Republicans are always talking about tax cuts -- and that appeals to people. It appeals to me. Lowering the tax burden as much as possible on the poor and middle class should always be a goal.
Where I differ with the Republicans is that they want to give the biggest break to the richest of the rich while our federal government is running huge deficits. Even so, because they continue to talk about tax cuts, the public perception is that “tax-cutting” is a Republican issue. Democrats have to start winning people over on this issue.
The single area, favoring the wealthy, that I agree with Republicans on, is doing away with the Estate tax. This is out of principle. I don’t think the government should have the right to tax a family when parents or grandparents die. It’s just that simple. It’s immoral for a family to be forced to sell a house after a loved one dies in order to pay death taxes to the government.
Whenever taxes are cut, the hand-in-hand concern must be what program or area loses money. If government has less money to spend, something in the budget must be trimmed. What bothers many of us is that all too often, our government is quick to look at vital areas to cut instead of making an effort to eliminate truly wasteful spending (we know there’s lots of this).
Let me define vital areas: education, law enforcement, health and safety, the environment, and programs that assist the poor, elderly and so-called disadvantaged. There are plenty of areas to look. There’s talk today about us giving Turkey $26 billion in grant/aid money (which we know for the most part would not be paid back) in exchange for us using their land for our military in order to launch an attack vs. Iraq. Is such an expense really necessary???
I read a couple days ago that congress spent $100,000 to build an elevator in a private women’s club in Ohio.
Much has been written about wasteful spending on projects ranging from the thousands to billions of dollars so I won’t list other examples here. It wouldn’t be news to anyone, and we know it’s an ongoing thing.
Can it be stopped?
Probably not. We could curb a great deal of it though if congress were not allowed to load up bills with package deals. For years congress has put together bills that involves several items. This way if a person says yes to one item, he must also accept perhaps a half dozen or more other items. What this allow congress to do is slip in an item, like a plan for a $100,000 elevator, to an education or farm bill.
If congress were only allowed to put together bills containing one item only (no riders or add-ons), then they would likely spend more responsibly because they could be held accountable for lousy, costly ideas that could only get passed on their own merit.
Some presidents have wanted a line item veto. How about just giving the president single item bills?
