‘Tax cuts for the rich’ won’t cut it anymore

Quick! Stop whatever you are doing and say this number out loud: 7,793,475,043,505.68.

Whew! That was a tough one. I haven’t had to say a number that big since elementary school when they were teaching us the big numbers.

“The Number” is the U.S. National Debt Clock’s tally of our outstanding public debt as of April 17. By the time you read this, it is likely to be $6 billion higher.

Yeah, so that’s a big number. Luckily, the Bush administration had a plan to fix it: tax cuts for the rich. Only, that didn’t work out so well. So they concocted a new strategy: tax cuts for the rich. But, it’s funny, that one didn’t go so great, either. So then they hired a slew of new geniuses to invent the next big idea. You guessed it: tax cuts for the rich.

One day I will understand the logic behind this plan … probably when I make my first billion.

A 2004 study by the Congressional Budget Office revealed that President Bush’s tax cuts have shifted more of the tax burden to middle-class families and away from the rich, who could afford it more easily. Actually, by the end of the decade, more than 50 percent of Bushy’s tax breaks will go to the wealthiest 1 percent, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

But to the fiendishly rich, like Bush, these cuts make perfect sense. Like he once said, “The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.” Instead of demanding the IRS bring these people to justice and receive their taxes, he is rewarding the rich and punishing the poor.

While the Billionaires for Bush are using their tax breaks to buy new Hummers and shipments of “Don’t mess with Texas” stickers, the Republicans slashed funding for Medicare, Medicaid, student loans, school lunches, child care, food stamps and veterans’ benefits.

Let’s say another number out loud, shall we?

420,700,000,000.

This number is how much the United States requested for the military this year. Think of how many school lunches that could buy. Or how many people it could send to college.

Yes! I think I am finally starting to understand Bushy’s tax break logic! It does not make sense for the rich to foot the bill for the Iraq war. After all, their sons and daughters aren’t the ones fighting. Or dying. Under this way of thinking, the war should be the responsibility of the middle class and the poor.

Bush is showing us, once again, how he is willingly out of touch and out of reach of the bottom 99 percent of the country. The Bush tax plan makes us pay to have our benefits cut and see our friends and family die in the war on terrorism.

Meanwhile, the rich sit back in leather couches and watch the U.S. National Debt Clock tick higher.

Erin Roof is an angry proletariat, a junior magazine journalism major and a columnist for the Daily Kent Stater. Contact her at [email protected].