According to the AP, Bush has wisely decided to pursue incremental changes to the current tax code, instead of trying to scrap the income tax for a national sales tax or other system that House Speaker Dennis Hasters and other conservative Republicans favor. This is probably because, despite victories in Congress, President Bush still probably doesn't have the ability to push through both major Social Security and tax reform, and has obviously chosen to focus on the former. So what kind of changes might we see? Well, a shift of the tax burden to blue states seems to be in order!
The biggest option they are looking at is eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to "make sure the rich paid their fair share of taxes but is now ensnaring more middle-income taxpayers." Sounds like a good idea doesn't it? Well, some have looked under the surface:
"Now here is an especially devious aspect of the Republican plot. Republicans did not show the interest in a long-term fix for the AMT in 2001 that they showed for slashing the estate tax, or in 2003 for chopping the tax on corporate dividends. After all, those are taxes that irritate very wealthy Republicans. By contrast, it so happens that the AMT's rise creates a much bigger problem for Democrats than Republicans. The states and localities that levy income taxes tend to be more Democratic, like California and New York, than the states that do not, like Texas. So that's where the taxpayers are whose income tax, but not their AMT, is reduced by deducting state and local income taxes -- and who will find themselves paying lots of AMT in a second Bush term. Thus the AMT performs the politically dangerous trick of surcharging Democratic areas and sparing Republican ones.
In fact, the partisan effect of leaving the AMT without a long-term fix is so potent that an article in the tax journal Tax Notes during the passage of Bush's 2001 tax bill had the stark headline, based on the AMT's long-term effect, 'No Tax Cuts for the Gore States.' Change 'Gore' to 'Kerry' or just plain 'Democratic' and the post-2005 prospect becomes alarmingly clear."
The article goes on to how the Republicans will probably contrive the tax reform bills to set up Democrats for voting one way or the other, as they have done before on previous tax cut bills and others. Again, the Republicans show more interest in punishing Democrats than they do in actually trying to reform the tax code to make it "simpler and fairer" as they so often claim they want to do. And why not? They know most people would reject their attempts to undermine a progressive tax system in favor of one that shifts the tax burden toward the middle-class and away from the rich. Besides, it's more fun this way. They can tax Democrats more while simultaneously taking more seats away from them through the inevitable negative ads that read "Your congressman voted for high taxes" which people will again swallow hook, line, and sinker.
But I digress...
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
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3 comments:
Why is it that most all the political pundits in this country still think in terms of Republican and Democrat? Either this nation's political writers are incredibly ignorant (willfully or not) or they are too frightened to tell the truth. The truth is that both Democrats and Republicans have the exact same agenda: open borders, welfare state, drug war, war on terrorism, up with pharmaceuticals down with vitamins. How many politicians do you see saying: "we need a media campaign to educate the people on the constituton"? Our government is run by big money, everybody knows that. Everyone except the political pundits. And who is pulling the strings? Halliburton, Phizer, et al.
When are the political pundits going to just tell the truth? There is no Democrat or Republican anymore, only money grubbing prostitutes.
I hope you are not referring to us as political pundits. I'd be offended! Political pundits are stupid, but for other reasons...
I assume that you are a libertarian or paleo-conservative, and I guess, if you are, there's not a whole lot of difference to you. But I have a real problem with this way of thinking that "Democrats and Republicans" are the same, so let me address some of the things you bring up.
open borders:
Well, liberal Democrats want amnesty programs. Others, like Hillary Clinton, take a more right-wing stance. The Bush proposal is not an amnesty plan, it is a "slave labor for corporations" plan that doesn't grant immigrants citizenship at any point. Nonetheless, many conservative Republicans are against it.
welfare state:
Well, I suppose you mean that they both support some government programs to some extent. Well, true. Republicnas have for the most part drop their ridiculous ideas of ending SS or Medicare and stuff like it. But that doesn't make them liberal. Now they find ways of pleasing the private sector by reforming these programs to benefit them, like the Medicare prescription drug benefit and the proposed SS changes.
drug war:
This is like the "open borders" issue. Liberal Democrats would like to see marijauna legalized, stuff like Plan Columbia ended, and the "war on drugs" programs greatly rescinded. Conservative Republicans would like to see those things greatly increased. Moderates would like to keep the status quo.
War on Terrorism:
Well, in that they support some form of it I guess. Only a few radicals propose an isolationist policy, but there are obviously great disagreements over the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, the detainment and treatment of "enemy combatants," etc.
I'll certainly agree that big money has too big a hand in politics, but you have to be reasonable about it. There are a lot of corporate Republicans and (less) corporate Demcorats, but not all.
Anonymous, if your point is that Dems and Repubs are the same, a bunch of evil parasites, that's fine, but don't ignore the fact that it's the Repubs who are trying to pass stuff that actively injures the middle-class people.
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