You’re Poor = Pay Up
Last week I went off on a rant on the 2003 Bush budget, but, it turns out the temper tantrum was a bit premature. The effects of the $350 billion dollar tax cut are worse than originally reported.
In closed rooms at the midnight hour, just before the budget bill was signed, representatives of the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate hammered out the details on how to pay for this preposterous bit of vote buying.
And in the end it is a damn travesty!
It seems that in order to give huge tax breaks to the upper 1 percent of the population, in order to make sure that the upper class and upper middle class do not have to experience any discomfort in this weak economy through the removal of marriage tax penalties, estate taxes, dividend taxes and huge capital gains tax cuts, we will lower the earned income tax credit on the lowest income bracket.
That’s corrrect. The lowest income bracket, those folks who can barely get by when things are good, not just when times are bad, will have their earned income tax credit reduced! Families (not individuals, families, meaning a household of people) that have an income of $10,500 to $26,625 a year (apparently a liveable wage, according to your government) will not receive the earned income tax credit benefit. That is the equivalent of raising the taxes on the poorest to pay for a tax break for the richest.This measure effects less then one percent of the Bush budget but also effects 12 million children – 12 million who would have received an additional $400.00 a year stipend.
It fucking sickens me!
To the rich, $400.00 is the equvalent of a few neckties, but to a family making 20,000 a year and rasing children, 400 is more than a week’s pay!
The earned income tax credit is a Reagan era tax break that allows the poor with families to in effect, get into higher adjusted income class, kind of a permanent tax break, and thus pay less money to the government because they are supporting their children.
That kind of “largesse” just doesn’t help the economy, apparently. Why give money to families who are barely getting by when you can dish it out to the rich who need more “walking around money” to pay for their new poolside bar-be-que.
This fake budget was already a sham, with many of the mechanisms designed to pay for it to come from future yet-to-be-determined revenue increases (we pay for a tax cut today with a tax increase tomorrow – that’s the plan to help the economy.)
I probably missed a ton of stuff explaining this – but the whole idea makes me so God Damned Angry. What makes me even angrier is that this clause was in the tax bill all along but no reporters took the time to write about it, until the tax bill was signed and became law. The reporters and the “liberal” media waited until the bill was signed before they read the damned thing to the tell the public what is going on.
Lazy media = bad government.
Let Salon, Time and The Washington Post and others explain it so much better than me: