers is evident.
Give me a break! :re: