Send Us Your Rebate
HAYES, STEPHEN F.
Send Us Your Rebate . . . The ultimate in self-serving leftist crusades. BY STEPHEN F. HAYES PATRICK PATT IS TICKED. The wealthy ex-superintendent of a suburban Chicago school district is so...
...President: don't try to buy my support through insulting cash rebates...
...I'd rather you used the money for better causes...
...and dropping it in the mail...
...Patt is not alone...
...He believes all of this because the federal government is returning money to those who paid it...
...In addition to TaxRebatePledge.org, other protest websites—rebateTHIS.org, rejecttherebate.org—have sprung up to encourage protest donations to left-wing nonprofits...
...And inevitably, lefty groups are loosely organizing a protest...
...The money then stays in the Treasury...
...It's not a lot of money, but it's enough to fund a Hillary Rodham Clinton Bridge in upstate New York, or a Paul Wellstone Park in Minnesota...
...After all, these are people who not only believe that they're taxed too little, but who get cartoon-character hopping mad— steam from their ears and every-thing—that the federal government isn't doing more...
...Actually, Democrats probably make up a bit less than half of those getting checks, and of course, not all taxpayers will have voted...
...Okay, statistically speaking, he's almost alone...
...Add the 9,000 (combined guesses of some really smart people) Democratic staffers on Capitol Hill and in the political committees, and do the same math...
...The Democratic National Committee initially had the same idea as the Nation, and asked supporters to send their rebate money to the DNC...
...The whole issue is rather confusing for the Democrats who opposed the "irresponsible" Bush tax package...
...Patt reveals in his letter that he and his wife paid $50,000 in federal income taxes last year, and, he concedes, "collectively earn a good salary...
...In a subsequent phone interview, he throws in "drilling in the Arctic" and "tax incentives for oil companies...
...If all Gore voters receiving a rebate burn their checks, mark "Return to Sender," or simply let them sit in a drawer somewhere, some $19 billion will remain in the federal kitty...
...But even as congressional Democrats are disavowing the tax plan, they're embracing the rebates...
...The wealthy ex-superintendent of a suburban Chicago school district is so peeved about recovering $600 of the money he paid in taxes last year that he wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune about it...
...Forty-seven percent plan to pay bills or debts...
...It threatens to invade the trust funds of Social Security and Medicare...
...mind as they type...
...C. Dykstra of Potomac, Maryland, writes on rejecttherebate.org: "Mr...
...Actually, socialist congressman Bernie Sanders of Vermont is widely credited with first proposing rebates, but perhaps that's close enough...
...or (2) self-styled progressives succumb to the greedy impulses of capitalism and decide to pay off a credit card, put the money in the bank, or buy back-to-school outfits for their kids...
...It threatens to put us back into deficit, back into debt...
...Some imprecise calculations: If half of the 260 congressional Democrats are married, and all of them and their wives leave their rebates in the Treasury, the government will be $117,000 richer...
...In his letter, he connects the rebates to income inequality, local school funding, child poverty, and campaign finance reform...
...Interestingly, the magazine's "Rebate Rebel" campaign essentially sets up two possible outcomes: (1) The Nation rakes in tons of cash and has conservatives to thank for its fiscal stability...
...Some 973 of the 95 million Americans who will get rebates have signed a petition at TaxRebatePledge.org...
...If securing the future of the Old Left's flagship publication isn't enough, the magazine throws in an added incentive: "Nation publisher Victor Navasky will include the names of all Nation Rebate Rebels in a future letter to the White House...
...Down about the death of the death tax...
...National Democrats quickly abandoned that plan when it turned out to be a PR disaster, but some local Democratic groups haven't given up...
...This bill is a monument to fiscal irresponsibility," said senator Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, shortly after the bill was passed...
...Bingo, another $4.05 million...
...Don't need no stinking child tax credit...
...One of the more frequent complaints is that the rebates are simple bribes—a cash-for-votes scheme...
...The neo-pinko magazine proudly announces on its website its 136-year history of profit-seeking failure and even reprints the federal rebate schedule to give readers a heads-up on their checks...
...Blow it off...
...Sort of...
...Another 32 percent said they will save or invest the rebate, and 17 percent said they'll spend it...
...It's probably a stretch to call the postings entertaining, but they're amusing in a vague, people-really-believe-this-stuff sense...
...But to those who believe this sum entitles him to a rebate that amounts to about 1 percent of that total, he says: "Wrong...
...As I said, it was our idea in the first place...
...When the money comes, explains the pitch, readers can simply sign over the actual rebate check by writing "Pay to the Order of The Nation Co...
...A recent CNN/USA Today /Gallup poll found that an overwhelming majority of Americans plan to do just that...
...Don't like marginal rate cuts...
...As rebate opponents trumpet their charitable giving, it's fair to wonder whether they're not actually reinforcing the main point of Bush's tax cuts: Individual taxpayers should decide how to spend their own money...
...One rebate protester, Sally Arnold from California, told a reporter from the Progressive, "One of my friends was saying the money they're giving away could be used to put solar panels on every public building...
...At a news conference last week, Senate majority leader Tom Daschle first gave credit to President Bush for the rebates, then said Democrats should share in the credit, then worried about draining the Treasury, and finally boasted that Democrats themselves came up with the plan...
...Say "problem solver," and they think of the fat-tie, short-sleeved-shirt bureaucrat brigade, the guys who sleep with their government ID badges around their necks...
...The larger point is this: If those who oppose the rebate put their money where their mouth is, so to speak, they can negate much of its effect and alleviate much of their worry by simply doing nothing...
...Send a check...
...We support it," he said of the rebate package...
...Pay more...
...If they believe that the rebates jeopardize necessary government spending, congressional Democrats should simply tear up their rebate checks...
...The tax plan, he insists in the letter, is "illogical, irrational and immoral legislation...
...Each of the sites invites protestors to comment on the rebates (and, apparently, whatever else crosses their Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...Only 2 percent indicated they plan to give the money to charity...
...Liberal politicians and interest groups continue to hit the Bush tax plan as excessive, the rebates as a gimmick...
...The Nation magazine has even gotten into the act by launching a fund-raising drive based on the rebate...
...At least a few hundred other Americans are furious, too, about getting their money back...
...The Senate is half Democratic, the House is essentially half Democratic, the White House vote in 2000 was half Democratic, so let's say that of the $38 billion in tax rebates, half goes to Democrats...
Vol. 6 • August 2001 • No. 45
