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DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISTS OF AMERICA
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August 23, 2007
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| News From DSA A Report from DSA's National Office |
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Average income down, war spending up: What to do? ‘Steal more from children’s programs,’ administration says.
Reports released over the last few days showing a decline in average annual income document not only the economic insecurity with which most of us now live, but the utter failure and hypocrisy of the economic theories and practices favored by George W and his gnomic advisors. To top it off, this was the week the president threatened the health of millions by issuing new rules reducing the number of children that states could insure through federally funded child health programs.
The Internal Revenue Service’s report shows average annual income declining for the fifth year in a row. Adjusted for inflation, the average wage dropped by more than 1 percent. While the average figure—$55,238—may look good on paper, it’s inflated because of the incomes of all those multimillionaires and billionaires about whose success Bush and company so fondly brag. The point is: it documents why even the middle class is feeling the pinch of stagnant wages and economic insecurity.
Our friends at Citizens for Tax Justice gave the IRS numbers a close read, and they report that in the year 2005 (the most recent year for which data is available), tax cuts on capital gains and dividends that Bush and the Republican Congress passed reduced federal tax payments by $91.7 billion. As much as 73.4 percent of the tax savings, an average of $81,204 per tax filer, went to the top .06%, or those reporting income above $500,000. The 67 million taxpayers (just about half) who reported taxable income under $30,000 got virtually no tax savings. And the lucky 13,776 tax filers (.01 percent) with incomes above $10 million received an average tax savings of just under $1.9 million (or 28 percent of all the benefits).
Now, those of us at the bottom or even in the middle are suppose to tolerate these tax breaks for the rich because those at the top ostensibly spend all their money generating jobs for the rest of us. Not so! As our friends at the Economic Policy Institute reported this week, economic growth as measured by employment growth and investment growth was superior in the 1990s, when federal revenues were increased during an economic recovery.
So what does our president do when he discovers that federal revenue is declining even as much of it is siphoned off to fund the occupation of Iraq? He decides to steal dollars from children. Issuing new administrative rules to limit the number of children that states could insure under the federally funded child health programs is an attack on a program that has become popular even among Republicans in state government. These programs allow states to use federal funds to provide coverage to children without health insurance; some state programs even fund children from families whose incomes are at double or triple the poverty level. For a family of four that makes an income of around $50,000 eligible. The new, punitive rules would require individuals to be without health insurance for a year before children could become eligible (This is for families with incomes above 250 percent of the poverty line—definitely not enough to be able to afford to buy private health insurance.)—and even then, they could only get the insurance if the number of children in the state covered by private health insurance has not dropped by more than 2 percent over the last five years.
So Bush gets a twofer. He saves money on a domestic program so he can spend it on his war, while he gives his buddies in the insurance industry protection for their premiums so that parents won’t opt into a public health program.
Now what is ironic is that in many cases there is no public health program to opt into because states like New York use private insurers to provide child health coverage! So our children are denied health coverage in deference to private insurers who in many cases are not even losing money because of the public funding source. And these are the clowns who run our government.
Frank Llewellyn
National Director
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Paid for by Democratic Socialists of America PAC, 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 505,
NY, NY 10038; not approved by any candidate or candidate's committee.
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