Deficits Matter Sometimes

When this president was on the campaign trail, he said he’d get rid of President Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. Then after Obama won the election that promise turned into well, he’d wait and let them expire.

Now expiration time has arrived, and the Republicans are calling to make them permanent, but when a jobs bill comes up for a vote, the Republicans block it because they’re worried about the deficit. Deficits in federal and state governments have been gaining momentum because the federal government has steadily decreased taxes on the monied minority, ever since Reagan was President.

According to Robert Reich former Secretary of Labor, “the rich have been getting a larger and larger portion of total income. From 9 percent in 1980, the top 1 percent’s take increased to 23.5 percent by 2007.”

A hedge fund manager making a billion a year pays less in taxes than his secretary does, whose income is taxed at a higher rate than the billionaire’s 17 percent .

Another component in the Bush tax cuts is the estate tax, created to keep dynasties from forming by passing a family’s wealth from one generation to the next. If the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, the estate tax (inheritance tax) will be repealed.

People were up in arms when Senator John Kerry and Congressman Charlie Rangel failed to pay taxes on property they own. If the tax cuts are made permanent, this means family members of John Kerry or Charlie Rangel stand to inherit millions of dollars in property with none of them paying any taxes on it, ever. Meanwhile, ordinary Americans have paid tax on any property they’ve inherited.

The monied minority assaults us with Orwellian double speak, turning the estate tax into the “death tax”, and it’s working as many Americans agree with this double speak. Even if they don’t understand the truth about it they are against the estate tax. The super-rich own the propaganda machines, the politicians and the media.

Former Vice president Dick Cheney said President Reagan proved deficits don’t matter, when it suited the republican cause. Now, because Democrats added to the deficit, they suddenly matter. Why weren’t they important during the Bush years, when he was tilting the odds in the favor of his friends, the monied minority, with tax cuts?