Budgets are moral documents

The Republicans are at it once again, insisting on huge tax breaks for billionaires and millionaires in order to rein in our massive federal deficit while asking for huge sacrifices from the poor and middle class: no more Medicare, no more Pell grants for college, no more Medicaid, no more social safety net. They want to balance the federal budget on the backs of the most vulnerable and keep steadily moving wealth upward to the already wealthiest Americans. Well, it just so happens that 400 Americans hold the vast majority of our national wealth and they get HUGE tax breaks and in some cases, pay no taxes at all and cleverly hide their money in offshore tax havens. There is a four story building in the Cayman Islands that houses 18,000 companies, for example. Now, you might say, wow, that's got to be mighty crowded in there, but guess what? All that building amounts to is a fake offshore address for 18,000 American companies to use to hide from Uncle Sam's taxes. As a result, our country is losing $100 billion dollars in unpaid taxes that 18,000 companies are hiding in the Cayman Islands. These companies pay NO taxes to the US, none, zip, zilch, nada. Now, imagine if corporations ponied up their fair share of taxes. We might actually be able to fix our budget deficit without having to ask huge sacrifices from the most vulnerable among us. But of course, legislative proposals to close these tax loopholes are meeting with staunch opposition from conservatives who say it is not business friendly and that it inhibits offshore competition, which is a lot of hooey if you ask me. The simple fact is that the GOP works for the richest and the huge corporations, not the ordinary blue collar working stiff. But Joe Lunchbucket keeps voting for people who are in turn screwing him, and that makes no sense whatsoever.
But the fact is that budgets are moral documents. They show where priorities lie, and a budget that favors the super rich and continues to move wealth steadily upward demonstrates a blatant disregard for the most vulnerable among us. What good is it going to do to cut social safety net programs that keep people out of poverty, funding to schools and universities that allow people to receive an education that will allow them upward mobility, cutting funding to clean energy programs that will create millions of good paying jobs for Americans, putting the kibosh on high speed rail systems that will help ease the congestion that currently plagues urban highways and more? I don't understand why these Republicans are so hell bent on benefitting the richest among us who do not need anymore help, thank you. If the philosophy of moving wealth upward in hopes that the richest among us would use that money to invest in job creation had any merit, we'd be living in a golden age right now, but the fact is that this idea doesn't work. It's been tried for the past 30 years and found wanting. Poverty is on the rise, joblessness is at an all time high, colleges and universities are becoming so expensive that few people can afford a higher education, thus leading to a deficit of educated people to fill high tech jobs that are currently going unfilled for lack of trained people to fill them, more people are losing their homes and everything they worked hard to gain over a lifetime, more and more people are medically uninsured or have such minimal health insurance coverage that they are all but unisured, leaving them one illness or injury away from bankruptcy.....does this sound like an economic theory that has worked? No, it most certainly hasn't, but now that the heinous Citizens United case has gone through the Supreme Court and has granted personhood to corporations, they can now drown out our voices with unlimited money and can literally buy any candidate they want to further their own agenda, meaning that Democratic and progessive candidates are sunk and dead in the water. From now on, corporations are going to buy the most conservative candidates that money can buy and our rights are going to be trampled on and disappear entirely. Elections will be easily rigged in favor of corporations who can buy their own candidates, effectively drowning out democracy as we once knew it. The super rich will continue to be beneficiaries of government tax breaks and the rest of us are going to shoulder the load and we will see the complete extinction of the middle class that once made this country great. I dread the future if things look as bleak as I think they are going to become. I hope I am wrong, but I am afraid that I am not.