Tax Code (Cassidy / New Yorker)

[struggle4progress]

by JOHN CASSIDY
Tax cuts were just the beginning: the President is signalling a far more radical agenda.
Issue of 2004-09-06
Posted 2004-08-30

<snip> When the President pledges to create an “era of ownership,” he is not talking merely about encouraging people to buy their own homes and start small businesses. To conservative Republicans who understand his coded language, he is also talking about extending and expanding the tax cuts he introduced in his first term; he is talking about allowing wealthy Americans to shelter much of their income from the I.R.S.; about using the tax code to curtail the government’s role in health care and retirement saving; and, ultimately, about a vision that has entranced but eluded conservatives for decades: the abolition of the graduated income tax and its replacement with a levy that is simpler, flatter, and more favorable to rich people.

<snip> Since the personal income tax was introduced, in 1913, it has been based on two principles: the burden of taxation is distributed according to the ability to pay; and capital and labor carry their fair share. The Bush Administration appears set on undermining both of these principles. <snip>

According to the White House, in fiscal 2004 the three Bush tax cuts will cost the United States Treasury about $241 billion in revenues, which is about two per cent of the gross domestic product. (The Congressional Budget Office, which is nonpartisan, puts the 2004 cost of the tax cuts at closer to three hundred billion dollars.) The lost revenue has wreaked havoc with the budget. In 1999, the federal government had a surplus of $125.6 billion; this year, according to the latest official forecast, it will have a deficit of about $450 billion. The 2001 recession and the jump in spending on defense and homeland security since 9/11 are responsible for some of this reversal, but even the Bush Administration concedes that tax cuts caused about a third of it. <snip>

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040906fa_fact


Some indication of the Administration's aims and major players ...

[papau]

1. Well written and true - but broadcast media does not care to discuss

:-(

[rfkrocks]

2. an ideologue in the white house

Lets turn the clock back to 1929-this shrub hates the "new deal"-it is the Roosevelts against the robber barons all over again-great post-the NewYorker has been great this year too