September 26, 2005

Gene Lyons

Backlit by temporary spotlights flown to New Orleans, Bush vowed to spare no expense in what he called "one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen." He added that "federal funds will cover the great majority of the costs of repairing public infrastructure in the disaster zone." Costs are estimated at $200 billion, very roughly what the U.S. expects to spend in Iraq this year.

And here’s the beauty part: In the short run, those billions will come mostly from the governments of China and Saudi Arabia in the form of Treasury Bond purchases. Eventually, of course, the debt must be repaid with interest, but not while Bush is president. Sweet.

Pressed by reporters for a ballpark estimate, the president shrugged. Rebuilding after Katrina, he said, would "cost whatever it costs." He vowed not to raise taxes. Unspecified cuts in other government programs supposedly would make up the difference.

Since Bush took office in 2001, government spending has risen by almost a third, from $1.86 trillion to $2.48 trillion, Newsweek reports. He has never vetoed a spending bill. In recently signing a $286.4 billion, pork-laden transportation bill—$250 million to build a bridge from a town of 8,000 to an island of 50 in a powerful Alaska congressman’s district, for example—Bush praised himself for doing it the "fiscally responsible way." Instead of raising taxes, he borrowed the money.

Bush "conservatism," see, is grasshopper conservatism. Party today, let the ants pay the caterer another day. Meanwhile, two little known, millionaires-only tax cuts enacted in 2001 will take effect next year. By removing ceilings on personal exemptions and itemized deductions, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the provisions will cut income taxes on the top 0.2 percent of taxpayers an average of $20,000 each. The five-year budget cost is $35 billion. With hundreds of thousands homeless and destitute, do they really need it?

Then there’s that GOP obsession, the so-called "death tax" repeal. It’s valuable only to heirs (like Bush himself) who expect to inherit multimillion-dollar fortunes. Just over 1 percent of inheritors last year paid any estate tax at all. Roughly one-quarter of the total collected came from estates of more than $20 million.

The average estate tax paid in 2003, reports Ernest Dumas in the Arkansas Times, came to 17 percent. Middle-class wage earners pay higher withholding taxes. Contrary to GOP propaganda, most large estates consist of unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed at all.

Keeping the estate tax could pay for Katrina all by itself. Instead, Bush vows to ask Congress to make tax cuts enacted in 2001 for the wealthiest Americans permanent. Over a decade, that’s expected to cost an estimated $1.4 trillion at a time of record deficits. Can the nation afford it?

Read the entire piece here.

9 Comments:

At 9/26/2005 9:38 AM, Blogger Dave Victor said...

Bush has spent more money on programs for the poor than Clinton ever did. Black home ownership is at an all time high. The poor in New Orleans were the direct result of the Great Society policies. Here's a news flash for you-they were porr when Clinton was in office too.

 
At 9/26/2005 3:41 PM, Blogger Dave Victor said...

There was no surplus, it was a projected surplus that never existed.

 
At 9/27/2005 1:17 AM, Blogger The Inside Dope said...

Dave and Bad Breath,
You're both nothing but guys who love to mouth off and start fights. I call people like that assholes, but that's just me.

Dave spouts "facts" that simply aren't. And apparently, for Dave, if Bush spent more than Clinton on "the poor", then that must mean that the problem can safely be dismissed and ignored. Or perhaps Dave is trying to say no problem exists? Whatever he's saying, it doesn't refute the argument that more needs to be done to address poverty in this country.

And Badbreath is in fine right wing form, substituting a snarky jerk attitude, reverting to infantile stereotypes and his "boogy-men" that he quivers in fear of, like "hippies" and people that care about the environment... dangerous people like that.

Try to at least offer something that shows even a bit of thought here guys. Or is thinking something those "liberal eggheads" do, and therefore not your style?

 
At 9/27/2005 7:03 AM, Blogger Dave Victor said...

dope


Which facts aren't? And what is your solution to the war on poverty if not more money?

 
At 9/27/2005 9:45 AM, Blogger The Inside Dope said...

First Dave, how you can read the facts in the Lyons piece and still maintain everything's just fine is stunning.

And I am beyond skeptical of the fact that Bush "spent more on the poor" than Clinton. I'd like to see what he considers "spending on the poor".

And who said that the solution to poverty couldn't involve more money?

The fact remains that there are hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on dubious and ill-considered government programs.

It's a matter of priorities. For one instance, and by no means the most important, is it more important to this country to let the Paris Hilton's of the world keep a few hundred thousand of tax dollars, or undertake some meaningful efforts to reduce the economic disparity in this country?

And if you think the rich are rich because they're just that smart and hard-working, you've got problems.

They are extremely rich 9 times out of 10 due to inheritence (and yes, they'd been paying inheritence taxes for generations with no ill effects)

They're very rich often because this administration and those in the past as well as congress have been their paid servants in proposing and enacting endless legislation and other laws which both enable them to pay almost no taxes, far, far less than the middle class, and to in many instances have the government literally give them billions in subsidies and guarantees, ensure that they make enormous profits while avoiding any risk, and give them endless other benefits that ensure that they play by an entirely different set of rules, rules which are only there to benefit them and increase their wealth.

How can you believe that out of all the critical problems in this country, that the biggest priority for our economic well-being and the good of society is to give enormous tax cuts to the very richest in the country, to spend mulitiple TRILLIONS in a scheme to hand over social security profits to Wall Street firms, and in the process kill it, or remove the burden of paying a tiny fraction of their inheritance in taxes from an almost microscopic segment of the country, those inheriting over 20 million dollars in one fell swoop.

As a very small example of such idiocy, Bush gave the wealthy tax breaks for buying gas guzzling Hummers. That's stupid on so many levels as to need no explanation.

Maybe eliminating idiotic and counter productive measures like that would be a good start in preventing Bush and Co. from further accelerating this country's slide into becoming a banana republic.

It's clear that Bush and his cronies admire and envy the dictatorships in which there is a plutocracy which rules the country with impunity while the vast underclass lives just at or below subsistence levels. Nearly all their priorities and efforts are to enact laws which serve to move this country further and further toward that model.

Handing more and more money to the richest 1 or 2% of this country at the expense of bleeding the middle and lower class white isn't the way to combat poverty.

The gulf between the rich and poor in this country has never been wider, and it's getting more vast all the time.

And if someone with an estate of over 20 MILLION DOLLARS is such a collosally greedy ass as to begrudge having to pay a tiny portion of it to the country which made it possible for that wealth to be created, then they should have ALL of it taken from them and they should be deported.

To defend repealing the estate tax as somehow being unfair is ridiculous. Poor, poor Paris Hilton... whatever would she do without hundreds of thousands of tax breaks?

 
At 9/27/2005 3:47 PM, Blogger HRC said...

Lyons is one of my all-time favorites since I discovered him. He and Conason were a great team; should do it again.

 
At 9/27/2005 3:57 PM, Blogger HRC said...

Señor Tonto says:
Other than those who are physically and/or mentally unable to support themselves, most people need to look to themselves to get out of poverty.

It is fascinating to see how ignorant some people can be.

Trickle down economics works like this:
I piss on your head and tell you to get out of the rain.

No, seriously, trickle down economics works like this:
Denny Hastert gets a big fat tax break and buys antique cars and tells the poor to work harder at getting a God Damned job.

 
At 9/27/2005 6:12 PM, Blogger Dave Victor said...

diehard

You are fat, aren't you?

 
At 9/27/2005 8:49 PM, Blogger Dave Victor said...

no, I'm just trying to get a picture that's all really. So, you're overweight, right?

 

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