Krugman: Bush's Class-War Budget

[Strelnikov_]

Dupe from Editorials to get this important article out to the denizens of GD.

Another partial chronicle of economic policy in the Whore Nation.


Bush's Class-War Budget
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 11, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

. . .

It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.

It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.

. . .

Here's a comparison: the Bush budget proposal would cut domestic discretionary spending, adjusted for inflation, by 16 percent over the next five years. That would mean savage cuts in education, health care, veterans' benefits and environmental protection. Yet these cuts would save only about $66 billion per year, about one-sixth of the budget deficit.

On the other side, a rollback of Mr. Bush's cuts in tax rates for high-income brackets, on capital gains and on dividend income would yield more than $120 billion per year in extra revenue - eliminating almost a third of the budget deficit - yet have hardly any effect on middle-income families. (Estimates from the Tax Policy Center of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution show that such a rollback would cost families with incomes between $25,000 and $80,000 an average of $156.)

. . .

[stray cat]

1. Great article. More tax cuts for wealthy buried in Bush budget.

[peacetalksforall]

2. The determination to give to the rich and take from the struggling

is so blatant, so cheap.

They are:
Cheap Stingy Avaricious Chintzy Close-fisted Curdudgeonly, Grasping, Greedy, Ironfisted, Mean, Miserly, Niggardly, Penurious, Petty, Pennypinching, Selfish Tightfisted Uncharitagle, Ungenerous Ungiving

They are UNAMERICAN.

They laugh at us. They insult us. They cheat us.

[EVDebs]

3. Warren Buffett already says in class warfare 'my class already won' eom

'If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning.'

"Warren Buffett Urges Higher Corporate Taxes"
www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0306-01.htm