George W. Bush came into office and immediately gave everyone who pays income taxes a tax break. For some people on the lower end of the pay-scale, this amounted to a few hundred extra bucks a year. For people on the high end of the pay-scale, however, this amounted to few extra hundred thousand bucks a year, or even millions of extra bucks a year for the very top earners. We quickly ate through what had been a large projected surplus in revenues and began to go trillions of dollars into debt. Then Bush sent our troops off to fight a war of choice in Iraq that turned into an expensive quagmire. For the first time in our history, no one was asked to pay for this war, or the one in Afghanistan. Look at the history. Taxes went way up in 1917 to pay for our entry into World War One. The top marginal rate hit 94% during the last two years of World War Two. Taxes hit 91% in 1950, to pay for the Korean War. Taxes went up again in 1968-69 to help pay for the Vietnam War. And taxes went up in 1990, to help pay for the Persian Gulf War. If you want less taxation, demand less war. But that’s not what Republicans do. They do the opposite and demand less taxation.
But they really only care about taxes on rich people. That’s why they just submitted a tax plan that raises taxes on ten times as many people as receive cuts. Middle class folks will see cuts in the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the American Opportunity Tax Credit that helps them pay for their children’s higher education, but rich people will see their Bush tax cuts extended. In other words, they want the middle class to retroactively pay for the Bush wars (with interest). Then they are going to ask you to work longer to receive less from Social Security and Medicare. Why? Because they want the middle class to pay for the huge hole Bush’s handouts to the rich blew in the country’s budget.
Remember this, too. Other than six and seven-figure annual tax cuts for rich people, the other thing that killed our fiscal situation was the lack of regulation and oversight of Wall Street. That was another gift to rich people, the smartest of which developed schemes to game the housing market and make a fortune for themselves, while the rest of us were left with properties that were worth less than we borrowed to move into them. They took away our money and then they took away our jobs and then they took away our freedom to move to find a new job.
And then they convinced the Supreme Court to allow them to contribute any amount, even into the billions, to corrupt and influence our politicians and misinform us about the real deal that has been going down in this country.
The Republicans did all this and then they pissed on our legs and told us it was raining. They had the gall to actually complain that taxes on the rich were too high and that the budget deficit they created was too big. They offered to lower taxes but then gave us a plan that raises taxes on ten times an many people as it cuts taxes for.
They always lie. They never tell the truth.
