Truth about Taxes

My last letter prior to the mid-term elections. Please don't forget to vote on November 2nd.

Jonathan

I don’t like taxes any more than the next person, but it’s important to make decisions about the upcoming election based on facts.

Republicans are in favor of extending Bush tax cuts to the richest 2% because they claim it will help the economy. But according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, extending high-income tax cuts is the worst policy option currently available for promoting jobs and economic growth.

Republicans want us to think that President Obama and the Democrat-led Congress have raised taxes. That’s not correct. The stimulus package resulted in tax cuts for 98% of working taxpayers in 2009; no one has had a federal tax increase in the past two years.

Republicans claim they want to help “Joe taxpayer” as much as they want to help the rich. It’s not true. They are against extending enhancements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit that help working families, but for extending tax cuts to the richest 2% of taxpayers. So, with Republicans in control, many Americans would actually pay higher taxes than under President Obama’s proposed tax relief.

Republicans want us to think that the Bush tax cuts were great for the economy. Facts show the opposite. In the six years following the Bush tax cuts, jobs grew by 4.8%. In contrast, following Clinton’s courageous move to raise taxes in order to restore fiscal responsibility to the Federal budget, jobs grew by 16.2%, more than three times better than Bush’s performance.

If you want to live in a fairyland of low taxes and no hard choices, vote Republican. If you want to help the vast majority of Americans who need help, and recognize that some sacrifice by the most fortunate of us is necessary to set our fiscal house in order, vote Democrat.

A good article from which some of my facts were confirmed:

Three Good Reasons to Let the High-End Bush Tax Cuts Disappear This Year, Center for American Progress, 7/29/10

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2010/07/let_cuts_expire.html

Eliminating the Income Tax Draws Opposition -- What Else do They Want?

Apparently there is some internet swirl around a bill introduced last
February by a PA democrat calling for a 1% tax on financial
transactions, along with abolition of the federal income tax.
Interesting that even a crackpot Democrat who wants to get rid of
income taxes can attract the ire of the opposition. But I felt the
misinformation should be called out.

To the Editor, Greenwich Time
October 19, 2010

John Corrado, in his letter, “Spending is the Problem” urges
opposition to a bill in the House, H.R. 4646, that proposes a 1% tax
on all financial transactions. Mr. Corrado goes on to blame the
Democrat who introduced the bill, Representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA),
of “looking for ways to introduce new taxes on the already heavily
taxed people.”

The problem with Mr. Corrado’s assessment is that it completely
misrepresents the facts. According to the Congressional Research
Service (part of the Library of Congress), the bill offers an
offsetting tax credit for couples earning up to $250,000. More
notably, the bill calls for phasing out the individual income tax, and
is aimed at eliminating the national debt within seven years. Whether
or not the bill has any merit, claiming that Fattah favors “tax and
spend” is ludicrous.

Implying that Fattah’s bill represents a real threat misleads
further. The Congressman has introduced similar legislation for the
past six years, which each time has died without a vote. While Mr.
Corrado reports that the bill is “in committee”, it has not attracted
any co-sponsors nor made any progress in the legislative process.

This is simply another in a sustained effort by those opposed to
Democrats to inject misinformation into the political process as a
primary strategy for advancing their agenda. Caveat emptor.

Here's the letter, published at Greenwich Time online on 10/18/10
(http://www.greenwichtime.com/default/article/Business-versus-
executive-experience-711951.php)

"Spending is the problem"

To the editor:

It seems the tax and spend folks in D.C. just don't get it. Americans,
by a large majority, are fed up with the out-of-touch elected elite
class that populates our government. These officials are still looking
for ways to introduce new taxes on the already heavily taxed people.

I urge everyone to check out H.R. 4646, a bill now in committee and
due out after the November elections, that would impose a new 1
percent tax on all monetary transactions.
Included are ATM transactions, deposits and withdrawals by any means,
and checks written, to name a few. The sponsor is a Democrat.

The country's government does not have a revenue problem. It has a
spending problem. Let's throw out the bums who would continue to bleed
us dry by means such as H.R. 4646. Write your representatives and vote
out the institutionally incompetent who won't listen to the people.

John Corrado
Norwalk

What Republicans Stand For

Plenty to write about these days...my next letter for local papers, with reference to Fairfield County, CT candidates for state and federal office:

It’s clear from their actions that Republicans have elevated
obstructionism over doing what’s right for the country. As the
midterm election nears, I ask Independents and others on the fence to
be sure they understand the motivations of candidates from the two
parties. I think you’ll find that Jim Himes, Dick Blumenthal and
Democratic candidates for state office have positive ideas for
rebuilding our economy and improving economic security. In contrast,
Republicans are motivated by obstruction and protecting the wealthy at
the expense of the middle class. Just listen to what they’re
saying.

John Boehner, Republican House minority leader, is so unconcerned with
the plight of ordinary Americans that he called financial reform
legislation “killing an ant with a nuclear weapon.” In Boehner’s
world, millions of lost jobs, and trillions in lost savings is
inconsequential. All but three House Republicans voted against
financial reform, decrying it as a threat to free markets. The same
free markets that needed Bush’s $700 billion taxpayer-financed
bailout.

