The Angry Liberal Commentary Archive:
It's Time to Repeal the Great Tax Giveaway of 2001
Finally! After months of complete silence, a Democrat has found the bollocks to criticize one of Bush's many mistakes. In a speech delivered yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle fired the first shot. It's about time!
Daschle got a lot of stuff right in the speech. He touched on the following facts:
1. September 11 is not responsible for the disappearance of the government surplus. The main culprit was Bush's payoff to his campaign contributors in the form of that big-ass tax cut.
2. When America pisses away its tax surplus in the face of a national emergency, it is forced to either cut corners or borrow money to pay for the response.
Unfortunately, Daschle failed to touch on the logical conclusion:
When a national emergency arises, decent Americans must be asked, and are willing, to pay for the resulting costs.
This is not a new premise. During times of crisis, Americans have proudly volunteered to pay with their very lives to defend the nation. God knows that enough civilian lives have already been lost in this tragedy. Our response to this particular crisis, however, doesn't require that kind of sacrifice from its civilians. We are blessed with a professional military that is more than able to handle the job. The only sacrifice we civilians need to make is to be willing to pick up the tab. And that tab is pretty small. As a matter of fact, if all Americans were willing to simply pay, for the next nine years, the same tax rate we paid last year, we could pay for the war and the increases in homeland security brought on by September 11, and wipe out a sizable chunk of George W. Bush's deficit as well.
Decent Americans will not hesitate for a second to agree to this. Unfortunately, decent Americans do not contribute to Republican election war chests. By surrounding themselves with only the rich and the greedy, Republicans believe that all of America is unwilling to pay for necessary government programs. They think that Americans would rather allow the country to be destroyed by terrorists than repeal a tax cut. They would even try to make political hay from a Democrat suggesting that we should pay for the war on terrorism. What a sad, pathetic, and unpatriotic group of people comprise the Republican Party.
Even though Daschle never once mentioned repeal of the Great Republican Tax Giveaway of 2001, Republicans were happily attacking him as a tax-mad Democrat. AP ran these quotes:
``Senate Daschle's Economic Speech for Dummies,'' read the headline on a rebuttal from the office of Senate GOP Leader Trent Lott. When Daschle says ``restores fiscal discipline,'' he really means ``raise taxes,'' Lott's office said. When he says a ``return to fiscal discipline,'' he really means ``undo the tax cut supported by 12 Senate Democrats.''
``Perhaps the most important thing Congress did last year to promote economic security was to pass the president's tax relief proposal,'' said Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill. ``Senator Daschle voted against that proposal, and now he seems to indicate he wants to repeal it.''
