October 30, 2011 by David K. Sutton
Poor Not Taxed Enough According to GOP
Even though they signed the Grover Norquist no-tax-increase pledge, many Republican lawmakers and Republican presidential candidates support raising federal income taxes on the poor.
Sure, they don’t specifically target the poor with their tax proposals — but supporting ideas like a flat tax or saying things like “broadening the base” mean just that. How else do you broaden the base? It implies that not everyone is paying federal income tax – which is true – and that everyone should. Rick Perry has gone as far as to say, “we’re dismayed at the injustice that nearly half of all Americans don’t even pay any income tax.” So broadening the base means more people putting skin in the game.
When you look at the facts – something that would dismiss much of the rhetoric from the Right – you find out there’s a good reason so many millions of Americans don’t owe federal income tax – they make shit. Republicans believe at least some of that be paid to the federal government so that Rick Perry and fellow Republicans can stop being so dismayed. They believe this is a good way to begin balancing the budget and solving our long-term debt problem yet they don’t feel raising taxes on the wealthy can have the same effect.
I’m sure many of these Americans – with incomes typically below $20,000 a year – would love to make more money and would then be happy to pay their fair share of federal incomes taxes. Republicans need to explain how someone making $15,000 a year is going to pay federal income tax when they already pay social security and medicare tax (payroll tax), state tax, local tax and gas tax. That doesn’t leave much to live on.
This is another example of the Right deflecting the public away from the problems we face in this country. It is not the poor and powerless that are the root of our problems.