[Mb-civic] Trimmings for the poor - Derrick Z. Jackson - Boston Globe Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

Trimmings for the poor

By Derrick Z. Jackson  |  November 26, 2005

AMERICANS HAVE received a turkey, and it is not a golden brown Butterball.

Last week the Republican-led House passed $50 billion in budget cuts to 
the poor, working class, and lower middle class.

It was bad enough to slash money for higher education, food stamps, 
pension insurance, and Medicaid, just as the lights were barely 
flickering back on in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans and the gulf coast, 
while state governments scramble to cover the uninsured, while local 
public school boards still struggle to fit the mammoth mandates of No 
Child Left Behind into shriveled budgets, and while college tuition 
threaten to cement a class system.

What makes the cuts reprehensible is that they are only a precursor to 
$56 billion in tax cuts for the wealthy. The only thing that kept the 
House from passing the cuts was fear of being seen as utterly craven 
before Thanksgiving. They will take up the cuts next month. The Senate 
of millionaires, even more insulated than members of the House, passed 
$60 billion in tax cuts.

''We got through the first round," said House Speaker Dennis Hastert of 
Illinois. ''You've got to get through the first round before you get to 
the championship."

That is quite a statement that afflicting the afflicted and comforting 
the comfortable is worthy of a title trophy.

Barely part of the debate is whether the tax cuts of Congress and 
President Bush work at all. There is evidence is to the contrary. United 
for a Fair Economy, the progressive economic think tank known for 
keeping track of the outrageous pay gaps between workers and CEOs, has a 
new report that shows that the Bush tax cuts already enacted have not 
produced new jobs or otherwise raised the standard of living. If 
anything, the cuts have depressed the economy for the average American.

Bush promised to add 1.4 million jobs to the economy with his tax plan, 
on top of the 4.1 million jobs projected over an 18-month span in 
2003-2004. Of the total of 5.5 million anticipated jobs, only 2.6 
million jobs were created, according to United for a Fair Economy, less 
than half of projections. In August a report in the Federal Reserve Bank 
of New York Economic Policy Review reported that there were 3.1 million 
fewer people working today than in 2001.

In the economic boom of the 1990s, the unemployment rates for all 
workers and racial gaps in unemployment declined to their lowest levels 
in three decades, when the working class could still depend on 
factories. Pay gaps are growing again, particularly for Latinos. In 
1974, Latinos and African-Americans made about $4,000 and $5,000 less, 
respectively, than white workers. Today Latinos and African-Americans 
make $10,000 and $6,800 less, respectively.

The United for a Fair Economy report found that since World War II, 
major tax increases by the Truman and Clinton administrations were 
followed by increases in the employment rate, while tax cuts by the 
Johnson, Reagan and the current Bush administrations were followed by 
drops in the employment rate.

''One of the many reasons that tax cuts are not a sure formula for 
increasing jobs is that tax cuts mean less government revenue and 
therefore fewer public sector jobs," the report said. Yet, the tax-cut 
happy Hastert keeps saying things like, ''We want to continue to create 
jobs in this country." Hiding behind Bush's patented facade of doing the 
people's work, Hastert said Americans ''want us to provide a better life 
for themselves and their children and this majority will do it."

The Republican majority is doing us in, according to just about every 
economic measure. Since the 2001 Bush tax cuts, median household income 
has declined, poverty has increased, the percentage of Americans without 
employer-based health insurance has increased and the percentage of 
people receiving employer-based pension benefits has declined. This is 
despite a national work ethic in which we work 213 hours more a year, or 
five weeks more, than our counterparts in the industrialized world.

This is what Hastert calls a championship. In fact you could argue that 
Congress didn't even deliver a turkey. It delivered a carcass.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/11/26/trimmings_for_the_poor/
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