Bush
should get his story straight
Tax cuts, Social Security, deficit spending,
lies, lies, lies. Instant gratification
always comes with a price, and the price
for Bush’s budget is too high.
From the Bush administration’s inception,
its budget seems to have been the key. He
even called his 2001 budget plan “a blueprint
for new beginnings.” Hah! This seems more
like a flashback, a flashback to Bush number
one and to Reagan. Deficit spending is all
the rage again and the trickle down theory
is in full swing. The sick part is that
people are happy about it!
For a few hundred dollars more on their
tax refund, people are supporting Bush’s
plan like a bunch of bamboozled I-don’t-know-what’s.
This sad story has a tale behind it a mile
long, one that reeks of doubletalk and straight
out lies.
In the beginning there was Dubya, and was
he good? He planned to retire $1 trillion
of the national debt within the limits of
his present term. He was going to leave
Social Security alone and reform Medicare
and end unemployment. In February of 2001
there was a sparkling golden road ahead
of us and it was good too.
By August he had his hands in the cookie
jar of Social Security to divvy out a tax
rebate instead of retiring $1 trillion in
debt, which is how much he “borrowed” from
the Social Security fund to pay for his
wonderful tax cut.
His tax cut would have 43 percent of the
benefits going to the top 1 percent of Americans,
only people earning over $900,000 a year.
Persons in this top percentage received
an average $46,000 tax break. On the dark,
filthy underside of the population comprised
of you and me, the bottom 60 percent got
a pitiful and barely worthwhile $227 per
year.
This anomaly is certainly a broad and all
encompassing mistake for Bush. His 2001
tax cut fell short of fixing the economy,
and with $227 you can imagine how much it
helped out most individual households.
Bush’s other wonderful plan for 2001 was
to put an end to the estate tax. This tax
is the bane of only about 2 percent of Americans,
people who have in excess of $5 million
in planned inheritance for their children.
This is just another useless executive action,
another tax against the rich vetoed.
Bush’s track record is less than Olympic.
With his tax relief for the rich, his stock
policies and his “compassionate conservatism”
crap trickling down right into the sewer,
Bush has made it apparent that what he says
is little more than that, because what he
does always seems to be something entirely
different.
Another tax refund is underway and the deficit
begins to loom unrestrained and ugly in
our near future, so just remember to take
a long look at your refund check. Instant
gratification is great, but at what cost
compared to the decade trying to make it
back. Increase spending and decreased taxes
do not make dollars and sense.
Monica L. Pardee is a journalism major
at Cal State Long Beach.
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