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Macomb, IL – Millionaires should be giving to charity, not getting it from the rest of us.
And we should all be more skeptical of the "have your cake and eat it, too" philosophy that's hurt the country for 10 years now.
Before extremists try balancing the budget on the backs of regular people by cutting Medicare and Social Security, jobless benefits, and other needed expenditures, sensible voices should suggest letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule after 2012.
Last week marked 10 years for what's known as "the Bush tax cuts," but George W. Bush should not be exclusively blamed. Republican ideologues, Congress and lobbyists all were complicit, and many Americans were tricked by the foolish appeal that promised, "You can have something for nothing."
In reality, the main reasons for decaying budgets and projected shortfalls over the next few years are continuing those tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, reports the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) - $500 billion of 2009's deficit and $7 trillion projected for the next 10 years.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says,"We are on the verge of trading tax cuts for the wealthy and spending on wars for large cuts to social programs." He also scolds those who blame consumers for economic problems, adding "We need to place the blame where it belongs, to chasten our policy elites. Otherwise, they'll do even more damage in the years ahead."
Concern with budget deficits and the national debt - the sum of all deficits (and surpluses, like the Clinton administration left in 2000) - misses the point: The tax cuts and the wars will account for almost half of public debt by 2019 if policies don't change, the CBPP shows. Add the recession's effect on jobs and the loss of income revenue, and that already dwarfs the rest of federal spending.
At best, those tax cuts (in 2001, more in 2003, and renewed with Obama's compromise last year) continued to bet on a long-shot that's never happened - employment spurred on by enriched wealthy people.
At worst, it was a political trick to get re-elected and maybe starve government, which has been unfairly generalized as incapable of doing anything citizens need.
President Reagan's budget director, David Stockman, has conceded the philosophy's flaws. Recalling Reagan cut taxes in 1981 but raised them in 82, '83 and '84 to make up for lost revenues, Stockman says "supply-side" failed. Instead of a trickle-down effect, the result was the rich saying, "I got mine." Affluent individuals and big corporations benefited - the top 1% 65% of the country's income growth in the last decade.
The price tag for the tax cuts was about $2.5 trillion through 2010, according to Citizens for Tax Justice. That could have bought:
*a decade's worth of health care for 122 million poor children;
*provided Pell grants for 43 million students;
*provided care for 30 million military veterans;
*hired 4 million fire fighters or 3.6 million police officers;
*hired more than 3 million grade school teachers annually; or
*retrofitted 144 million homes for wind power or 54 million households for solar energy - each year.
The Economic Policy Institute reported that "the Bush tax cuts were expensive, ineffective and unfair. If continued, they will crowd out budget priorities such as economic security programs and investments in education, infrastructure, research and health."
Why should 90% of the nation and its older citizens suffer to help those who don't need it?
Still a small-government conservative, Stockman criticizes the Bush administration for repeating (quote) "in much greater magnitude the errors we made in the early '80s: a massive increase in defense spending, a massive reduction in the revenue base [via tax cuts], and not even an effort at spending cuts."
He suggests:
*cutting Defense $100 billion or more a year,
*applying a means test to Social Security and Medicare (so those who don't need assistance don't get it), and
*raising taxes (he favors taxing financial transactions, telling David Corn in Mother Jones magazine, "We have a massive casino that is doing nothing but churning transactions by the millisecond, as a result of the Fed juicing the system continuously with overnight money that's free. There's no productive value for Main Street or the real U.S. economy."
Congress must face facts, concede mistakes, and restore tax fairness.
Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio