Taxes

The Republican “Balanced Budget” Amendment Proposal: Preposterous As It Has Always Been!

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The Republican Party is again out on a tear promoting a so called “Balanced Budget Amendment” to solve the future problem of national debt!

This idea has been promoted on and off since the 1980s as a solution to the growing national debt! It is as preposterous an idea now as it has always been!

It puts the federal government in a “strait jacket”, unable to react to economic collapse or foreign war! Just as no family can be certain as to their expenses in any calendar year due to unforeseen circumstances, the government also cannot possibly know ahead of time what the total government expenses will be!

The proposed amendment is just an excuse to avoid the ultimate responsibility of government beyond defense of the nation: to deal with the nation’s basic needs, domestic and foreign, through TAXATION, every person’s basic commitment as a citizen to pay taxes as part of their patriotic duty!

And just remember that it was under Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush that the national debt multiplied, with SEVEN TRILLION out of the $10 Trillion national debt in 2008 being due to Reagan ($2 trillion) and Bush ($5 trillion)!

The House Republican Budget: Very Clear What The Party Is Trying To Do To America!

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The House of Representatives Budget plan devised by the majority Republicans is a clear cut attack on the middle class and the poor, and all of the social and economic progress of the 20th century Presidents and Congresses which brought prosperity and a growing middle class to American society!

The budget document is an obscene attempt to promote the super wealthy and corporate agenda at the expense of the middle class, and the poor, and with no compassion or conscience displayed at all!

Imagine this:

1. The destruction of 700,000 jobs due to the budget cuts.

2. Cutting of three million low income people from community health centers.

3.Cutting of food and health care assistance to pregnant women, new mothers, and children.

4. Major cut in funds for Head Start.

5. End of federal funding for National Public Radio and PBS.

6. Forcing states to fire teachers and aides, making class sizes dramatically larger.

7. Cutting of some or all financial aid to over 9 million college students who are low income or middle income.

8. Slashing of funds to the National Institutes of Health, cutting research on cancer, Alzheimers, and Parkinsons diseases.

9. Cutting all support of Planned Parenthood, and family planning programs.

10. Putting 10,000 veterans into homelessness because of cuts in housing vouchers.

Other plans are in the works to prevent all abortions, cut the Environmental Protection Agency ability to protect against industrial pollution, and to do nothing to create new jobs, hoping to make economic conditions worse, with the hope that the American people would blame the Democrats and President Obama for the poorly performing economy!

This is a time for all decent people to make clear through calls and emails to their Congressmen and Senators that they will not tolerate the war on America’s middle class and the poor being perpetrated by the Republican Party!

It is time that excuses for budget cuts be replaced by tax increases on the wealthy and the corporations, who have to take responsibility on the national and state levels to help resolve the inequities that exist in America. They have received enough benefits over the past ten years, and really the past thirty years, and it is time to pay up as good, responsible Americans!

What The Republican Party Refuses To Recognize! :(

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The Republican Party refuses to understand that even if ALL discretionary non defense spending is eliminated, it does not come anywhere near the problem of resolving the deficit.

The only way is to RAISE taxes on the wealthy and corporations, back to the level under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower during the 1950s, a level over 70 percent, rather than the 36.5 percent that the wealthy now pay. Plus corporations must not be allowed to have an effective tax rate of 10 percent after all the loopholes and accounting tricks that cut most of their tax responsibility!

What kind of country cuts educational opportunity, allows poor people to freeze in the winter, makes lawlessness easier in urban neighborhoods by cutting police forces down, lets states destroy labor rights hard earned over 80 and more years, shows no concern for the welfare of children, cuts back on promotion of clean water and air, etc? 🙁

We are trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poorest in our society, and making the middle class slip into poverty, all because of the greed and selfishness of the wealthy and multinational corporations who do not give a damn about anyone but themselves! 🙁

But the national debt and deficit will never be resolved until the upper class follow John F. Kennedy’s Inaugural statement: “Ask not what your country can for you, ask what you can do for your country!”

If the elite rich and corporations do not wake up, they will face the threat of social and economic turmoil which could lead to violence and bloodshed, a horrible thought!

We are all in this together, and it is time that the elite paid their fair share of the burden of making this country work, and return to a stable economy!

The Danger Of City And State Budget Cuts: Future Lawsuits!

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The city of Camden, New Jersey has just cut its police and firefighter contingents by 45 percent, in a city infamous for the second highest crime rate and a large number of suspicious fires.

At the same time, in New York City, a 75 year old woman had cardiac arrest, and with the failure to clean up the snowstorm that hit the city, it took three hours for help to reach her, and she passed away, and now her daughter is suing the city because of the lack of response.

It is easy to say–cut, cut, cut–rather than to tax to keep services. But these developments mentioned above are happening all over the nation, and it means crime rates will skyrocket, fires will destroy much property and kill large numbers of people, education will become truly a mockery, health care in hospitals will deteriorate, sanitation will not be able to keep up with vermin that will overrun where garbage gathers uncollected, libraries will shut down that offer people a chance for an escape and to do job seeking on their computers, etc, etc, etc.

There are no winners in this situation, including hundreds of thousands or even millions of dedicated public servants who will be unemployed as a result.

Instead of everyone facing up to the reality that we do not get necessary services by praying to God, but must pay the appropriate level of taxes to keep our service, even in a difficult time, the nation will deteriorate to a level that will destroy the body fabric long term.

It also is reality that more lawsuits will ensue, which will use up city and state budgets for attorney fees, and the likelihood of payouts in the millions of dollars for reckless endangerment of all citizens because of the budget cuts!

It is due time for all citizens to face reality: we are all in this together, and must stop seeing taxes as the great evil, as lack of services is a far greater sin! 🙁

Budget Cuts In The Real World: Total Confusion Of Americans!

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A CBS News Poll demonstrates the difficulties involved in the need to cut government spending.

77 percent want spending cut to deal with the deficit and the national debt, while only 9 percent want to raise taxes.

But ask people what should be cut, and then one realizes just how difficult it is going to be for either the Republican House or the Democratic Senate and President Obama to come to grips with the crisis.

63 percent say to cut cut Social Security for the wealthy, but how is the issue of what is “wealthy” to be determined, particularly in a nation where tax cuts for the wealthy have been part of policy under Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Republican Congresses, and was part of the Obama tax deal with the GOP in December? Interesting that people want the wealthy to lose benefits, and yet the Republican Party is bitterly opposed to any such idea.

58 percent support reducing money for projects in their area, what is now called “earmarks”, but is that really true when such “pork” helps creates employment, boosts the economy, and promotes infrastructure improvement and public works which people like and want?

55 percent want farm subsidies reduced, such as for tobacco, cotton, and dairy, but will GOP representatives and senators whose constituents want it and vote for the Republican party, really vote for that?

52 percent want to reduce defense spending, but it could be argued that it could undermine our national security, and would force the closing of naval, air and military bases in many states, affecting the economy in a detrimental way.

Other areas to cut spending get a negative reaction, such as 48-45, people are against eliminating the mortgage interest deduction; 54-43 against raising the retirement age; 56-41 against reducing money for student loans; 65-33 against raising taxes; 67-27 against reducing health care and education spending (which the Republicans want to do, including repealing the Obama Health Care plan); and 69-26 against taxing health care benefits.

So what it comes down to is that Americans want to “have their cake and eat it too!”, pay no more in taxes but only hurt others rather than themselves!

In other words, the American people don’t want to face reality, and that makes the job of the politicians extremely difficult over the next two years of the 112th Congress!

The Truth About Taxes: They Must Go Up, Especially On The Wealthy!

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A study by the NY Times demonstrates that tax rates have fallen for the wealthy in the past thirty years by a far greater amount than for middle income taxpayers, while their incomes have soared.

At the same time, the incomes of most workers have grown only slightly, and their taxes have only gone down a bit.

The rich have become much richer, a with a greater share of income concentrated at the top, and they are taxed less than they once were on every dollar.

But the study shows that if taxes are not raised on the wealthy, the only alternative is to raise taxes on everyone else a lot more than would occur otherwise,or there will have to be deep cuts in Medicare, Social Security, military spending, and other large spending programs.

It is clear that affluent families have the ability and means to hide much of their income, and are therefore putting the burden of taxation on the middle class. There is no sense of responsibility or patriotism that their being more fortunate requires that they willingly pay more taxes as they used to, without complaint, since it is the American system that allowed them the opportunity to achieve more success, and they owe support to the country that gave them that chance.

No one “enjoys” paying taxes, but it is a responsibility of citizenship. It has become a mark of greed and selfishness that those on the top do everything they can to avoid taxes and put the burden on those less fortunate and less able to pay higher taxes.

Future increases in taxation, in any case, is inevitable, whether one likes it or not!

This is a sobering thought on Income Tax Day, April 15!