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Good news America! The GOP Congress and the White House have reached a consensus. The nation’s budget must be balanced. We will no longer force our grandchildren to pay for our wars of choice for oil. Despite the best efforts of the Tea Party to resist the inevitable, taxes will and must be raised. And so, many of us will be called upon to make sacrifices. We will have to give up our homes, our families, maybe even our lives. Since no one will volunteer for this national service, Washington has decided to draft those of us who can not resist, those who have the least political power-----the nameless, the faceless, the real America that will never be shown in Reality TV. Our suffering will be as silent as snowfall on a winter night. Our loss will never be acknowledged. For there is no Works Projects Administration to commission photographs to record our misery…..
I wish I could show you a photograph of Cindy. She has a sweet smile, even though she can not afford dentures. Cindy buried her husband last spring. His heart attack did not kill him right away. The family accrued enormous debts, many of which were charged to credit cards. Cindy has not worked in ten years, since she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. Being disabled, she had Medicare, but her husband did not. That’s why she has inherited so many bills. Cindy’s monthly Social Security check just about covers the VISA interest payment. What she does not know is that she has been selected to be one of the few, the proud, the Americans whose taxes will rise. The federal government has decided that some of her social security payments will now count as general revenue---a retroactive tax increase. The money diverted to regular income tax will go to pay down the deficit. Cindy will not get her check. VISA will not be paid on time. The interest rate on Cindy’s account will rise. Citibank will be a stronger, more secure company for her sacrifice.
I wish you could see Henry. Losing both legs in Iraq has not slowed him down, thanks to his wheelchair. Oh, sometimes he still feels some regret and anger, as when he watches his wife struggle with the lawnmower or when his son plays catch with some other neighborhood dad. But he knows that he has served his country well. What he does not know is that he will be called upon to serve his country once again. The check he receives for being a disabled veteran will be held back. Washington needs that money. It has selected him to pay more taxes, so that the rich will not have to suffer the burden of a tax increase. Too bad for him that Bank of America also needs that money. When he misses a house payment, the bank will foreclose. Eventually, he and his family will be forced to live in their car. His home will be sold at a fraction of its value to a foreign investor who will give heavily to a Republican SuperPac in 2012, to show his gratitude towards America. Henry will give up his house, and the nation will gain a happy foreign business partner.
I wish you could see Rachelle. She never misses work, even though her labor is grueling. When she was a girl, if you had asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she would have said “a nurse or a doctor.” Instead, she cleans toilets in a federal government owned hospital. She pays taxes on her income---state as well as federal---- and on the food she buys for her three kids. She pays gasoline taxes that go to maintain her roads. The high price of gasoline has been a real strain on her. Ten years ago, she relocated to the suburbs, when gas was cheap, because the schools were better. Now, she pays three times as much to get to work, and so her bank account is usually empty by the time the next paycheck arrives. Though Rachelle never went to medical school, she will soon find that she has something in common with the nurses and doctors who work at her clinic. Only women in the medical professions can be drafted, and Rachelle is about to be drafted. The powers that be have decided that she can do without gas money for a couple of weeks---and her kids can do without food and electricity is optional---in order to balance the federal budget. She should be glad to perform this public service, since she and the other government employees who build our roads and teach our kids are the whole reason we have gotten into this mess. No one asked the Koch Brothers if they wanted clean toilets, educated kids or roads free of potholes, and so oil barons like them can not be asked to give up any of their federal oil subsidies. It would be taxation without representation! They might make $2 billion in profit next year instead of $3 billion. What if Rachelle loses her job, because she can not get to work? No problem. The Koch Brothers will be happy to hire a hard working woman like her to work in one of their Dixie Cup plants for minimum wage and no benefits.
I wish you could see Irene. She still makes Thanksgiving dinner for the whole family, though she has to stop from time to time to prop up her legs. If she stands too long, her heart will feel the strain, and she will go into congestive heart failure. Irene is a testament to the miracle of modern medicine. Thanks to a half dozen medications, she lives at home and is self sufficient. The medications are not cheap. The British firm that manufacturers three of them keeps prices in the U.S. high so that it can cut prices back at home in the U.K. Medicare pays most of her bills, but her Part D “Prescription Drug Coverage” covers only a small portion of her pharmacy bill. Good thing she gets a disability check. It just about covers her medications. Irene is a very conscientious woman. She never misses a doctors appointment, and she sticks to her diabetic, low salt, low fat diet. If anyone in the federal government had thought to warn her in advance “We have to balance the budget, and we have decided that you will donate one of your disability checks to our general tax coffers” she would have found a way to scrimp and save, in order to put aside the money she would need to buy her medications. Unfortunately, the decision to draft Irene was made at the last moment. When her check fails to arrive, she will run out of her drugs. Her doctor will be able to give her a few samples. Unfortunately, the doctor will have dozens of people in her situation, and there will not be enough medicine to go around. On the second day of the second week after her check is held, she will begin to have swelling in her feet. She will find herself getting out of breath when she tries to take her dog out for a short walk. That night, she will sleep on the recliner, because when she tries to lie down in bed, she will smother. Around three in the morning, she will wake in a panic, unable to get her breath. She will call her neighbor, who will drive her to the hospital. Because of the health care crisis, the closest emergency room will be packed with folks who have serious problems. Irene will have to wait her turn. She will wait and she will wait until they find her collapsed in the restroom, dead. Her dog? Don’t worry. The story has a happy ending. Her neighbor will take the dog.
Once upon a time, America was not afraid to look upon the faces of those it sent off to die in the service of its country. Once upon a time, we did not turn our faces away from poverty and misery. The result was Social Security and Medicare and the Civil Rights Act. The forces that seek to undo the gains made by Democrats under FDR and LBJ have discovered a simple strategy. Talk about the disabled as statistics. Paint the poor as an economic problem. Show us Paris Hilton and Donald Trump over and over until we decide that they are the heart and soul of this country---and that no sacrifice is too great to help them maintain the lifestyles of the rich and famous. It is so easy to demand that the poorest thirty-five percent of Americans pay more taxes, when they refer to them by number rather than name.
Taxes shall be levied according to their inability to worm their way out of paying. That is the new American way.
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