-Caveat Lector-
---------- Forwarded message -------
Author: Ivins, Molly
Title: Fairness, Republican Style.
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COPYRIGHT 1999 Progressive Inc.
Thank God all that insane impeachment claptrap is over so we can finally get
around to discussing the important public issues of the day. Such as whether
Tinky Winky, the purple Tele-tubbie, is gay.
We live in a great nation.
The minute the impeachment trial was over, the Republicans made a gesture,
the Democrats criticized it, and the Republicans sprang into battle position
screaming, "Class warfare!"
As you know, this traditional bit of theater occurs whenever Democrats, in
some rare atavistic lapse into their ancestral mores, point out that
Republicans are giving tax breaks to the rich again.
One happy anti-class warrior wrote in The Washington Times, "These people
resent success and want to seize the income of people they envy.... They are
the hate-and-envy crowd." Sheesh, stand up for just a smidgen of justice in
this world, and there you are, in the hate-and-envy crowd.
"A 10 percent across-the-board tax cut, what could be fairer?" demanded
Senator Trent Lott, well-known friend of the working class. What could be
fairer than a tax cut that gives 62 percent of its benefits to the richest 10
percent of the people? A tax cut that gives 32 percent of its benefits to the
richest 1 percent? A tax cut where the lower 60 percent of income earners
would get an average cut of $99, while those making more than $300,000 a year
would get an average $20,697?
I dunno--we'll have to think about what could be fairer than that.
The figures on who would benefit most from that supremely fair
across-the-board tax cut come from Citizens for Tax Justice, which does get
some money from the labor movement. According to The Washington Times, this
makes it "radical," "a leftist think tank."
In the next act, condescending Republicans point out, with painstaking
patience, the reason, actually, that rich people get a larger share of the
across-the-board tax cut is because--tah dah!--rich people pay more in income
taxes. Thanks for your help on that, Sherlock. We never could have figured it
out without you. Guess we'll also never figure out why the rich have gotten so
much richer while everybody else hasn't.
Who needs a tax cut more: a young couple with two small children making
$30,000 a year, or a Wall Street broker making $500,000? It might all depend
on your concept of fairness, except for one odd fact: The $63 billion federal
surplus, which would fund the proposed across-the-board tax cut, does not come
from income taxes but from Social Security taxes. Check it out: If you exclude
Social Security taxes, the federal budget is barely in balance; the surplus
comes from deductions from the paychecks of working Americans.
So the Republican-proposed across-the-board tax cut takes payroll taxes from
average Americans and gives the great bulk of it to the richest 10 percent of
the people in the country.
And note that the Social Security tax maxes out at $72,600: All income above
that level is untaxed. So our hypothetical $500,000-a-year Wall Street broker
pays no more in Social Security than a couple making $45,000 each, but he gets
much, much more of a tax cut. What could be fairer than that?
Now it's true, as Republicans are fond of pointing out, that the very
poorest income workers pay nothing in federal income taxes. That's because of
the Earned Income Tax Credit, which may have been the only good idea Ronald
Reagan ever had--and good on Bill Clinton for expanding it, too. But poorer
workers still have to pay payroll taxes, including Social Security. So money
from farm workers and janitors will help fund the tax cut for our $500K-a-year
broker.
In Texas, where we have compassionate conservatism, we are getting
compassionate taxation.
For example, last month Governor Shrub declared an emergency so the very
first bill the legislature passed could go into effect immediately: It was a
$45 million tax break for the oil and gas industry. But not for the owners of
great big oil and gas wells. No, this tax break is only for the owners of
small oil wells--tiny, itty-bitty, really.
Senator J.R. (Buster) Brown explained, "The oil industry is hurting." And
there's nothing like pain in the oil industry to touch the compassion in a
conservative. Of course, the bill does dump an additional $45 million worth of
tax liability on everyone in the state who doesn't own a teeny-tiny oil well.
And, according to a recent report by the state comptroller's office, the
poorest Texans shoulder a disproportionate share of the state's total tax
burden already.
Block that compassion!
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
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