Kucinich Labels Bush's Economic Stimulus Plan ''Another Tax Break for the Rich''

http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20080118005870&newsLang=en

“We're digging ourselves a financial hole that goes all the way to China” says Kucinich

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Ohio Congressman and Democratic Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich sharply criticized the economic stimulus plan President Bush proposed earlier today, which calls for an additional $145 billion in tax cuts in hope of ending the country's first recession since 2001.

“President Bush's plan is nothing more than another tax break for the rich, this time cynically disguised as help for our ailing economy,” said Kucinich, right before traveling this afternoon to Las Vegas on the eve of the Nevada caucuses. “Americans know who is responsible for starting the financial fire now threatening to engulf our entire economy. Wars that make us less safe; tax cuts favoring the already affluent; and a complete lack of accountability and oversight of financial institutions are what are fueling this fire. The Bush Administration has to answer to all of this,” explained the 10th District Congressman from Ohio.

Kucinich pointed out that the President's call for “broad-based tax relief” is code for continuing his destructive policy of giving most tax relief to those who don't need it and ignoring the middle class' shrinking income. Based on figures from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, Bush's stimulus package, which officials there call “massive” will account for 23% of the tax cuts that the top 1% will have received in this decade. In fact, the top 1% of household received more money in tax cuts than the bottom 80% over the last seven years which has hastened the consumer slowdown and piled trillions of dollars of debt on our children.

Even more worrisome is, with the collapse of the U.S. dollar, arises the strong possibility that the U. S. government may no longer be able to finance its “preventive” wars using borrowed money from China and other countries. When the specter of huge trade deficits with China, some $280 billion at this time, is added into the mix, it is clear that the American economy is in the first stages of a staggering melt down.

“We're digging ourselves a financial hole that goes all the way to China,” said Kucinich.

In contrast to Bush's desperate financial scheme, Kucinich explained that he has already proposed in Congress new legislation (H. R. 3400) for a public works program “a Works Green Administration” that will resemble the public works programs that President Franklin D. Roosevelt put in place promptly after his election in 1933. “It is time to rebuild America and its dream, not to tear down the industrial capitalist system in favor of a system in which the only real product is debt, with the American family trapped on a debt treadmill,” added Kucinich.

Kucinich is the only candidate in the Democratic Party who has called for eliminating the waste and fraud in the military budget. His proposed 15% cut in military spending, which has been endorsed by many retired generals and admirals, would free up some $70 billion more for job creation in America.

The recently released Kucinich Tax Plan would immediately get $1,250 to families with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000 by simply shifting the tax cuts from those earning over $400,000 a year to those earning less than $78,000. It would double the tax cuts and earned income credits for all those earning under $78,000. With this plan fully enacted that same family would see up to $5,000 a year in additional disposable income resulting in the elimination of the 6.2% employee-paid FICA tax.

“It's time to help working families in America make ends meet while our country's financial future,” said Kucinich. “President Bush's so-called stimulus plan is just a brazen attempt at delivering more tax cuts to the wealthy. I sincerely hope Congress, the media and all Americans see this scheme for what it is: an awful idea by a reckless leader in his last year in office.”

then and it will now. dennis is the only candidate that actually has a clue about what will work.

:toast:

I'll be proud to vote for him in my primary Feb. 5.

It is clear to me that many elected officials are not on the side of the people :(

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h110-3400


DU thread for article below

http://www.alternet.org/story/74268?page=1

"Hedges: Have we evolved into a corporate state?

Kucinich: I Look at it as the political equivalent of genetic engineering. That we've taken the gene of corporate America and shot it into both political parties. So they both now are growing with that essence within. So what does that mean? It means oil runs our politics. Corrupt Wall Street interests run our politics. Insurance companies run our politics. Arms manufacturers run our politics. And the public interest is being strangled. Fulfilling the practical aspirations of people should be our mission. How do we measure up to providing people with jobs? It was a Democratic president that made it possible for NAFTA to be passed, causing millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs that help support the middle class. . . .

NAFTA, GAT, the WTO, China Trade, and every other trade agreement that's passed in Congress has been passed with the help of either the leadership of or with the help of the Democratic Party, knowing that each and every one of those agreements was devoid of protections for workers, knowing that if you don't have workers' rights put into a trade agreement then workers here in the United States are going to see their own bargaining position undermined because corporations can move jobs out of the country to places where workers don't have any rights. They don't have the right to organize, the right to collective bargaining, the right to strike. So what I see is that the Democratic Party abandoned working people, and paradoxically they're the ones who hoist the flag of workers every two and four years only to engender excitement, and then to turn around and abandon their constituency. This is now on the level of a practiced ritual.