I am flabbergasted. President Obama is pressing Congress to temporarily surrender the automatic termination of the Bush-era tax cuts for the rich, in favor of some across the board tax breaks and economic provisions that would give ¾ of these breaks to the top 1%, and which, by eliminating his own Making Work Pay credit will mean that the poor will pay more taxes, not less. Why did our President feel the need to offer estate tax breaks for the rich as an additional deal sweetener?
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No wonder so many Republicans are gleeful about the way that the President is reaching out to them. As to reducing payroll taxes for social security contributions, this opens the door to wholesale looting of social security. We ordinary people will pay later. Obama’s so-called compromise plan is expected to contribute nearly $1 trillion to the federal budget deficit over the next two years. Who will pay for this, if we allow the Bush-era tax cuts to continue, with Obama’s estate tax bonanza added to the mix? Only the rich can afford the changes we need, but Obama is pressuring Congress to let the rich duck out of an ever greater contribution to the society that has served them so well for so many years.
The Bush-era tax cuts, greatly favoring the rich are set to expire. The best thing that Congress and the President can do is to let this happen. No deals. No compromise. It won’t get easier to put this off to a future time. No amount of trade-offs to get temporary tax breaks for the middle class, or economic stimulus or extension of unemployment benefits should be offered. These issues should be dealt with separately. As a separate bill, unemployment benefits should be extended. For the longer term we need more jobs. How about putting the jobless to work, on an emergency footing, to transform the entire nation to solar and wind energy? Whatever we do, we need to get back to a more progressive tax system. Unless this happens, virtually everything that is done will be paid for by those least able, and because the least able can’t afford it, most of what we want will not get done, and the economy will go down hill. Let the Bush-era tax cuts expire!
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