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Has anyone noticed that the Democratic
Presidential candidates seem to be on quite a spending binge lately? Just think
about what Hillary has proposed in the last few months alone: $5,000 baby bonds,
to a $110 billion dollar mandatory healthcare insurance plan, to a thousand
dollar per person government 401k match. And whether it's her, or Obama, or John
Edwards, the fine print is always the same: we pay for it all by letting the
Bush tax cuts on the rich expire in 2010.
It's a painless solution. You don't have to sign anything, you don't have to
veto anything -- you just let these supposedly sweetheart tax cuts quietly
expire and --poof!-- you've magically got billions of dollars freed up for all
your pet programs. Or do you? Unfortunately for the phantom economists,
somebody's been doing a little math.
The Real Story is that, according to the U.S. Treasury, the wealthiest one
percent paid almost 40 percent of all income taxes in 2005. That's up 10 percent
from Bill Clinton's last year in office! The wealthiest five percent paid almost
60 percent of the total tax bill in 2005; and the richest ten percent paid over
70 percent! Every single one of those numbers is a record. And if you want to
take it from the other direction, the bottom 50 percent -- half of the country!
-- paid just 3 percent of our bill. That's a record too; it's an all-time low!
Gosh, it sure doesn't seem like those Bush tax cuts are screwing the poor and
serving cake to the rich, like everyone claims. I'm sorry to play Mr. Logical
and ask the question that no one else wants to, but if lower taxes mean more
revenue (a concept only true capitalists and unbiased treasury data seem to
understand) then what happens when we raise taxes and add billions in new
spending at the same time? |
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