How have many of the richest recipients of the Bush tax cuts chosen to use their tax-cut funds? Wonder no more.
Ten years ago today, President George W. Bush signed into law massive tax giveaways for millionaires and rich CEOs who popped champagne corks across the country to celebrate their new windfall. "Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities," President Bush assured the American people on April 16, 2001.
What a difference ten years makes.
A decade ago, unemployment was under 5 percent and hundreds of billions in budget surpluses put the country on track to pay off the national debt by 2012. President Bush signed into law massive tax giveaways for billionaires and corporations with the promise that this time, unlike every other time in the past, trickle-down economics would work to benefit everyone. It didn't.
The Bush tax giveaways have added $2.6 trillion to the public debt; which is a whopping 50% of the total debt accrued during this time. It was a period marked by the slowest job growth since World War II. During the span of one three-year period under the Bush tax cuts, the economy did not add a single new job.
Recently, many Republicans have begun parroting a similar message during budget proposal talks: that we cannot afford our social safety net because "we're broke." These are the same Republicans who, only months ago, went to the mat to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. But now they're singing a different tune; saying we can't afford Medicare or the Medicaid our seniors in nursing homes rely on...all the while continuing to advocate to spend trillions on more taxpayer handouts for their multi-millionaire donors.
Think Progress comments that if the last decade is any example, this is not a policy prescription that should be taken seriously. We agree and we know we're not alone in this practical line of experience-based thinking. So taking it one step further, we have a *revolutionary* suggestion we think could make a real difference in lowering the national deficit and debt.
(Drum roll, please....)
Instead of cutting back on services for children, seniors, people with disabilities, the sick and the destitute, and every other measure that helps the middle class stay afloat, how about we try increasing taxes on the very wealthy, the millionaires and the billionaires?
Great minds think alike: We know we're not the first to come up with this grand idea, and we certainly won't be the last. Two recent reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and Pew Charitable Trusts show that just by allowing all the Bush tax cuts to expire on schedule next year would be enough all by itself to stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio. Even leading Republican economist and former Federal Reserve Board chairman Alan Greenspan has been on the record recommending that we let all the Bush tax cuts expire and stressing the importance of raising revenues to deal with the debt.
Bush Tax Cuts Weren't All Bad....Were They?
While we're on the subject of the tax breaks the very wealthy have been afforded these past ten years under the Bush tax cuts, now seems like an appropriate time to look back to see just how well giving those tax cuts has worked out for our country. How, for example, have many of the richest 1% of taxpayers chosen to use their tax-cut funds?
Mother Jones' Stephanie Mencimer makes this recent comment about Bush tax cut recipients:
"The best-known result of the Bush tax cuts is that virtually all the benefits were conferred upon people who didn't need them at all and who didn't use the money to, say, create more jobs or pay their workers better."
We'll let you be the judge. Straight from the mouth of (billionaire) babes:
"I got a bigger boat than I used to have."
- Spoken by Dennis Mehiel, Founder and Chairman of cardboard box manufacturer U.S. Corrugated, Inc., in an interview with Huffington Post on how he's spent some of the millions he's saved from the tax cuts enacted during the George W. Bush administration. (Unfortunately, Mehiel elaborates, the sale of this boat wasn't actually the end result of U.S. labor, nor did it create any jobs for American workers. "It was built in Italy," he said.)
Dal LaMagna, founder of Tweezerman, reports he
"[U]sed his extra money to help the local economy in by 'adding stuff' to his large home."
Among this "stuff" was a dance floor and a parking garage.
Other billionaires chose to take a slightly less "philanthropic" path.
"I have not done anything with that money."
- Paul Egerman, the founder of medical transcription company eScription.
Well! There you have it, folks!
According to Citizens for Tax Justice, extending the Bush tax cuts further would result in an extra $68,079 for the average member of the richest 1% of taxpayers in 2013. Making them permanent would nearly double our country's budget deficit.
We cannot shred the social safety net when it's most needed. It's long past time to require the super wealthy pay their fair share.
In nearly 20 states, Americans are joining together on this 10th anniversary of the Bush tax cuts to highlight the wrong priorities of politicians who want to give even more tax breaks to millionaires at the expense of hardworking Americans. Speak up now to do your part to help build support in Congress for tax justice and oppose budget cuts.
More information and facts on the 10-year anniversary of the Bush tax cuts:
» Citizens for Tax Justice: The Bush Tax Cuts After Ten Years (includes state-by-state figures)
» Economic Policy Institute: Tenth Anniversary of the Bush-era Tax Cuts
» Campaign for America's Future: Ten Years of Bush Tax Cuts Benefitting The Rich
» Media Matters: We Don't Need More Millionaire Tax Breaks
