GOP to raise taxes on poor in latest repulsive hypocrisy
The GOP wants to end a tax break extension in the payroll tax. They can’t possibly tax mega corporations who are getting rebates. They can’t possibly tax the top 2% at a rate where they pay the same amount as everyone else by closing loopholes. They can’t possibly end tax-payer paid subsidies to oil companies who are raking in billions in year after year of record profits. Such measures could easily raise over a trillion dollars in the next ten years. Instead, they want to raise taxes on the bottom 50% of America who hold less than 2% of its wealth.
On Fox, they have started an all out seething fit about how the bottom 50% of America isn’t paying income tax at all - a blatant lie as they have taxes taken from every paycheck - and yet still have access to refrigerators. I’m not kidding about complaining that poor people with access to refrigeration are somehow not really poor. The GOP has been callous and deeply hypocritical for some time, but the nakedness of their hatred of working Americans could not be more plain. All this does is squeeze the middle and lower class harder in a time when they are already reeling and hit hard.
Paradoxically, the only way to jumpstart an economy in such a situation is to inject money into the economy at that level. We got out of the depression by massive government spending that employed millions of Americans - in the middle and lower classes. Helping working Americans was never a GOP priority. It is economics 101 to notice that without an employed and spending middle class, the economy grinds to a halt and revenues plunge. However, the GOP made clear, when they killed the jobs bill and cut federal employment, that they have no intention of restarting the economy. Pyramiding wealth even more and breaking the American workforce so it is desperate and will accept less and less has always been the goal. Weakening the economy and blaming the Democrats is just a strategem to them.
GOP may OK tax increase that Obama hopes to block
Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different “temporary” tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.
The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a “payroll tax” on practically every dime they earn.
Apparently, not all tax cuts are created equal. Rep Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas agrees.
“It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn,” says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, “but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again.” The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.
Cantor and others are suddenly deficit conscious again… Eric Cantor, R-Va., “has never believed that this type of temporary tax relief is the best way to grow the economy,” said spokesman Brad Dayspring. Except of course, when it is for wealthy people.
At issue is a tax that the vast majority of workers pay, but many don’t recognize because they don’t read, or don’t understand their pay stubs. Workers normally pay 6.2 percent of their wages toward a tax designated for Social Security. Their employer pays an equal amount, for a total of 12.4 percent per worker.
As part of a bipartisan spending deal last December, Congress approved Obama’s request to reduce the workers’ share to 4.2 percent for one year; employers’ rate did not change. Obama wants Congress to extend the reduction for an additional year. If not, the rate will return to 6.2 percent on Jan. 1.
Obama cited the payroll tax in his weekend radio and Internet address Saturday, when he urged Congress to work together on measures that help the economy and create jobs.
“There are things we can do right now that will mean more customers for businesses and more jobs across the country. We can cut payroll taxes again, so families have an extra $1,000 to spend,” he said.
Social Security payroll taxes apply only to the first $106,800 of a worker’s wages. Therefore, $2,136 is the biggest benefit anyone can gain from the one-year reduction.The great majority of Americans make less than $106,800 a year. Millions of workers pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes.
The 12-month tax reduction will cost the government about $120 billion this year, and a similar amount next year if it’s renewed.
Read the whole terrible thing.
Also see:
Jon Stewart Does Obama’s Job For Him
If you didn’t see Jon Stewart’s summer break sign-off Thursday night, in which he summed up the right’s “class warfare” hysteria over demands that the rich go back to paying the same tax rates they paid during the Clinton boom years, you’ve got to give this two-part clip your eyes for just a couple minutes:
In all this, Stewart makes clear that Fox News is able to lie and bark absurdities because it’s not a news organization but a one-note propaganda machine whose seamlessness would have left George Orwell’s Winston Smith paralyzed in admiration…
“The poors,” Stewart calls them. Obama needs to recognize that the world economy is shuddering to a halt because the global rich are so focused on wealth protection into a distant future that capitalism can’t find the money to function and grow. The time that his paltry stimulus bought the system has run out. As they did by going after Saddam instead of Al Qaeda, the political class is again setting off weapons of mass distraction—this time, by going after “spending” and the deficit instead of unemployment and the foreclosure crisis.
