Tax Cut Results – Moon of Alabama

April 5, 2006

Tax Cut Results

For a party or a presidential candidate, it is easy to collect campaign money when the central promise is tax cuts. The next step is deliver them. And the step after that one is the promise to fight any tax rise.

It is the Republicans money machine and it is much easier to run this machine than to promise and deliver on good deads for the masses. The practical tax point in this strategy was Bush’s lowering of the tax on investment income.

The NYT today has a good piece on the results:

Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million.
…
Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years.

If only 150,000 people, one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, give 10% of their yearly gain to the party that argues for it, that party can rake in $600,000,000 per year.

Enough to bribe and deceive half of the rest of the electorate.

When Bush said, at an $800 per plate fund raiser, "This is an impressive crowd – the haves and the have-mores" and
"Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." he was 100% right.

This "campaign money for tax cuts" or "campaign money against tax rises" mechanism always steers the U.S. parties to the side of capital and the rich.

If the Democrats ever again get a majority in both house, public and only public campaign financing should be their number one issue.

Ok, I’ll stop dreaming …

Posted by b on April 5, 2006 at 17:59 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Another part from the article linked above:

During last week’s debate on whether to restore limits on the alternative minimum tax or make permanent the cuts in investment income taxes, House leaders chose as their spokesman Representative David L. Camp, a Michigan Republican. He said Republicans favored continuing investment tax cuts because that would help more people and would especially benefit those making less than $100,000.
“Nearly 60 percent of the taxpayers with incomes less than $100,000 had income from capital gains and dividends,” he said on the House floor.
But I.R.S. data show that among the 90 percent of all taxpayers who made less than $100,000, dividend tax reductions benefited just one in seven and capital gains reductions one in 20.
Mr. Camp, who had said in an interview that his figures were correct, said Monday through a spokesman that he had been misinformed by the staff of the House Ways and Means Committee. But his office said he supported making the investment tax cuts permanent because cutting these rates was “good policy and good for our economy.”

He lied. Because it is “good policy and good for our economy.” Their economy.

Posted by: b | Apr 5 2006 18:06 utc | 1

Please remember: tax cuts are wasted on the poor: they just blow the money on junk food, WWF season tickets, chrome girl mud flaps and .3006 ammo.
The rich, however, invest their tax cuts in offshore corporations, guaranteeing a ready supply of low-priced consumer goods available 24/7 at the local Wal-Mart.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 5 2006 18:51 utc | 2

This thing is all over the internet. Tax cuts will end soon. Unless theyt are that reckless, which I’d many time the rethugs are, the tax cuts will have to end for the top 1%.

Posted by: jdp | Apr 5 2006 21:23 utc | 3

“Nearly 60 percent of the taxpayers with incomes less than $100,000 had income from capital gains and dividends,” he said on the House floor.
This is very probably correct, and enormously misleading. What he didn’t say is that (1) this is income from investments in pension funds and 401(k)s, which don’t benefit from the tax cuts, and (2) for the average person making less than $100,000 per year, this income amounts to at most a few hundred dollars a year, so that at most the tax cuts would save a couple of hundred dollars. Hey, that’ll pay the cable bill for, oh, three months or so (if you don’t get HBO).
Liars. They’re all liars.

Posted by: Aigin | Apr 5 2006 21:30 utc | 4

Not 30 minutes ago I was in a discussion with a wealthy friend who insisted that her taxes were too high, around fifty percent, [an argument my wealthy father also made to me over twenty years ago].
I guess those tax cuts for the wealthy are figments of our imagination.
She was quite racist and classist; complaining about spanish speaking people changing our country’s language because there was a sign in Spanish on a local store; how she was assaulted/robbed by an inner city man when she was much younger [“they’re all like that”]; and spewing every GOP talking point about how Bush is a great savior and everything is all Clinton’s fault and Johnson’s fault [great society]; how the media is extremely biased toward the liberals; how global warming is a lie covering up normal temperature swings; how Iraq was not based on a lie because the WMD was secretly moved to Syria; how socialism means everybody giving all their money to the government which then redistibutes it so everbody gets the same amount; how Dem politicians were socialists; how the French government and all of European governments are socialist; and how Greens were communists; how poor Lieberman was a moderate besieged by those awful liberals etc. Really it was breathtaking.
But her main point was that her taxes were going to lazy poor people who refused to work and that her fifty percent tax rate is a redistribution scheme for supporting lazy shiftless blacks. When I pointed out that her taxes were actually going to support war profiteers, and quoted Eisenhower, she accused me of not supporting the military, [which of course is not true, I am part of a military family and I am not a pure pacifist].
My main point is that the GOP is continuing to foment and cater to these racist classist fantasies about taxes going to wealth redistribution toward the poor, and will therefore always campaign for more tax cuts for the wealthy and justify worse conditions for people of color and the poor.

