April Fools: GOP Budget a New Windfall for the Wealthy
By Jon Perr Wednesday Apr 01, 2009 10:30am
It may be April Fool's Day 2009, but the Republican Party is playing the same joke on the American people. After brushing off last week's calamitous Republican "road to recovery" blueprint as a "marketing document," Rep. Paul Ryan unveiled the GOP's alternative budget in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. In it, Ryan offers the same snake oil his party has been selling since the days of Reagan and Bush. The cure for what ails the U.S. economy, it turns out, is a massive tax windfall for the wealthiest Americans who need it least.
The new Republican budget doubles down on the wildly regressive Bush/McCain tax cutting binge American voters rejected at the polls in November. Making the budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 permanent, the GOP also proposes an alternative "highly simplified system that fits on a post card, with few deductions and two rates." Taxpayers making over $100,000 would see their rate drop to 25% from its current high of 35%. (Below that level, the rate drops to 10%.) Corporate taxes would also drop to 25%. While the capital gains tax rate would be frozen at its post-2003 level of 15%, the estate tax would be eliminated altogether.
The predictable result is yet another massive redistribution of the tax burden away from the richest Americans even as it produced a torrent of red ink. While the Center for American Progress concluded the Boehner-Ryan giveaway would hand an annual tax bonanza of $1.5 million to the average CEO, a preliminary analysis from the Center for Tax Justice last week concluded that by 2011, the GOP scheme would drain the Treasury to the tune of $300 billion more than the Obama plan. And as is par for the course for the Republicans, the usual upper-income suspects benefit the most:
Over a fourth of taxpayers, mostly low-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the President's plan.
The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $100,000 less, on average, under the House GOP plan than they would under the President's plan.
(It should be noted the CTJ model was preliminary and does not necessarily reflect the final details in today's GOP budget document. For example, CTJ assumed a capital gains tax rate of 10% and not 15%.)
To be sure, the GOP's so-called alternative budget is merely a reprise of the unprecedented windfall George W. Bush and his Republican Party delivered to the rich over the past 8 years.
And a massive windfall it surely was. As the Center for American Progress noted, the Bush tax cuts delivered a third of their total benefits to the wealthiest 1% of Americans. And to be sure, their payday was staggering. As the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities detailed in 2008, in 2007 millionaires on average pocketed $120,000 from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Those in the top 1% stashed an extra $45,000 a year. As a result, millionaires saw their after-tax incomes rise by 7.6%, while the gains for the middle quintile and bottom 20% of Americans were a paltry 2.3% and 0.4%, respectively. (Another CBPP study demonstrated that the Bush tax cuts accounted for half of the mushrooming deficits during his tenure in the White House.)
And as the New York Times detailed in 2006, the 2003 Bush dividend and capital gains tax cuts offered almost nothing to taxpayers earning below $100,000 a year. Instead, those windfalls reduced taxes "on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000." As the Times revealed in a jaw-dropping chart, "the top 2 percent of taxpayers, those making more than $200,000, received more than 70% of the increased tax savings from those cuts in investment income." So it should come as no surprise that the income share of the 400 richest Americans doubled over the past decade.
And so it goes. As surely as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Republicans will offer tax giveaways to the wealthy as the cure-all for surpluses, deficits, boom times and recessions, perhaps even for enlarged prostate and erectile dysfunction. But while Steven Benen deemed today's GOP budgetary sleight of hand "completely insane," OMB communications director Kenneth Baer said, "I have two words for you: April Fool's."
As usual, the Republicans' joke is on us.
(This piece also appears at Perrspectives.)
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They will never change and offer the number one reason to never vote for the bastards.....tax cuts for the rich.
These mother f's will never get my vote. I called my Senators office and told them not to privatize medicare. I told them to leave it alone and people in my tax bracket need medicare. Am not 65 yet but am getting there in another 4 yrs. I told them that there budget was an april fools joke and more of the same nonsense. Everyone call your representatives and let them know how you feel.
The republican party, the party of nothing new.
I am shocked, shocked I tell ya!!!
we'll be laughing at you liberals all the way to the bank ( what's left of them).
