John Snow Waffles on Tax Cuts

John Snow is one of the real lightweights in the present administration, his ongoing presence at the Treasury Department is a clear sign that economic policy is, and always has been, at the bottom of Bush’s agenda. Today he defended the recently enacted package of tax cuts and benefit cuts as being in everyone’s interest. Read about it here: Senate extends tax cuts, raises levies on oil firms – Nov 18, 2005

The thrust of his argument, and I use that word lightly, is that the wealthy get more tax breaks — as usual the vast majority of the tax cut goes to people earning over a million dollars a year — and because this somehow stimulates the economy all the rest of us also benefit. We get to keep our pathetic little jobs is what he means. The class warfare continues!

What he didn’t talk about, presumably because there’s nothing good to say, is that the benefit cuts hammer the poor even more. Food stamps, medicaid, and children’s programs don’t exactly affect the wealthy. One of his Republican colleagues even had the gall to say that the spending cuts equal about $50 per person next year. That’s supposed to make us feel good. Wow, the government is spending $50 less of my money. I assume that they hope we don’t notice that our benefits have also been reduced, so we are also receiving an average of $50 less, which means of course that we are no better or worse off. The purpose of the spending cuts is to pay for the tax cut for the rich, not to save us all money! It’s weird how the Republicans can go around in these tortured loops just to hide their primary goal, which is to shift wealth away from the middle class and the poor and give it to the rich. What’s next: ‘Let them eat cake’?