GOP Congress Pays for Tax Cuts for Wealthy with Child Health Cuts

[Time for change]

By the time voters go to the polls this fall they should be made aware of the wealth redistribution measures perpetrated by our Republican controlled Congress. Three recent Congressional votes make their priorities very clear.


The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005

Signed into law by George Bush on February 8, 2006, this bill cut federal spending by $38.8 billion over 5 years, according to the Drum Major Policy Institute for Public Policy, with much of the cutbacks coming from Medicare and Medicaid cuts and the college loan program. The bill also cut funds for child support enforcement, foster care and support for the elderly and disabled. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will reduce funding for Medicaid over the next ten years by $26.1 billion.

This is what Marian Wright Edelman of the Children’s defense fund had to say about this bill shortly prior to its passage:

It would take away far more from Katrina’s and other poor families than it would give and undermine rather than strengthen guaranteed Medicaid protections for the 25 million children who depend on it. Even disabled, neglected and abused children are asked to endure budget cuts in order to finance huge capital gains and dividend tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. The Congress and Administration seem to have lost all sense of shame…

The bill was passed by the Senate 51-50, with the Vice pResident breaking the tie. Every Democrat voted against it, as did five Republicans (Snowe, Collins, DeWine, Chafee, and Smith). The bill was passed by the House by a 216-214 margin, along a similar party line vote, with 100% of Democrats voting against it and 6% of Republicans voting for it.


The Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act

But the name of the “Deficit Reduction Act of 2005” is highly misleading. As explained by Michael Michaud in his article, “Budget Deception”:

These cuts to programs that are meant to help the poor are being pushed for one reason only: in order to allow $70 billion in new tax cuts, much of which goes to the wealthy. In other words, this bill robs the poor to feed the rich.

Michaud was referring to the Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act, signed by Bush on May 17, 2006, which focuses on tax rate decreases on dividends and capital gains. Phil Singer explains how this law provides relief exclusively to the wealthy, while screwing everyone else, in an article that focuses on its effects in Ohio.

At a time when the cost of college is skyrocketing, it makes no sense to eliminate a tax deduction that families and students rely on to help pay their tuition. No wonder George Voinovich called this bill immoral. The fact that DeWine prioritizes tax breaks for oil companies with record profits ahead of average families says a lot about his judgment…thousands of middle class Ohioans will no longer be able to rely on a number of tax breaks. By prioritizing tax cuts that aren’t due to expire until 2009, DeWine left no room for a range of other expiring or expired middle class tax cuts, including tuition relief, cuts for teachers who buy supplies out of their own pockets for their classrooms and incentives to put money into retirement accounts.

The bill was passed by the Senate almost totally along party lines (with only Snowe, Chafee, and Voinovich among the Republicans voting against it, and Nelson, Nelson, and Pryor among the Democrats voting for it). It passed in the House by a vote of 234-197, along similarly partisan lines.

But the Republicans in Congress apparently felt that this bill was not enough to show their appreciation to their wealthy benefactors.


The attempt to permanently repeal the estate tax

As it stands now, the estate tax will be re-instated in 2011, so that individuals who inherit more than $1.5 million after that date (or more than $3 million for married couples) will have to pay taxes on amounts above that figure. Concerned about the unimagined misery that this would cause to their favorite constituents, 100% of House Republicans, along with 21% of House Democrats, voted to permanently repeal the estate tax, despite the fact that this would add one trillion dollars (click on “death tax repeal permanency act”) to the federal deficit between 2012 and 2021.

Addressing this fall’s Ohio Senate race, Phil Singer described what Mike DeWine’s Republican colleague in the Senate and his Democratic challenger had to say about this act:

Sherrod Brown has opposed the irresponsible repeal of the estate tax, saying middle-class Ohio families can’t afford the “trillion-dollar giveaway to {DeWine’s} millionaire friends.” DeWine’s GOP colleague George Voinovich echoed Brown’s criticism calling estate tax repeal “incredibly irresponsible and intellectually dishonest”.

Subsequently, Senate Democrats went on to successfully filibuster the bill in June 2006, with only Voinovich and Chafee among the Republicans voting against cloture, and with only four Democrats (Nelson, Nelson, Lincoln, and Baucus) voting for cloture.


Putting this in perspective

The votes described above represent only a small sampling of the many ways in which Republican Congresspersons have put the interests of their wealthiest constituents above the interests of everyone else, even when that means cutting off desperately needed health care for children – thus resulting in a democracy endangering widening income gap between the rich and the poor and a shrinking middle class not seen in this country since the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century. With such a voting record, the only way that these Republicans can win re-election is to make sure that the bulk of their constituents don’t know what they’re up to – a task that is made much easier by the millions of dollars rolling into their campaign coffers, contributed by their wealthy benefactors, along with a compliant and irresponsible corporate news media.