The awful stench of un-American bill
THE CURRENT outrage at the Republican Congress should come as no surprise to anyone with half a brain.
There are a number of problems with their tax reform bill, not the least of which is that proposed tax cuts for big business are to be permanent. We are not sure what will happen, but it is made permanent. Americans are being asked to put their faith in the benevolence of corporations to grow the economy, all while we see increasingly huge profit margins for corporations, executive bonuses, offshore tax shelters, public bailouts of banks and financial industries, increased exploitation of our public lands, a weakening of environmental and consumer protections, mega media mergers, and an administration that refuses to acknowledge its transgressions nodding to corporate greed while ignoring the needs of its citizens. There is nothing novel about trickle-down theory. We’ve been there before and we’ve seen how it compounds the dynamic of class polarization. It should come with a prenup, but it doesn’t.
While it is true that the cost of “entitlements” has skyrocketed over the years, we’ve done nothing to rein in those costs. Throwing millions off Medicaid, and paring down Social Security and Medicare does not solve the problem of insurance and drug companies claiming exorbitant profit margins. That elephant is still in the waiting room.
The proposed pass-through rate cut will only facilitate new ways for the wealthiest Americans to reclassify their non-business wage and salary income at a lower rate. These are not your average mom and pop business folk. These are mega corporations we are talking about and the proposed tax cuts represent a huge revenue loss that is needed to sustain publicly funded programs. This tax reform will only widen the gap between the richest and the poorest Americans. It will shrink the middle class and throw many more into a state of dependency on “entitlement programs.” The very programs that are being cut as I write this.
Surrounding it all is an evergrowing deficit, the very real threat of a complete economic collapse, an environment that those very large corporations are spoiling for short-term gain, a weakened populace that is angrier, more divisive and desperate than ever while an intimidated Republican Congress collects campaign promises and celebrates having finally pushed through something that carries an awfully un-American stench. WENDY FABIAN Albuquerque