The tax cut will be for America
Levinson, Mark
THE RIGHT' S ALLERGY to active government has become the dominant theme in American politics. Bill Clinton's ability as a politician was not to challenge that theme, but to operate within it....
...But from the corporate point of view it appears that anything is possible these days...
...The fact is that corporations retain huge earnings, and they cannot pass all costs on to consumers...
...The economy is on the brink of recession, the economic stabilizers needed in bad times have been eroded by decades of reductions, and the tax cut is too back loaded to kick 10 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 COMMENTS & OPINIONS start the economy...
...Second, it is staggeringly regressive...
...Why can't all working parents have access to safe day care for their children...
...Treasury...
...So, by 1994, Clinton and the Democratic Congress were reduced to coopting Republican ideas—less regulation, balanced budgets, reduced welfare payments, devolution to the states...
...Inequality is rising, and his policies will exacerbate it...
...More than a third of the tax cut goes to the richest 1 percent of all taxpayers, more than 70 percent goes to the top 20 percent...
...history, do so many lack health care, live in poverty...
...There are so many ways several trillion dollars could be spent to make America a better place...
...Lawmakers added provisions and juggled the timing of the tax breaks in ways that will increase the cost of the bill and keep accountants gainfully employed for years to come...
...To put the giveaway to the rich in perspec**The information that follows comes from various reports published by the valuable troika of progressive think tanks in Washington: the Economic Policy Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Citizens for Tax Justice...
...O'Neill's argument, long made by business, is that it is irrational to force corporations to pay taxes, rather than individuals, because corporations just pass on the cost of taxes to consumers...
...All domestic spending areas, except health, will experience cuts ranging from 2.1 percent for education and training to 23.6 percent for natural resources and the environment...
...And a recent study by Citizens for Tax Justice showed that many corporations (including General Electric, Ford, AT&T, Merck, Microsoft, Bristol MyersSquibb, and Exxon) had negative federal income tax payments—meaning that they received rebate checks from the U.S...
...Bush not only received fewer votes than Gore, but if you add Nader's vote, the right was soundly defeated in the last election...
...I do not mean that we are losing ground to the rest of the world...
...I mean that we are falling behind with respect to our own capacities...
...On most aspects of domestic policy Clinton and Gore were to the right of Richard Nixon...
...Giving it to millionaires is not one of them...
...Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, in an interview in the Financial Times, said he "absolutely" backs the abolition of taxes on corporations...
...He is simply a hard right winger...
...Is it inevitable that our cities strangle in traffic...
...Given this, it would seem to be politically impossible to cut corporate taxes even further...
...TO UNDERSTAND the full impact one also has to look at Bush's spending proposals...
...DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 9 COMMENTS & OPINIONS tive: millionaires will receive more in tax cuts over the next ten years than the total that would have been provided for all initiatives in education, Medicare, defense, reducing the ranks of the uninsured, and other areas...
...Bush's boldness is encouraged by the timidity of many Democrats.* When the smoke cleared after congressional negotiators—including key Democrats who claimed their participation would "make the outcome better"— *In 1993, when Clinton proposed to restore some modest progressivity to the federal income tax and raise rates on wealthier taxpayers, every Republican voted against it...
...MARK LEVINSON is research director at the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE...
...reached agreement on a tax cut, the outcome was worse than Bush's original proposal...
...The argument that corporate taxes should be eliminated, with taxes coming only from individuals, is—from an administration that just enacted a massive tax cut for individuals— a radical effort to shrink government...
...It gets worse...
...In contrast, twenty-eight Democrats in the House and twelve in the Senate voted for Bush's tax cut...
...Why don't we have world-class schools...
...America is falling behind...
...Because businesses and corporations have to recover all of their costs and earn the cost of capital, after all of their expenses including taxes...
...He does not have Reagan's ability to translate ideology into warm sentiments and stirring slogans...
...Why, despite the longest economic recovery in U.S...
...The clear economic truth is that businesses and corporations don't pay taxes, they just collect them for the government...
...The share of taxes paid by corporations, about 25 percent three decades ago, is down to approximately 10 percent...
...DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 11...
...The real cost is closer to $2 trillion for the first ten years and $4.3 trillion in the next ten years...
...His first months in office produced a tax bill that will deliver truckloads of cash to millionaires, a bankruptcy bill for bankers, attacks on unions, reductions in public spending that will hurt the poor, environmental betrayals (discarding his campaign pledge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions), a massively flawed missile defense policy, and promises to extend the North American Free Trade Agreement to the rest of the western hemisphere...
...These budget cuts will have real impacts on programs: 70,000 fewer Head Start slots, 125,000 fewer students in after-school programs, 60,000 fewer child care slots, 195,000 fewer dislocated workers served, and 125,000 fewer young workers trained...
...Corporate taxes have already declined...
...How bad is it...
...George W Bush is not Ronald Reagan...
...Bush's agenda is out of touch with reality...
...The $1.35 trillion figure is arrived at only by including artificial sunset provisions that no one expects to be enforced...
...The top 1 percent— whose average income is more than one million dollars a year—receives more than the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers...
...By the end of the Clinton years, despite projected budget surpluses of hundreds of billions, no, trillions, of dollars, the most imaginative thing Clinton and Al Gore stood for was paying off the national debt...
...Economic insecurity is rising, and Bush's spending cuts will further shred the already inadequate safety net...
...Why can't we leave clean air and water for the next generation...
...We are not the country we could be...
...First, the tax cut, which congressional negotiators put at $1.35 trillion— is actually much larger...
...This nasty piece of work—which the Senate spent less time debating than it did renaming National Airport after Reagan—will make the rich richer and hurt the poor...
...Corporations may sense that this could be their last chance...
Vol. 48 • July 2001 • No. 3
