For years now, Republicans have been telling us that tax cuts pay for themselves. They’ve said that over and over again every time they’ve voted for tax cuts for their fat-cat friends.
It’s a cardinal principle of supply-side economics: Tax cuts don’t deepen deficits. Sometimes they even reduce deficits by magically increasing federal revenues.
But what have we here? Why it’s those same Republicans arguing that an extension of payroll tax cuts for ordinary Americans somehow will have to be offset — but not, of course, by a surtax on millionaires. So, what happened to their theory that tax cuts pay for themselves?
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich has MORE TO SAY about all this hypocrisy:
Yes, the dirty little secret of the Republican Party is that they recognize the need to raise taxes. Even the GOP knows that their tax free utopia is not possible. After all someone has to pay for those huge defense budgets, and that someone is you and me. Republicans know that taxes will have to be raised on everyone else in order to fund their tax cuts for the wealthy.
They understand that trickle down economics does not work, and they expect every American who isn’t a member of the income elite to pay more so that our country can afford their ideological driven generosity to the rich. How else can the GOP conversion from the mantra of tax cuts pay for themselves to the payroll tax cut must be paid for be explained?
The truth is that the Republican Party is engaged in a massive wealth redistribution plan. Their plan is to concentrate America’s national wealth at the top, and expand the economic inequality already present at historic levels in our current system. The GOP is out to fundamentally transform America into a rigid class structure where poverty will be inescapable for many, and advancement up the economic ladder will be a myth.
Republicans don’t hate all tax cuts, just those that will require the rich to pay more.
Related posts:
- At a glance: GOP tax cuts vs. Dem tax cuts
- GOP hypocrisy on deficits and tax cuts
- Why do Republicans oppose Obama’s tax cuts?
- Methinks Obama’s offer of cuts in Social Security and Medicare is a trap he’s laid for Republicans
- Why did Obama cave in on tax cuts for the wealthy when he had most Americans on his side?
So you don’t think it’s fair that some people have more money than others? Well, I don’t think it’s fair that some people are married and others aren’t. By your warped logic, we should pass a law that requires all married people to get divorced after 5 years. This would increase the number of single people and redistribute marriage opportunities throughout society.
Get a clue, Pat. The gap in wealth between the rich and the poor is due to many, many things. Simpletons like Reich have this religious belief that the gap exists because the rich are evil and the poor are victims. Has it every occurred to you that the rich are doing something right and the poor are doing something wrong, and the key to eradicating poverty is to stop poor people from chronically making bad choices?
I know, I know, you will reply with your canned verbiage about how I am blaming the poor. I am actually blaming government programs that perpetuate and petrify poverty. We have spent trillions of dollars since the 1960s, and what do we have? Poverty levels are unchanged, and the number of food stamp recipients is higher than ever. I want my money back.
Dan F: Your comment makes no sense whatever. What’s all this crap about married people and divorced people? What does that have to do with the subject at hand?
Moreover, this post is not about poor people vs. rich people. It’s about a payroll tax cut for 160 million working Americans. It’s not about poor people who have no jobs and are not directly affected by payroll taxes.
And for you to call Robert Reich a “simpleton” is beyond ridiculous. He’s a distinguished economist and professor. He also knows how to stay on the subject, which is something you have yet to master, as your rambling, incoherent comment will attest.
It is you, not me, who should “get a clue” (as you put it).
By the way, Dan, I seem to recall you’re having predicted that the Republicans would nominate a Perry-Rubio ticket next year. How are the prospects for that working out?
Taking the only source of income from the Social Security System (payroll taxes, FICA), does not create anything except a larger unfunded SS program.
This puts Reich and Pat, and Obama, smack dab into class warfare and wealth envy. Cutting funding to the largest unfunded mandate (Social Security) is their tool to do just that. As evidenced by the way they demagogre the subject. It’s easy. It works on the dumb masses.
Changing the tax system, like to the FairTax, eliminates the class envy quotient, and takes the tax hammer away from the social engineers in Washington. Keeping it as it is only insures more of the same. Obama’s re-election depends on dividing America on these lines.
Ross: Fair tax, you say? Isn’t that the same cockamamie scheme that Herman Cain touted?
Yeah, that’s just what we need — a regressive national sales tax.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for that.
Pat, you are showing your ignorance where the FairTax is concerned and how it works. By design, it is not regressive.
Ross: When I put the words “fair tax” and “regressive” in a Google search field, I get 233,000 results. I’ll leave it to you to sort through them all and decide where the “ignorance” on this matter truly lies.
Meanwhile, I again warn you not to hold your breath waiting for enactment of this so-called fair tax. It ain’t gonna happen.
Reich is truly one of the great minds with the ability to connect the dots between true democracy and the conservative cabal’s efforts to destroy it for their own personal gain.
Pat, if you google “obama blames”, you’ll get 264,000 hits. And just obama blames (without the quotes) it goes to 11,600,000 hits. But stupid stuff like that is irrelevant to what is actually in the bill, H.R. 25, the FairTax.
Rather than waste time looking at google results, I instead read all 131 pages of the bill. You might try that before characterizing the FairTax into something it is not. What is interesting is the low threshold for truth you have.
“For years now, Republicans have been telling us that tax cuts pay for themselves. ”
When the taxes are on income and investment, they do. When they are on funding entitlement programs, which produce nothing, they don’t.