House easily passes tax cut bill The debate divided starkly along partisan lines, with Republicans crediting the tax cuts, first enacted in 2003, with a surging economy, millions of new jobs and booming tax revenues. Democrats countered that the deficit-financed tax cuts are tilted in favor of wealthy investors and that the economic benefits are not as great as advertised. Critics, including most Democrats, attacked the tax rate reductions on dividends and capital gains as being skewed in favor of the rich. They noted that it was the second half of a GOP budget package that began with $39 billion in benefit cuts over five years, many of which came from programs for the poor such as Medicaid. Democrats also cited a joint study by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution that shows taxpayers with incomes greater than $1 million per year winning tax cuts of $42,000 under the bill while families with incomes of $50,000 a year would average a $46 tax cut. âThe Republican Party ... is sending all the millionaires on an all-expenses-paid vacation â for $41,000 a year,â said Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Wash. âThe rest of America is being forced to choose between filling the gas tank or stocking the refrigerator.â --------------- What a great idea, cut taxes for the rich at the expense of Medicaid. $46 dollars goes a long way.....if your living in 1920! At least one economist recently wrote about Dick Cheney's cocktail napkin. Yes the patented Cheney logic of "deficits don't matter" and other related wonderful economic thought still prevails in Republican lore.
I'm not surprised that this article quoted Jim McDermott, D-Wash. - regurgitating the failed socialistic economics from yesterday. Tax cuts, bad. Tax increases, good. That fiscal policy thinking is why Jimmy "stagflation" Carter was a one-term president. Supporters of tax increases never have an answer for how they would have brought us out of the 2001 recession. A couple of years ago, the socialist and anti-American McDermott was in Baghdad pre-war, and announced to the world that Saddam Hussein needs to be believed, not the US government.
Is there still anybody who believes that bureaucrats actually care about poor or middle class people?
Most everyone is in agreement that the budget deficits, the "national debt" and trade imbalance are at way higher than healthy levels. Of course it's one thing to pay lip service but it's another to actually make the effort to purchase American goods (a self imposed tax toward buying higher priced domestic goods) or to willingly pay higher taxes to government. As a futures trader, I don't feel particularly over taxed. However if I were at the same income level and on the hook for the 38% Federal, 16% self employed Social and Medicare, and then x% state, depending where I live (Illinois is 3%) I would feel GOUGED! Throw in several thousand a year for property taxes on even the humblest abode along with sales, gas, phone taxes and driving fees like licenses, stickers and plates. It's a SHITLOAD of taxes. Most of which fail to be progressive. Out of the three major individual tax categories: estate, capital gains, and income, I would make permanent cuts in income, perhaps raise capital gains and make slight reductions to around 35% in the death tax9with a $3,000,000 exemption). Most appreciation of capital has to do with the INFLATIONARY fiscal and monetary policies of either Congress or the Fed. Thus capital gains are derived from Caesar. Pay the Man his do. Likewise estates have been prime beneficiaries of the same inflationary system. However unless someone works for XOM or HAL, I'd say FEW can claim with a straight face that their income is derived from the policies employed by the Federal government. As it is, about 38% of the wage earners in the United States make too little to pay Federal income tax. (most of that pool is part timers, lower wage workers, ect.). Hence the top 50% of wage earners pay better than 96% of all income tax. The top 5% pay 53.25% of all income taxes. At some point Congress has to ponder the morality of asking big paycheck people to pay more.
How much tax do the poor and middle class pay? The poor pay no taxes so it is mighty hard to cut taxes when you do not pay them. Additionally, the middle class pay a much lower tax rate than the rich do. It is not low taxes that are killing us, it the "entitlement mentality" that decades of the government taking on a larger and larger role of social support has fostered. An added consequence of this "entitlement mentality" that the government has fostered has helped to erode the priciple of self responsibility to a dangerously low point.
That's why it's nice to replace republicans with democrats every so often. republicans cut taxes and run up the deficit, and democrats then come in raising taxes and balancing the budget. We do need to be honest though. The wealthy pay their fair share of taxes. Off the top of my head I believe it is something like the top 1% of income earners pay 35% of all income tax recieved by the IRS. Whereas the bottom 50% of wage earners shoulder about 4% of the total tax burden. The "rich" are already punished by the progressive tax system. If a tax cut did favor them, it would be well placed in my opinion. If the rich did \n't pay as much as they do, the poor would really have to step it up to compensate.