Posted by: gylangirl | Apr 5 2006 23:34 utc | 5

gylangirl,
You might ask your friend how the problems created by the shiftless, ignorant, underemployed, and violent underclass are to be delt with absent the social programs she is so abhores. Sure throw them all in jail, at 70 thousand a year, per prisoner — and who pays for that? Is she willing to increase her taxes to pay for that, or the incresed expense incured by those without healthcare who wait until they need really expensive critical care, or the extras expense caused by high crime rates?
And be sure to point out that those evil socialist countries with the really high tax rates — somehow still have a relative (or higher) per-capata income, generally higher standards of living, higher qualities of life, higher rates of foreign aid, better and cheaper health care systems, lower crime rates, more accessable and higher educational standards, and better enviromental records — than the good old USA — and still manage to be competative internationally.
The main problem with these types is that they have no ETHICS, at all.

Posted by: anna missed | Apr 6 2006 7:09 utc | 6

Spending campaign money to bilk the people:
Grand Old Preying

Dole’s solicitation certainly looks official. In the upper left corner is an official-looking American eagle. In white letters over a black bar above the address window is “U.S. INDIVIDUAL RESIDENT.” In the bottom left corner is “Form 1163 (2006) Return Enclosed.” Aunt Maude’s hands are already shaking.
Stamped in red and black on the upper right corner of the covering letter is the imposing label “Registration#: 54.93.252.” The letter starts off: “Your immediate attention is required on a confidential and time-sensitive matter.” And then, “Enclosed, please find your official SURVEY DOCUMENT — REGISTERED in your name only — assigned to you as a REPRESENTATIVE of ALL REPUBLICANS living in your voting district.” By now, Aunt Maude is in a sweat.
…
And then comes the insult to the intellect of even the lowest common denominator. Aunt Maude has three choices. She can check “YES!” she wants to help defend the Republican Senate Majority with a contribution of $500, or several lesser alternatives. She can check “No,” she does not wish to participate in “this vital Republican Senate Leadership Survey,” but she does want to give a generous donation of $500, or several lesser alternatives, to “help build Republican grassroots support for President Bush and his agenda.”
Or she can claim membership in the group below the lowest common denominator by checking No: “I do not wish to participate in the Survey, nor do I wish to make a donation to help the Republican Party. I am returning my Survey Document, along with a contribution of $11 to help cover the cost of tabulating and redistributing my Survey.”

Posted by: b | Apr 6 2006 8:48 utc | 7

And be sure to point out that those evil socialist countries with the really high tax rates — somehow still have a relative (or higher) per-capata income, generally higher standards of living, higher qualities of life, higher rates of foreign aid, better and cheaper health care systems, lower crime rates, more accessable and higher educational standards, and better enviromental records — than the good old USA — and still manage to be competative internationally.

All socialist propaganda. Lies catapulted by the liberal press because they are communist haters of success that want to re-distribute ours.
This is how the upper-classless lull themselves to sleep.

Posted by: gmac | Apr 6 2006 10:17 utc | 8

jerome a paris has a nice peice at kos about the middle and lower classes. He points out that even liberal economist have bought into the supply side economy where the top gets richer and the bottom stagnates.

Posted by: jdp | Apr 6 2006 12:02 utc | 9

gmac,
one of the mantras recited by the neoliberals is “we must protect America’s competitive ability”.
I take this as a euphemism for “our ability to pay competitive executive salaries & bonuses”.

Posted by: ralphieboy | Apr 9 2006 8:53 utc | 10

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