A counter to "Kerry will raise taxes, costing 900 Billion dollars"

Yeah, even if Kerry does what Bush is trying to say he will do, it won't cover half of what Bush has done to the deficit by giving the breaks to the wealthy.

ACCORDING TO BUSH, THE POOR DON'T PAY TAXES! Therefore, he couldn't rescind the taxes on the poor!

Kerry is putting back the tax rate on those making $200K or more. So much for the "middle class". I remember when they tried to tell us that Clinton thought $20K a year was rich.

It just goes to show you exactly what Bush took away by taking the office.

That's a TEN YEAR figure meaning only around 90 billion a year. That's actually small relative to the size of the budget.

I'm having this debate on the Kerry forum in a thread about $200,000 not being very much money. I just posted this in response, which I think fits generally. If I were the Kerry campaign, I'd just say YES, we're going to put in health care programs to help take the burden off business and the wealthiest are going to pay for it. But that's just me. Anyway, here's my argument:

First of all, again, we're talking about 2% of the population. That the Republicans have already got so many people thinking that they have to be concerned about a tax increase on such a small number of people means they've already made great headway in framing the debate. I can't think of any other issue that only concerns 2% of the population that we'd be seriously discussing. They've even got people thinking mom/pop businesses fall in that category. Mom/pop businesses are my clients, my friends, my neighbors. They do not make $200,000 a year, most of them don't even make $100,000 a year. Alot of the wives take second jobs in order to supplement the income from their mom/pop business. The small businesses that employ over 15 people or so are generally set up as full corporations and are going to get both corporate tax cuts and new hire tax cuts, so they would be pleased with Kerry's tax plan. So you see, Americans have already been duped by the Republican rhetoric.

It's about power. The Bushies will say anything to stay in power. They refuse to spend money on social programs, but it's clear to me that it's not the money because they're spending it, as the saying goes, like drunken sailors. Most of the very wealthy can move their money around and avoid paying taxes no matter what the tax law, so again, they don't particularly care about the tax rates. Enron and Microsoft didn't pay taxes at all in something like 4 of the last 5 years. All their rhetoric about Kerry and taxes is just political rhetoric. It doesn't matter to them one way or the other what the U.S. tax code is or whether we even have very much economic growth. They know how to make money whether the economy is good or bad, whether it's in the U.S. or somewhere else. The tax cut nonsense appeals to a simplistic mind that doesn't want to spend too much time thinking, or to those who have dreams of being wealthy and think if they think like the rich people that will make it happen. They're voting against their own best interest on the off chance that they manage to join 2% of the U.S. population. Without thinking that if they do get there, they'll have all the same accounting benefits that those people already enjoy to hide their income and pay less taxes. Manipulation of the masses, that's all it is.

and that is because of the strange IRS rules that would qualify both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as "small bidnessmen". They have to cook the books to even get up to the 3.8%. Very few people are aware of this. The Rethugs are indeed great at manipulation of the facts.

"...Unless Bush is scared to debate Kerry, man to man, in monthly debates, that is...why IS Bush afraid to debate Kerry?..."

Pretty much my standard answer for people who think Bush can keep on arguing through his surrogates...

Empty the pockets of the middle class in order to line the coffers of the rich.

(published last Saturday)

Dear Mr. Bush,

I just saw one of your campaign commercials where you said that John Kerry would raise MY taxes Nine Hundred Billion Dollars (I had to spell it, because I have no idea how many zeros that is after the 9).

OK, what you actually said was "John Kerry wants to raise YOUR taxes Nine Hundred Billion Dollars". And you looked me straight in the eye when you said it.

Mr. Bush, I think you have me confused with someone else. Maybe you thought you were talking to Bill Gates, or Warren Buffet, or George Soros, or Rupert Murdoch, or Kenny-Boy Lay. I don't HAVE Nine Hundred Billion Dollars. I'm barely scraping by on my social security and a small pension. What with paying upwards of a buck-sixty for gas, and my health insurance premiums tripling in the last couple of years, it's a real struggle.

Maybe you weren't talking to me. Maybe you were talking to your top campaign contributors. I just read in a study done by Citizens for Tax Justice that over the 10 year period covered by your plan (2001-2010), the best off 1% of taxpayers will get tax cuts totaling almost half a trillion dollars. By 2010, 52% of the tax break will go to the richest 1%.

If those are the folks who would get hit by Kerry's Nine Hundred Billion Dollar "tax increase", I'll bet they are sweating bullets. Your Pioneers* and Rangers** must be shaking in their hand-tooled boots.

I just heard on TV that our national debt will reach Four Thousand One Hundred and Sixty Six BILLION Dollars by the end of the year. That's predicted to increase by about Two Hundred BILLION Dollars a year at least through 2008. As the late senator Everett Dirksen said, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking real money".

I still don't understand how we can keep decreasing income and increasing spending (it sure doesn't work at my house), but I guess you know best.
*Pioneers: Raise $100,000 for the Bush-Cheney Re-election Fund
**Rangers: Raise $200,000 for the Bush-Cheney Re-election Fund.

Massey Lambard
Foley, Alabama