...the idea behind an April Fools joke is to build on some vaguely plausible premise but to include a hidden twist that 'makes' the joke. This budget "plan" is exactly what I would have expected out of Congressional Republicans; the joke would have been on me if I had expected anything out of them other than windfall tax cuts for the wealthy and the destruction of entitlement programs...
when the lowest 40% become homeless? What is the plan for these people? Slavery? I don't think that the majority of this plans supporters, in these brackets, realize that they could end up in the same place as those who tried to fight to get them out of this mess.
Now the dem's will want to compromise with this offer, and we are going to get a half-baked solution that nobody likes. But, I guess that is the political definition of success.
Pawn says, "when the lowest 40% become homeless? What is the plan for these people?"
Ah -- detention camps? Remember, the Army already has a battalion mobilized to deal with civilian problems involving large movements of people, and forget Posse Comitatus...
The middle class and poor Republicans are some of the dumbest fucks in this country. They should put a "free sex" sign on their doors. Even prostitutes make you pay for their services.
at 95%, or the cost of their premium cable bill, whichever is greater. Granted, wouldn't add up to more than a couple $M nationwide, but it would deprive them of their nightly Beck/KKKlanity rituals, plus NASCAR qualifying.
Who are the GOP playing to? I just don't get it. They can't possibly believe that this is a winning strategy. They can't possibly believe that the small percentage of the population that likes their ideas is somehow going to keep them in power?
Politics is what it is. It is about getting votes and staying in power. The GOP just seems to either not care or is so out of touch that they honestly think that what they are proposing to America is a sensible thing.
Sad, funny, unbelievable....I just don't get it.
but they don't care. their base does nothing but listen to wing-nut radio or the F'ing FOX noise network. these people can't think for themselves, they have not had an independant thought since the third grade. the majority of them are not "rich", they are not "educated" and the GOP never wants them to succeed. yet they cast their votes year after year for the GOP. I can not figure it out either.
the voters in the Repug base, who are not "rich" or "educated" keep on "cast(ing) their votes year after year for the GOP."
Part of it is cultural - i.e. prejudices against non-white people, fear of a secular society, and fear of those Latino immigrants.
But it's also about wanting to identify with "winners" and "successful" people. A lot of not-too-bright people still believe in the idea that anyone can become rich if they have enough drive, or the right "get rich quick" scheme.
Then there's lottery-mania. Too many people are always "feeling lucky" and pinning all their hopes on the lotteries. Some years back I read an article about retirement planning that said a large percentage of people (I forget the number) expect to get a windfall for retirement.
You're not going to want to go after the rich if you think you're going to be one of them some day. Pretty scary, eh?
In some cases, the people getting screwed by the rich are ashamed of their backgrounds and want to make a statement of "Hey man, I'm not one of those losers!"
Who needs Republicans when we have Little Timmy and Helicopter Ben with their no banker left behind programs?!?!
What a dismal thought. And all to true.
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to the trickle down, the-rich-will-save-us plan.
Good luck with that.
The imfamous re-Thug "Trickle-ON" theory of economics.
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If you aren't familiar with Thomas Palley's "Sabotaging Government" article, you might want to read it here.
I think this is the 2 of the "1-2" punch for sabotaging government.
I only read the first paragraph because it basically said what I've believed for years. Make the government look so inept that the people will gladly participate in it's dismantling. FEMA comes to mind. Also EPA, SEC, FDA, the Office of Thrift Supervision, Dept of Agriculture, etc, etc, etc.
The stimulus plan was labeled by some in the media as 'class warfare'. If they were really fair and balanced, it's hard to see how the GOP plan could not be viewed the same way.
The correct term for them is "Class Optimization" where they go from 3 classes (rich, middle, poor) to a 2-tier system (filthy rich, filthy poor). Less paperwork, I guess...
So for them it makes perfect sense. "Warfare" sounds oh so confrontational and angry.... where as "optimization" has such a professional ring to it. Who would have a problem with "Class Optimization"?
Unless... you are one of them godless socialist bastards, the ones who love bureaucracy and paperwork! Why do you hate optimization? Why do hate America? Why do you want to fight for the inefficient middle class?
either politically clueless saps, or arrogant shills for rich people.
I report...you decide.
Because they definitely are both at times.
They are, in truth, SOCIOPATHS.
Read this and tell me it's NOT completely true.
Know the enemy.
