If you’re an alcoholic, a cocaine head, or a gambling addict – there are 12-step programs to help you. But where’s the recovery program for being a tax-cut addict?
Someone needs to do a tough-love intervention with George W, for he is helplessly hooked on tax cuts. Whatever the issue – cleaning up the environment, low wages, health care, affordable housing, you-name-it – George lunges for the needle to inject our country with another debilitating dose of tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.
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Now that Washington has discovered the long economic decline that’s been wracking the middle class and low-wage workers, Congress and the White House are scrambling to produce a stimulus program to produce a quick jolt of consumer spending. Bush, however, insists that the stimulus should consist almost entirely of tax cuts targeted for corporations and families making more than $100,000 a year.
Low-wage families – who have been the hardest hit by the Bush economy – would get nothing from George’s tax-rebate scheme. Well, say White House rationalizers, those people don’t pay taxes, so they don’t deserve a rebate. “This is for people who pay taxes,” snorts a Bush ally in Congress.
Hellooo… numbskull. Are you so clueless that you don’t know about sales taxes, fees, payroll taxes, property taxes, and other assessments that cause these millions of hard-hit families to pay a higher percentage of their income in tax levies than rich people pay? And, are you so ideologically hidebound that you don’t realize that these are the very folks who are most in need of cash and would spend their rebates immediately on such daily basics as food, clothing, and transportation – thus giving the economy the consumer jolt you say it needs?
Sadly, for Bush & Company, maintaining their addiction to tax-cut ideology is more important than taking the steps that would actually work for our overall economy.
“The Candidates Discover the Economy,” The New York Times, January 14, 2008
“Bush: Put billions back into taxpayers’ hands,” Austin American Statesman, January 19, 2008
“Bush, Democrats disagree on divvying up stimulus package,” Austin American Statesman, January 20, 2008
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