The GOP Welfare State

Believe it or not, I am actually an independent when it comes to politics. However, since this Bush character and his class of idiots have been in the White House, I have found no reason to support anything that they have done or that they try to do.

Now we have the Republicans trying to cut $4.9 billion from education, training, employment and other services (Reuters)

... the White House’s five-year plan foresees $66 billion in cuts to Medicare, a program for the elderly, and $12 billion in cuts for Medicaid, the state-federal program for the poor.

Reuters: Spratt said Bush’s plan projects a $61 billion budget surplus in 2012 while assuming only $50 billion in war costs in 2009 and none after that. This year, fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total around $170 billion.

Bush’s budget also does not factor in permanently fixing a quirk in the U.S. tax code so that middle-class taxpayers do not get hit with tax bills designed for the wealthy. The fix could cost around $1 trillion.

Let’s look at where some of the cash for the Iraq war reconstruction has gone to, or not.

Seattle Times: Waxman wanted to know how the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) could have shipped $12 billion in cash from the Federal Reserve in New York to Baghdad and handed it over to Iraqi ministries with only the sketchiest accounting controls. The cash, all 363 tons of it, was shrink-wrapped into $400,000 bricks and carried on C-130 cargo planes.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?" Waxman asked. And with limited oversight, he said, "we have no way of knowing whether the cash shipped into the Green Zone ended up in enemy hands."

The special inspector general for Iraqi reconstruction, Stuart Bowen, said in a January 2005 report that $8.8 billion was unaccounted for after being given to the Iraqi ministries.

If they’d have dropped me just one of those bricks I could have spent it better than the Republicans have and I would have had positive results!

Bush seems to forget that he doesn’t work for the Iraqis or the oil companies (?) or Israel or anyone else but the American people. At least he does, for now!

Technorati Tags: GOP,Welfare,Budget Cuts

The Alternative Minimum Tax

       Remember the AMT? That would be the alternative minimum tax which the government has taken to living off of, somewhat.

From the Tax Policy Center , we get some recent TPC analyses of the AMT, which examine the expanding reach of the tax and consider options for reform.

   An example for you.

News & Events

The Individual Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT): 11 Key Facts and Projections

Len Burman, Julianna Koch, and Greg Leiserson
December 1, 2006
Available in PDF

The individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) was originally enacted in 1969 to guarantee that high-income individuals paid at least a minimal amount of tax. Middle- and upper-income taxpayers must add a number of so-called "preference items" to their taxable income, subtract a special AMT exemption, and calculate their tax according to the AMT tax schedule. If the tax under that schedule is higher than the regular income tax, taxpayers pay the difference as AMT.

1. AMT is exploding. In 2007, unless Congress acts, 23.4 million taxpayers will be affected by the AMT. In 2006, only 3.5 million taxpayers will owe the tax because of a temporarily higher exemption, which expires at the end of the year. By comparison, back in 1970, just 20,000 taxpayers were affected. If the 2001-2006 tax cuts expire as scheduled at the end of 2010, 39 million taxpayers (more than one-third) will be hit by the AMT in 2017. If the tax cuts are extended, the number jumps to 53 million taxpayers (49 percent). (Tables T06-0266 and T06-0267)     Complete Analysis

   This example all by itself makes Bush's tax cuts a tax increase over time, except for the really wealthy.

 

Technorati tags: AMT, Bush Budget, Taxes