No serious person could have possibly believed that Bush’s proposed changes to the federal tax code would be fair and equitable. This president has already made it clear through his tax cuts that he prefers class warfare — benefit the rich at everyone else’s expense — and a tax system that, as John Edwards reminded us, rewards wealth, not work.
But now that details about Bush’s approach to tax “reform” are starting to trickle out, we’re learning just how twisted the president’s sense of “compassion” really is.
First up, not surprisingly, is a new round of benefits for investors.
The Bush administration is eyeing an overhaul of the tax code that would drastically cut, if not eliminate, taxes on savings and investment, but it is unlikely to try to replace the existing tax code with a single flat income tax rate or a national sales tax, according to several sources familiar with ongoing tax deliberations.
The plan will reportedly focus on making “interest, dividends and capitals gains” tax-free. Of course, to make these changes value-neutral, which is reportedly an integral part of the “reform” process, the money has to come from somewhere.
To pay for them, the administration is considering eliminating the deduction of state and local taxes on federal income tax returns and scrapping the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance, the advisers said.
Part one will, as Salon’s Michelle Goldberg explained, “screw the blue states, especially urbanites who pay high city taxes to support municipal services.” This makes sense; Bush doesn’t care about those Americans anyway.
But the second part is truly astonishing, even by this gang’s bottom-of-the-barrel standards. As the health care crisis has worsened, and the total number of uninsured as blossomed to 45 million Americans, Bush wants to encourage businesses to stop providing health care benefits by scrapping tax incentives.
These are the same tax incentives John Kerry wanted to expand, but that Bush may ultimately cut so he can give wealthy investors another capitals gains break.
If Dems can’t beat the crap out of the GOP with this one, we might as well give up now.