|
Kerry: A Vote For Recession
By Tim Siggia
March 16, 2004
Sen. John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, recently clarified his stance toward the Bush tax cuts: as president, Kerry would keep the Bush tax cuts in place for middle and working-class taxpayers, but would ask the rich -- those making $200,000 a year or more -- to pay their "fair share" by returning to the rate of taxation by which they paid under former president Bill Clinton. On the surface, of course, it sounds wonderful: especially for those below the $200,000 cutoff line. But anyone who analyzes this proposal coolly and dispassionately will quickly recognize it as a prescription for a return to recession.
With his latest pronouncement on taxation, Sen. Kerry has returned to the same tired, shopworn, class envy theme that has been a hallmark of Democratic politics since the days of the Great Society, if not before that. Kerry, in effect, says he is out to get the rich -- never minding that he himself is one of them. By calling on the rich to pay their "fair share", he implies that they are not already doing so, even as the top one percent of income earners pay roughly 25 percent of the taxes as it is.
In fact, this whole business of class envy is something people really need to get over. The overwhelming majority of those in our country who are truly rich -- which I would define as those having a net worth of $1 million or more -- did not become rich by being born to money. (Or by marrying into it, as Kerry has done.) They became wealthy by a combination of hard work, self-denial, and the kind of risk taking that makes a trip to Las Vegas look tame by comparison.
Most of us wouldn't mind being rich, but do not truly want to be -- at least not to the point where we would be willing to do what most rich Americans have done to attain their wealth. For the most part, we tend to shy away from the hazards and uncertainties of entrepeneurship, preferring the relative security of the steady paycheck. We tend to like our days off, our paid vacations, our paid holidays and sick leave days, our benefit packages, and our 401K plans, and would never risk losing all of that and more on a business venture with no guarantees. But the few who would have made all the difference for the many who would not. It is because of them -- in the private sector, at least -- that we have those secure jobs with the steady paychecks in the first place. Even in the case of the biggest of blue-chip conglomerates, someone, at the very beginning, had to take the big risk that made it all possible.
These are the people who make America work: who create jobs, who fuel the economy with their purchases and investments, who, in most cases, do not wait to be asked to give back to their communities, but do so voluntarily and cheerfully. These are the people who John Kerry, if elected president, would punish with a tax increase. By requiring such people to return to Clinton-era taxation levels, Kerry is in fact not only calling for a tax hike, but a punitive and discriminatory tax hike which, in effect, would choke off the largest contributors to the economy and send us back to the kind of recession President Bush inherited from his predecessor, Bill Clinton, from which we are just now beginning to recover. Conversely, Kerry does no favor for those below the $200,000 mark, either. He offers them nothing in the way of tax cuts that they do not already have, courtesy of President Bush. Kerry's higher taxation of the "haves" in no way improves the lot of the "have-nots". On the contrary, it would stifle economic growth, from which people of all income levels ultimately benefit, and merely redirect money to the federal coffers to make Americans at large even more dependent on the federal government. For Kerry, like so many of today's Democrats, ignores the fact that lower tax rates, as proved by presidents Truman, Kennedy, Reagan, and now George W. Bush, actually result in increased revenues.
Curiously enough, many of The Rich will vote for Kerry this year, assuming he is the Democratic nominee, even as he openly discriminates against them with his tax policies: George Soros, Barbra Streisand, Alec Baldwin, Stephen Spielberg -- the list goes on and on. Hopefully, however, the great majority of Americans -- those with smaller purses, but a higher level of common-sense awareness, will recognize Kerry's class baiting for exactly what it is, and not be taken in by his class-envy rhetoric. They will realize that Kerry, in fact, has nothing to offer Mr. and Mrs. Average America except another recession and the general weakening of America at home and abroad, militarily, economically, and diplomatically. Then they will hopefully remember the leadership and direction provided by their current president, the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the new freedom in Iraq and the capture of Saddam Hussein, and the turnaround of our economy at home, and return George W. Bush to the White House in November.
|
