Why Americans Are So Angry
Source: Wall Street Journal
By Senator Bernie Sanders
July 28, 2011
The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent
years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses,
teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some
billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.
Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have
made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any
federal income taxes. We lose $100 billion every year in federal revenue
from companies and individuals who stash their wealth in tax havens
off-shore like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. The sum of all the
revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross
domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.
In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically
determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large
multinational corporations so that they do not contribute a single penny
toward deficit reduction.
If the Republicans
have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on
the elderly, the sick, children and working families. In the midst of a
horrendous recession that is already causing severe pain for average
Americans, this approach is morally grotesque. It's also bad economic
policy.
President Obama and
the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing
extremist proposals. Although the United States now has the most unequal
distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country,
Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at
the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.
Instead, they've
handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the
Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and
lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. In April, to
avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed
$38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class
and middle-class Americans.
Now, with the U.S.
facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history, the
American people find themselves forced to choose between two
congressional deficit-reduction plans. The plan by Senate Majority
Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year
period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health
care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs
desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.
The Senate plan
appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest
people in this country and the largest corporations to make any
sacrifice.
The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker
John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in
the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it requires a congressional
committee to come up with another $1.8 trillion in cuts within six
months of passage.
Those cuts would
mean drastic reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
What's more, Mr. Boehner's plan would reopen the debate over the debt
ceiling, which is now paralyzing Congress, just six months from now.
While all of this is
going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated,
in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large
corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. They also want bedrock
social programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be
protected. For example, a July 14-17 Washington Post/ABC News poll found
that 72% of Americans believe that Americans earning more than $250,000
a year should pay more in taxes.
In other words,
Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't
want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is
on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most
important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no
sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's
going on in Washington? I am too.
Mr. Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is a member of the Senate
Budget Committee.
http://sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=23d554d6-dd0c-41a5-8b80-a95eb72be82a
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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