Blog For Arizona

Math Lesson

I get really tired of hearing from Democrats, who really ought to know better, that Dean wants to raise taxes on the middle class by repealing all of Bush's tax grift.

Here is the real deal:

Bush has raised the tax burden on Americans by a good deal more than 1 TRILLION dollars.

Once you have bought the candy and eaten the candy, any dimestore clerk can tell you that you must also PAY FOR the candy. Well, we've gobbled up over a trillion in goodies that somebody will have to pay for. That someone is you.

Bush has ensured that the massive debt he is pilling up will be paid back disproportionately by working people, by giving massive tax cuts to the hyper-rich, many of which don't kick in for years, or sunset and then resurrect years down the road (when the debt is being paid down). Ergo, more of the burden will fall on people like us. Ergo, we will be paying for more than our share for this fiscal orgy in which the GOP is engaged when the bill finally comes due.

Not only have revenue sources been "enhanced" elsewhere in the govermental system to make up for the shortfall (higher state, sales, and property taxes, lower benefits, higher fees and tuitions), the stimulative effects that tax cuts would normally have are dampened because there were no cuts in government spending to offset them. The result is ever-mounting debt which bogs down growth.

There is, of course, some growth, last quarter proved that, but absent jobs and with consumer spending outsripping consumer income, any growth is just a house of IOU's.

Who gets to pay the debt? Disproportionately, the working people of America have that dubious honor. The longer it takes, the more we will pay in interest to fatten the proverbial cats to ever more hyperbolistic levels of corpulence.

So, is it best to repeal all the Bush cuts, or only those benefitting the hyper-rich? If we repeal only the hand-outs to the hyper-rich, we will labor longer under a mountain of Bush-debt, paying more interest all the time. Who owns that debt? The hyper-rich. Either way, they win.

That debt must be retired and the debt paid down so that America can once again stand on a firm fiscal base, foster sustained economic growth, and pay for social justice. All the other candidates wish to keep Bush's cuts for the Middle Class. It is short term political pandering at the expense of fiscal responsibility. They will prolong the pain of a sluggish economy that isn't producing jobs, foster skewed investment markets, and pour ever more money into the pockets of America's creditors.

We let the bull loose in the White House china closet. Bush has done the damage and there is nothing we can do to un-spend the money he's squandered. We have to bite the bullet and clean up after the drunken frat-party that was the W Mis-Administration. It's our government, we have to take responsibility for it, even if the current Resident won't.

It's time to put responsible adults in charge of the country again. Dean is the only Candidate who sounds like one.

posted by Michael Bryan @ 12/04/2003 09:18:00 PM