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I really wanted to read that item on SOCIOPATHS, but the link isn't working. Just thought someone should know.
The GOP is full of nincompoops!
FOR TODAY ONLY!! - We have a special on "FOOLS" -- stock up now while they're CHEAP (and greedy) - AND (all too) plentiful.
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Okay, how stupid are they? First they trot out a plan about the size of child's story book, then they announce they will have their real plan on April Fool's Day. Wasn't anyone in their party thinking about the date and how it would appear?
GOPers never think before they act. With them, it's always "disengage brain, engage mouth".
Don't the blind Reslug morons, understand or care that their ancient, backward, ideas, are why a huge majority of Americans threw the uncaring assholes out of office?
The GOP has now officially become a laughingstock.
Notice that neither blowhard Boehner nor head mouseketeer Mitch McConnell made this presentation.
I hear the re-Thugs April Fools budget also calls for privatizing Medicare.
So - we're back to the "definition of Insanity" ....
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plans on raising taxes for the middle class! What a surprise.
This is all they have to offer? Another bag of flaming poo. These people are pretty much a cult. Denying reality up until they drink the sacred kool-aid. A 2 tier tax system? The 3 we have now still isn't enough, considering there's a class of super wealthy out there. April 1st was the perfect day for this. I love irony.
It's a good things this dipsticks don't have enough say to get this crap passed.
Personally, I say "FUCK bipartisanship," but that's just me...
To channel Malloy, "have i said yet today how much i hate these people?"
Republicans ARE practicing seditious DEMAGOGUERY and insurrectionary OBSTRUCTIONISM intended to destabilize our economy for purposes of political exploitation.
Republicans AREN'T making a sincere effort to STOP the bleeding THEIR incompetent leadership and failed policies created. Instead, they're using conflicting economic theories as a smokescreen to conceal their subversive agenda, which is to cause President Obama and America to fail so they can blame Democrats for the consequences of THEIR calamitous mismanagement.
Republicans ARE preposterously professing that THEIR disgraceful political WHORING had nothing to do with the banking, real estate, stock market and employment catastrophes that resulted.
Republicans ARE trying to hamstring Democrats to prevent them from exposing the damage caused during a Republican presidency.
Republicans ARE offering controversial arguments they know no one can agree on to disrupt and prevent progressive change. They'd rather divide America and create political gridlock than endure the political consequences of effective Democratic governance. That's how they gained power and that's how they're trying to retain it.
Republicans AREN'T the LOYAL OPPOSITION. They ARE the ENEMY WITHIN whose personal priorities have eroded their moral and ethical standards to the point that treachery and betrayal are their preferred modus operandi.
It's one thing to advocate their conservative beliefs; it's another thing entirely to willfully sabotage America's government because a successful Democratic presidency would not be vulnerable to the greed, fears and hatreds that have produced and sustained the radical Republican corporatism and extremism that have poisoned and crippled America.
It isn't just greed.
Remember about 2 years back when Bill O'Reilly accused liberals of being out to tear down the white Christian male power structure? The whole angry white man routine is about guys who think they have a literal God-given right to be in charge, and are desperately afraid that they're being pushed aside from their "rightful place" at the top of society.
These guys seem to sincerely believe that civilization will end if they have to share power with the "riff-raff"; liberals, blacks, hispanics, women, gays, secular people, etc. This mind-set makes it easy to justify the sabotage, dirty tricks, hate-and-fear mongering and calls for revolution. Anything goes in the name of the sacred cause of saving America from "those people".
Angry white men project their fears and hatred onto opponents. If you don't want to share power, you naturally assume that the "riff-raff" won't want to share either if they get into power. If you stomp on women, minorities and gays, you'll assume that they'll stomp on you too if given the chance.
I notice that in one week the Republican Road to Recovery has turned into the Path To American Prosperity.
Path, road... whatever you call it, the road to Hell is paved with Republicans....
This Budget is Dead on Arrival. I hope they come up some more great
ideas before 2010.
"Triple Down Economics"
It'll never happen. That would put legions of accountants and tax attorneys out of business, and the Rethugs will never allow it.
Do you know tax cuts also cure rickets, dandruff, anal leakage, spinal compression, adult back acne, and the pain of psoriasis?
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