Heck with the Poor!

Congress has agreed on the tax cut packages they have been debating for the past few months. You can read some details here: More House Tax Cuts, Total to Exceed $90 Billion. I won’t argue that the Alternative Minimum Tax (‘AMT’) doesn’t need fixing. It was designed originally to prevent the really wealthy from avoiding taxes through the accumulation of too many deductions. AMT restricts the level of deductions a taxpayer can use. The problem is that when AMT was created no one built in inflation adjustments, so gradually more and more middle income families have ‘crept’ into AMT levels of income. Congress has passed a continuation of AMT relief for these people at a cost of $30 billion.

The part of the tax cuts I really cannot agree with is the extension of low tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The cost of this extension is $56 billion, and the benefit goes almost entirely to people earning over $1 million a year.

What makes me even more mad is that Congress, having just doled out this benefit to the super rich, then turns around and tells us that we need to tighten our belts. Who do they target for this belt tightening? The poor and middle class. They are proposing cuts in Medicaid, food stamps, student loans, and other programs, all of which help the neediest.

That’s class warfare. Does anyone care?