Senator Jim DeMint, Republican from South Carolina, would rather lose
a senate seat than see a moderate elected who would cross party lines.
Congressional candidate Dan Debicella wants to repeal healthcare
reform, with no cogent plan on how to cover 50 million Americans who
lack health insurance. Representative Joe Barton, ranking Republican
on the House energy committee, was “ashamed” that the Obama
administration secured $20 billion from BP to cover the unprecedented
economic and environmental damage the company inflicted on the Gulf,
calling it a “shakedown.” This is the person who would take over
leadership on energy policy if Democrats lose control of the House.

Senate Republicans stood in the way of an additional $34 billion in
unemployment benefits, claiming the government can’t afford additional
deficit spending. The same Republicans who are willing to spend $700
billion to extend Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans.
Over in Alaska, Republicans are trying to “roll back the federal
government” while they take in federal stimulus money at nearly three
times the per capita rate as other states.

This is what Republicans are about. Hopefully it’s not what the
voters of Fairfield County want.

In Response to Greenwich's Former Mayor re "Liberal Politicians"

The former mayor of Greenwich, CT (where I live), wrote a letter to the editor in our local paper lambasting "liberal politicians" for everything they've done.

My response:

To the editor (Greenwich Post):

In his letter on September 9th, former Selectman Peter Crumbine assailed “liberal politicians” in Washington and Hartford for trillion-dollar deficits, sky-high unemployment and health care reform. The problem with Mr. Crumbine—and the Republican establishment—is that they love to play fast and loose with the facts.

They conveniently ignore that President Bush added nearly $5 trillion to the federal debt, reversing budget surpluses left to us by Clinton economic policies. The unemployment rate started its steady march upward well before President Obama took office. While it has continued to climb, the trend in job losses reversed itself after the Obama stimulus package was passed, supporting the perspective that the stimulus is achieving its goal of restoring the economy to health. If Republicans are so masterful at managing the economy, how is it that under Clinton, four times as many jobs were created as during the following Bush years?

Republicans appear to be pleased with the current state of health care, since they did everything in their power to block any attempt at reform. Apparently 45 million non-elderly uninsured (four out of five of whom are in working households), a steady decline in employer-based coverage and premiums growing four times faster over the past decade than wage increases are facts that don’t matter.

Mr. Crumbine encourages us to send “free market business executives with proven records of success” to Washington and Hartford. The same successful business executives, no doubt, that brought the global economy to its knees with their “fiscally conservative” risk taking and whose banks had to be bailed out by Bush with a $700 billion rescue package.

I suggest the next time a Republican asserts facts about how bad Democrats are for the economy, take the time to do some fact checking. You’ll be surprised at what you find.

It’s more than disheartening to believe that one vote in the Senate could make the difference between beginning to address the health care crisis in this country or accepting the status quo. Which is why I believe it is particularly important to stand up to Republican obstructionism on the issue, and encourage Democrats to push forward.

I’m off to watch President Obama take on the Republicans for six hours. How delicious!

Any way one looks at it, the evidence demonstrates that Republicans are fundamentally opposed to health care reform that would enable all Americans to actually enjoy “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, rights enshrined in our Declaration of Independence. Republicans would have us believe that they are for cutting costs, extending coverage, reducing the deficit, improving health care and working collaboratively with Democrats, but the facts paint a different picture.

Despite months of good-faith negotiation to accommodate Republican demands, only one Republican out of more than 250 actually supported the health care reform legislation passed by the House and Senate. This is despite the fact that Democrats significantly compromised on key priorities: a public option to make insurance affordable and introduce competition into the market, truly universal coverage (millions are still left uninsured in the current proposals) and protection of women’s right to choose.

Republicans are not committed to universal health care and protection from the catastrophic impact of serious illness on working families, leaving the United States alone among developed nations in not protecting its citizens. The latest Republican proposal would cover just three million uninsured, only 10% of what the Democrat’s legislation covers. By their own admission, Republicans question why universal coverage is a priority. Sage Eastman, a spokesman for Republicans on the House and Ways Committee asked, “Why is coverage the dominant theme?” For those who believe that Republicans are on the side of the middle class, consider the facts. Millions of the uninsured that Republican proposals won’t cover are working families and their children; universal coverage is not just about providing insurance to those in poverty.

By their words and actions, Republicans are demonstrating that their primary motivation is obstruction, not solving the health care crisis. They rail about “government takeovers” of health care and burgeoning government expenditures, but stand in the way of Medicare reforms to cut government spending without cutting benefits. John McCain attempted to block nearly $500 billion in planned Medicare savings and costly Medicare Advantage plans that receive unwarranted government subsidies. The Bush-enacted prescription drug benefit prohibits the government from negotiating for lower drug prices. Republicans are fine with government spending when it enriches pharmaceutical companies, but against it when it helps working Americans.

Republicans conveniently ignore the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office analysis that projects that the Democratic Senate plan would reduce the deficit by $132 billion over the next decade, and $1 trillion over the decade following. By contrast, the latest Republican measure, according to CBO estimates, will lower the deficit in the first decade by just $68 billion, while covering only one-tenth as many uninsured.

Republicans are scaring Americans into believing that health care reform will raise their premiums. In fact, the CBO concluded that the legislation won’t have much of an impact on premiums up or down.

If Republicans continue to stand in the way of health care reform, Democrats need to take matters into their own hands and use parliamentary maneuvers to let the majority will be expressed.