Just when I get my hopes up that Republican lawmakers have decided to join the human race, I come up against stark reality.
While we were still reeling from the shock of Sept. 11, and President Bush was telling us that we’ve all got to make sacrifices, the Republicans in the House of Representatives (with Bush’s blessing) were passing an “economic stimulus package” of windfalls for the rich.
This bill would eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, which compels corporations protected by tax shelters and loopholes to pay at least some taxes.
Sponsors of the bill did not stop there. Outshining all rivals in sheer gall, the bill would refund all of the Alternative Minimum Taxes that corporations have paid for the last 15 years.
Look at these rebates:
$1.4 billion for IBM
$833 million for General Motors
$671 million for General Electric
$572 million for Chevron Texaco
$254 million for Enron
This at a time when the surplus we inherited from the Clinton administration has already been given to the wealthy in tax breaks, at a time when we face a long and costly war.
Dick Armey claims that it’s better to give corporations rebates than to provide health care coverage and increase unemployment benefits for those who lost their jobs in the terrorist attack. He says companies will invest their rebates in new jobs for these people. But he neglected to write that investment requirement into the bill.
If corporations behave the way they did in the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and a Republican Congress gave them huge tax rebates, any jobs they create won’t be here in America, but in countries where workers are paid something like 60 cents a day.
Republicans always do this to us, grab all they can for their rich campaign contributors while people in need do without. But to loot the treasury in the wake of this tragedy, when the nation is wounded, breaks all their previous records of indecency.
Oak Harbor
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