Bill Gallagher of Detroit Fox News gives us the lowdown
on Bush's tax cut ~ and reveals that it is the ultimate
con and scam !
Allen L Roland
DO I HAVE A DEAL FOR YOU !
DETROIT -- Do I have a deal for you. It's irresistible. And not only do you make out, but others will benefit as well. The economy will blossom, jobs will abound and the nation will prosper.
I'll give you $3,593 cash. Think of the things you can do with the money. That home entertainment center you've been dreaming of. That Caribbean cruise or paying off your maxed-out credit cards.
Some people might use the money to pay the rent or even buy health insurance. What a deal! And it won't cost you a thing, at least until you get the bill. I guess I should mention that.
The bill will be $13,000. That's right. Who in their right mind would buy into a deal like that? No sane person who appreciates the facts, that's for sure. But that's exactly the deal George W. Bush and the Republican Congress have foisted on the American people with their tax-cut con.
Here's how it works. From 2001 to 2006, tax cuts will provide Americans an average $3,593 each. That sounds so appealing. But the con artists in Washington don't mention the fact that, from 2002 to 2007, the per capita share of the national debt will increase by $13,000. That's right, folks. You lose nearly ten grand in the con, and working people will be hit hardest with that mounting debt.
Citizens for Tax Justice provides this revealing analysis. People in the middle range of income, those making $28,000 to $45,000, get clobbered -- that's 26 million taxpayers. Each dollar of tax savings for this group is accompanied by a $6.55 increase of federal debt. Some slot machines have better payouts.
By 2007, the interest alone on the Bush debt will cost each family in this group more than $1,200. That's twice as much as their average $578 in tax savings in 2006.
Mr. "Fuzzy Math" himself, George W. Bush, has never shared this simple arithmetic with the people who pay the price for his reckless fiscal policies. Nor has he volunteered this telling tax tidbit: The only income group that comes out ahead in the money shuffle is the top 1 percent.
Each dollar of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us is offset by only 77 cents of added federal debt. The fat cats duck the bill while working stiffs pick up an inordinate portion of the burden. That's George W. Bush's sense of distributive justice. Works just great for the martini-sippers at the Petroleum Club in Houston, but not so well for the beer-drinkers at Cocktail Bob's in Niagara Falls.
George W's. budget for next year is already $500 billion in the hole and we can see trillions more on the horizon. No imaginable rate of economic growth will undo the structural deficits of Shrubenomics, and he spends the public's money like a brain-damaged, gin-drunk Texas cowpoke.
He has shown only the most minimal restraint in curbing federal spending -- like cutting funds for environmental enforcement and denying much-deserved pay raises for federal employees. Conservatives should wince when they hear that, in the first two years of the Bush administration, more federal government expansion took place than in Bill Clinton's eight years.
The spend-and-borrow policies have hurt economic growth, and prompted Veronique de Rugy in the conservative "National Review" to admit, "When the numbers are added up, in fact, it looks like President Bush is less conservative than President Clinton."
Ouch! But crypto-conservatives like Rush Limbaugh and company say nothing about the president's dismal numbers, because they are really just partisan Bush Republicans who toss out conservative principles when they get in the way of their leader's wild spending habits and irresponsible stewardship of the federal treasury.
While creating a river of red ink, Bush and his partners in deception on Capitol Hill have the nerve to talk about a prescription drug benefit for Medicare recipients. There is no doubt people need help, and the prices the president's pals and supporters in the pharmaceutical industry charge for drugs is simply unconscionable. Many older people have to choose between food and the medications they need to live.
They deserve the benefits, but we have to be honest and pay for them without just piling up more debt, which is what the president -- and many Democrats, I might add -- proposes to do.
Bush is in a bind, since many Americans are balking at his plea for $87 billion in emergency spending for the occupation of Iraq and other colonial expenses. Polls show most people wonder why we are spending so much money over there while there are so many pressing needs at home.
Asking for the money has put the administration into the uncomfortable position of having to explain to Congress what it will be used for and how long the occupation will continue. The short answers are: not sure and indefinitely.
