Hypocritical Senators Choose Tax Cuts For The Rich Over Job Creation

[Joanne98]

BY STEVE WAMHOFF

www.ctj.org

More than 40 U.S. senators have voted several times this year to block extensions of programs that -- according to mainstream economists -- are the most effective ways to boost consumer demand and create jobs. This minority of senators filibustered a package of extended unemployment benefits, Medicaid funding for states and other vital measures because it would have increased the budget deficit by more than $100 billion, which these senators claimed was unacceptable. They later stopped action on several smaller jobs bills until the Senate (just barely) approved a pared-down $34 billion extension of unemployment benefits.

Yet almost all of these supposedly anti-deficit senators also want to add about a trillion dollars to the deficit over the next decade by making permanent the Bush tax cuts that benefit the very richest taxpayers. While the relatively small, temporary job measures that these senators blocked would have little or no impact on the long-term budget deficit, making permanent the Bush tax cuts for the rich would drastically increase the deficit and reduce our ability to invest in America's future.

There are three parts to the debate over the Bush tax cuts. The first involves the cuts enacted under President Bush in the federal income tax. Under President Obama's proposal, the 98 percent of taxpayers with adjusted gross income less than $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples) would retain all of these income tax cuts. That leaves in dispute only whether the richest 2 percent will also continue to enjoy fully these income tax cuts, as congressional Republicans propose.

The second involves the federal tax on the estates of millionaires, which President Bush temporarily repealed. While congressional Republicans want to make this repeal permanent, President Obama would meet Bush halfway by cutting the estate tax in half (compared to what it would be if Congress simply allowed the Bush repeal to expire).



Read more: http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/07/30/1754318/hypocritical-senators-choose-tax.html#ixzz0vCjiGnwJ

[FiveGoodMen]

1. What will Americans do if they ever figure out that a representative democracy

without representation is not a democracy.

(And what will they be able to do about it by then?)

[truedelphi]

2. Oh, by the time MOST people figure it out, electronic

"Thought" chips will be required by the management.

"Senators good, common people bad," or some such nonsensical mantra.