Regicide

Happy Friday.

This week the House of Representatives passed regressive, oh-so-republican tax cuts. One of the Bills, (colloquially know as the “Help the Rich Get Richer Bill”) drains “the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years” supporting the current administration’s predilection for deficit spending. Nearly half that amount is intended to extend “special low tax rates for investors’ dividends and capital gains.” The target audience: People who make a million dollars or more a year.

At the same time, republicans “in the House and Senate are moving toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement.” As the below editorial from the Paper of Record concludes: “Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.”

After dinner and conversation last night with a good friend who is equally interested in political issues (although sometimes from the wrong side--I’m working on it), I realized that a theory I’ve been kicking around has legs. It’s Medieval, literally.

There has been much inquiry into why the poor and middle classes support an administration that so overtly disregards their interests in favor of the most wealthy in society. Here’s my theory: By denying people the basic resources to survive, the education to achieve, and the opportunity to excel, the current administration forces them into a desperate position wherein their only source of hope is found in religion. Then, the current administration presents itself as a bastion and protector of religious ideals seducing the desperate to align themselves with a self-indulgent oligarchy working against their interests.

A thousand years ago, we called this the feudal system. Today, it is called republican party politics.

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Tax Cut Showdown
Published: December 9, 2005

The House of Representatives passed two major tax-cut bills this week. One deserves to become law; the other deserves to die. It will be up to the Senate to make sure that happens.
On Wednesday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would shield millions of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax next year. The relief is expensive - costing nearly $30 billion - but it's critical. Without it, many middle-class Americans, who were never the intended target for the alternative tax, would be suddenly forced to pay higher taxes when they filed their 2005 tax returns. (The alternative tax was intended to stop rich people with lots of shelters from escaping their tax burden entirely, but it has not been changed to reflect inflation or the tax cuts passed under President Bush.)

The good news ended there. The House irresponsibly neglected to include any offsetting tax increases to help pay for the tax relief. (The Senate's tax bill includes $19 billion in offsetting tax increases.) Even more egregious, the House passed yet another tax bill a day later that would drain the Treasury of $56 billion of additional revenue over the next five years. Of that total, $21 billion would be used to extend, through 2010, special low tax rates for investors' dividends and capital gains. Those rates are set to expire at the end of 2008.

The extension is both unaffordable and gratuitous. Most of the benefits would flow to taxpayers who make more than $1 million a year. That's morally reprehensible at a time when the House and the Senate are moving toward an agreement to cut as much as $45 billion over five years from domestic programs like Medicaid, food stamps, student loans and child-support enforcement. And it comes at a time when the government is already borrowing extensively for all manner of undertakings, like the war in Iraq and the new prescription drug benefit for Medicare.

The Republican House leaders are also plotting to make it easier to get the unnecessary tax cuts for investors through the somewhat more responsible Senate. To date, moderate Senate Republicans have blocked the budget-busting investor tax breaks. The Senate tax bill, passed last month, includes alternative tax relief, but does not extend the preferential rates for investment income.

In a cagey maneuver, the House leaders have organized their legislation so the popular measure on the alternative minimum tax can stand on its own when it gets to the Senate, while the unwise tax reductions for investors can be inserted into a fast-track tax bill, which will, under special rules, be protected against any filibusters when it comes up for a final vote in the Senate. That will make it far easier for senators to abandon all restraint and vote for the House agenda.

It's not certain that the Senate will go along with this plan. The right course is clear: responsible senators should approve alternative minimum tax relief, but stand firm against machinations that would tart up the tax code with additional giveaways for the wealthiest Americans. Rampant tax cutting must be stopped in the face of deficits, looming budget obligations and the painful sacrifices being demanded of the poor.