But one way the president could deflect some of the heat is to offer a plan on how to come up with the money. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has proposed a brilliant idea that the president should pounce on and the American people would support in overwhelming numbers.
On Minnesota Public Radio's "Marketplace," Reich said, "The simplest and most obvious place to get the money: Postpone next year's tax cut for the richest 1 percent of Americans, those earning more than half a million dollars a year. That would generate about $87 billion right there, the whole extra cost of the war."
Marvelous. Not only is that fair, but it would give the wealthy cheerleaders for war a wonderful sense of participation. I'm sure Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Brit Hume -- all in the top 1 percent -- will be among the first to advance Reich's suggestion. Just a modest sacrifice for them, a small price for the war they helped sell, and much-needed help for the president they dutifully serve and support. (An aside: Fox News Channel's Brit Hume interview with the president last week was the most shameless sucking-up to a politician by a "journalist" I've ever witnessed. Barbara Walters would have asked more substantive and challenging questions. Thankfully, I was one of the few watching. The ratings for the unpaid Bush campaign commercial were awful.)
The trickle-down and great benefits for "working Americans'' promised in Shrubenomics are tough to find. Consider this grim statistic: In the last month, 134,000 American workers lost their jobs in 1,200 "mass layoffs." That's what the Bureau of Labor calls the firings of 50 workers in a single month by a single employer.
George W. Bush is well on his way to being the first president since Herbert Hoover to finish a term with fewer people working than when he started. I regret having to use the comparison, because old Herbert was a brilliant, self-made man. He should always be remembered for the monumental humanitarian achievement of feeding the starving in Europe after World War I. Bush's contributions to public life will never rival Hoover's.
Even as the economy shows flickers of strength, employers are continuing to cut payroll. Manufacturing took the hardest hit, and most of the mass layoffs were in California, New York, Illinois, North Carolina and Texas. The president's "brain," Karl Rove, helped forge the political-economic policy that achieved that dismal record. He's immune to the human suffering his plotting has caused, but he's certainly counting the electoral votes in those big job-loss states, and worrying, as well he should.
The number of Americans living in poverty soared last year by 1.7 million and household incomes declined 1.1 percent. A new report from the Census Bureau shows that, for the second straight year, poverty is up and income is down.
As a group, African-Americans are suffering most from the ravages of "compassionate conservatism." After several years of economic gain in the 1990s, the poverty rate among blacks shot up from 22.7 percent to 24.1 percent in one year, while their median income fell 3 percent.
White House flack Scott McClellan responded to the bad news by saying, "The actions that we have taken to boost the economy and to create jobs are essential to turn this around."
Sure.
Even the rich are taking a hit, as the incomes of the top 1 percent fell 18 percent in 2000, but they are also paying significantly lower taxes. Taxes paid by this elite group plunged from $366.9 billion in 2000 to $300.1 billion in 2001. That decline accounted for most of the $92.7 billion drop in individual federal income tax revenue.
But the tax burden went up for another group. People making between $56,000 and $92,800 saw their share of all income taxes increase from 16.7 percent to 18 percent. Shrubenomics is shifting the tax burden from the wealthiest to the middle class. Every time you hear Bush tell you how much he's helping working Americans, remember that.
The real beneficiaries of this administration are those at the summit of prosperity, the top tenth of 1 percent. Those households had $505 billion in income, an average of $4 million each. They represent 129,000 households in our nation, and the president richly deserves their support. The rest of us are getting the shaft.
Gen. Wesley Clark, the newest Democrat to challenge Bush, looked at the economic numbers and concluded, "With a record like this, he shouldn't be running for president, he should be running for the hills."
The general and Howard Dean can make that happen.
Bill Gallagher, a Peabody Award winner, is a former Niagara Falls city councilman who now covers Detroit for Fox2 News. His e-mail address is gallaghernewsman@aol.com.
| Niagara Falls Reporter |
www.niagarafallsreporter.com |
September 30 2003 |
1:44:27 PM 
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