The Reverse Robin Hood
commentary by BOB HERBERT
If you wanted a quintessential example of what the Bush administration and its legislative cronies are about, it was right there on the front page of The Times last Thursday:
"Tax Law Omits $400 Child Credit for Millions."
The fat cats will get their tax cuts. But in the new American plutocracy, there won't even be crumbs left over for the working folks at the bottom of the pyramid to scramble after.
When House and Senate negotiators met to put the finishing touches to President Bush's tax bill, they coldly deleted a provision that would have allowed millions of low-income working families to benefit from the bill's increased child tax credit.
It was a mean-spirited and wholly unnecessary act, a clear display of the current regime's outright hostility toward America's poor and working classes...
...But to really get a sense of the scandalous nature of this G.O.P. tax-cut scam, consider that the House and Senate negotiators also got rid of a number of measures in the Senate bill that would have saved billions of dollars by closing abusive corporate tax structures. The Center on Budget noted the following:
"As the Washington Post has reported, the Senate bill `included provisions to crack down on abusive corporate tax shelters, combat some accounting scams such as those pursued by Enron Corp., prevent U.S. companies from moving their headquarters to post office boxes in offshore tax havens such as Bermuda and limit grossly inflated deferred compensation plans for corporate executives.' "
The savings from those provisions would have been about $25 billion, much more than enough to cover the cost of Senator Lincoln's $3.5 billion attempt to give a bit of a break to several million working families...more [NY Times]
I love it when Republicans say that opponents of the tax cuts are dragging out 'old tired class warfare arguments.' The problem here is that the class warfare is in the Republicans hands, as they try to complete a massive shift of money back into the hands of the rich. What this country needs is some real class warfare. For more then 20 years we have watched as the Republicans have lied to the middle class about tax cuts. They talk cuts, but what they do is gut benenfits that middle calss people might need, give them a bone or two on tax cuts, and then give most of the money to the rich. When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee?..mj
10:04:51 AM 
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