By Restless 

Ok. Now that the Dems have taken back the Legislature, it’s not over yet. Time to rollback all or most of the bullshit that’s been passed by the previous Congress. I’ll detail Numero Uno here and why and then set out other rollbacks in future columns. Here goes:

#1: rollback the tax cuts

Do it now. The tax cuts voted in by the Rebubs were pure malarkey. The average tax cut under all of the Bush tax cut programs was $226. And the only reason that average was so high was those who make $1 million or more got $90,000 each.

So, to compensate for the income tax cuts for the very wealthy, the Repubs upped all the Federal fees (for national park usage, air flight tax, veteran’ medical benefits) and then cut federal funding to state programs that then forced the states to raise their taxes to compensate for Federal tax cuts. The upshot: the very wealthy got a tax break; the rest of us got an increase in state tax and other government fees as well as a smaller tax cut on the Federal end.

This is true: in recent years, Republican governors in Arkansas, Idaho, Ohio, Texas as well as Dem governors in other states have been forced to raise state, county, city and sales taxes to deal with the budget shortfalls created by Bush’s tax cuts on the Federal side. In my travels to the East, it’s been amazing the amount of cities that have an income tax: in Indiana, Ohio, Delaware and New York and I’m sure there are many more. In many cases, it’s a hefty tax, my friends. So, you pay less to the Federal government, but a lot more to the local government. Net effect: you pay the same or more than you did before—unless you are a millionaire. That’s the reality.

Then there’s the total bullshit around the estate tax. The so-called “death tax” (per Fox) affects exactly 2% of Americans. And half of all revenues paid in estate taxes are paid by just 1/10^th off 1% of the people worth more than $5 million. A permanent repeal of this tax would deprive the government of billions it needs to provide services to the American people. “Wealthy people will get tax cuts they don’t need at the expense of important public services like food stamps and health care.” It’s a stupid, bad idea. Period.

Then there are the corps. Corporations in the US pay less then 5% of their income in taxes. Although the official rate is 35%, the actual corporate rate (due to lax enforcement, loopholes and pure evasion) is lower than any other country except Iceland. Truth is, corporations in the US haven’t been paying even close to their fair share for a several decades. The burden of payment for services (including the military/prison/law enforcement complex, as well as more benign programs) falls on the middle and lower class, not on the wealthy or corporations.

And it’s worse because many corporations avoid any tax at all by using off-shore tax havens. By closing these loopholes and enforcing current tax law, tax revenue could be increased by $311 billion in the next 10 years, just by these measures alone. But instead, IRS audit teams have been decimated by under-funding, leading the IRS to go after easy prey, leaving the huge corporate cheaters alone. By re-funding the IRS auditors and instructing them to go after the big dogs, it would result in a 1,000-fold increase in tax revenues. And by forcing CEOs to certify their corporate tax returns (thus making them criminally liable for fraudulent returns) would be a step in the right direction. So far, lobbyists have pushed laws that make corporations the same as individuals, but not shielding them from the same liabilities as individuals. This must end. Making executives criminally liable for corporate wrong-doing would be a step in the right direction.

Other changes should be made: fix the regressive payroll tax by exempting the first $10k or income from all payroll tax (raise the cap on tax to compensate), tax capital gains just the same as income tax, limit the home mortgage deduction to homes of less than $500k in value and many other measures.

Rollback is needed now! Because of the Bush tax cuts the following (and many, many more) have been cut: programs for military families (such as schools for children of military) and supply of critical equipment to protect our soldiers in the war in Iraq.

The Dems have said they will adopt a wait-and-see attitude to rolling back the reactionary tax cuts enacted by the right-wingers. Any honest analysis of the situation reveals that funding enforcement, closing loopholes and making tax fair for all would go a long way to easing the budget shortfalls for many programs, including Social Security and our military efforts currently underway and help lead the way back to solvency and true economic power in the world.