The American Fiscal Cliff: The Irresponsible People
Published in Le Devoir
(France) on 29 December 2012
by Serge Truffaut (link to original)
The Republicans in Congress have known for two years that, without an agreement on tax before December 31, 2012, the U.S.A. will be hit with another recession. The Republicans have known for weeks that the majority of their fellow citizens will hold them responsible for this tax stagnation. Yet nothing has been done about it. They were and remain stubborn, and thus, irresponsible.
In their Friday edition, American daily newspapers related a staggering scene -- a scene that revealed how many of the elected representatives are being irresponsible. While everyone knows that the financial situation of the federal state is in need of urgent attention, we learned that the senators are twiddling their thumbs because they felt that it was the representatives' job to present them with a tax package. The representatives responded that it was the senators' turn to devise and present a solution. In the words of Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, the USA is on the edge of a fiscal cliff, not a wall. What are the members of Congress doing? They’re dancing the Waltz of the Dead End.
There is, within this story, a tyrannical aspect, a financial fury, which speaks at length of the influence that a minority of extremists possess over the Republican Party. Led by Jim DeMint and Ron Paul, the minority in question is so zealously opposed to the least rise in tax that they aren’t ready for what all Americans deal with… an increase in tax. So it is justified that if, by Monday evening, an agreement hasn’t been reached, then as of Tuesday, the application of a combined rise in taxes and reduction in expenses totaling a sum of $700 billion will take place.
To really measure the extent of the damage that many Republicans are inclined to inflict, we need to be aware that the financial subtraction previously mentioned will be equivalent to a scaling back of five percent of the national GDP. A scaling back perhaps equal to that of… Greece! In short, not only will the USA sink into recession again, but the whole world will be plunged into another economic crisis as well. All this because the words “taxation” and “tax” possess a certain satanic-like quality which exasperates those elected, and, for that matter, the devotedly religious, like DeMint.
In regards precisely to the tax breaks allocated by Bush, son of the rich, we recall that last September the economist Thomas Hungerford of the Congressional Research Service, through a non-partisan administration which produces analyses on behalf of those elected, published a study examining the following argument: All reduction of taxation of the rich stimulates the economic activity of the country. After having studied the fiscal history of the last 65 years — 65 years! — Hungerford arrived at the conclusion that there was no correlation between a decrease in tax and economic acceleration. He also learned that the one percent richest people own a third of the country's wealth, a level not seen since 1913. What else? He also learned that after decades of balance in the distribution of wealth, the gap between the rich on one side and the middle class and the poor on the other has been widening since 1977. This study appalled the Republicans in Congress so much that they laid siege upon the Congressional Research Service so that the Service would remove Hungerford's work from their shelves. The worst of it is that they achieved their goal. They obtained the removal of a study approved by a non-partisan organization, about which the Mayor of New York and previous Republican Michael Bloomberg shared his deep disappointment. Bloomberg feels that his ex-party is the prey of bigots and imbeciles who suffocate everything which reminds them more or less of the rational mind.
No later than last week, the party’s useless fools went as far as humiliating their own leader in the House of Representatives, John Boehner. Well aware that he had lost the presidency as well as seats in the Senate, and also aware that the great majority of Americans want an agreement, expecting an end to Bush's tax breaks, he presented a plan by way of a compromise. Not only did the furious extremists of his own party fight this but they then applied themselves to crushing him, even though they knew perfectly well that if there isn't an agreement by Dec. 31, along with the consequences previously mentioned, the risk will follow that the United States of America may default in March. In essence, calling them irresponsible is really a euphemism.
In their Friday edition, American daily newspapers related a staggering scene -- a scene that revealed how many of the elected representatives are being irresponsible. While everyone knows that the financial situation of the federal state is in need of urgent attention, we learned that the senators are twiddling their thumbs because they felt that it was the representatives' job to present them with a tax package. The representatives responded that it was the senators' turn to devise and present a solution. In the words of Ben Bernanke, the head of the Federal Reserve, the USA is on the edge of a fiscal cliff, not a wall. What are the members of Congress doing? They’re dancing the Waltz of the Dead End.
There is, within this story, a tyrannical aspect, a financial fury, which speaks at length of the influence that a minority of extremists possess over the Republican Party. Led by Jim DeMint and Ron Paul, the minority in question is so zealously opposed to the least rise in tax that they aren’t ready for what all Americans deal with… an increase in tax. So it is justified that if, by Monday evening, an agreement hasn’t been reached, then as of Tuesday, the application of a combined rise in taxes and reduction in expenses totaling a sum of $700 billion will take place.
To really measure the extent of the damage that many Republicans are inclined to inflict, we need to be aware that the financial subtraction previously mentioned will be equivalent to a scaling back of five percent of the national GDP. A scaling back perhaps equal to that of… Greece! In short, not only will the USA sink into recession again, but the whole world will be plunged into another economic crisis as well. All this because the words “taxation” and “tax” possess a certain satanic-like quality which exasperates those elected, and, for that matter, the devotedly religious, like DeMint.
In regards precisely to the tax breaks allocated by Bush, son of the rich, we recall that last September the economist Thomas Hungerford of the Congressional Research Service, through a non-partisan administration which produces analyses on behalf of those elected, published a study examining the following argument: All reduction of taxation of the rich stimulates the economic activity of the country. After having studied the fiscal history of the last 65 years — 65 years! — Hungerford arrived at the conclusion that there was no correlation between a decrease in tax and economic acceleration. He also learned that the one percent richest people own a third of the country's wealth, a level not seen since 1913. What else? He also learned that after decades of balance in the distribution of wealth, the gap between the rich on one side and the middle class and the poor on the other has been widening since 1977. This study appalled the Republicans in Congress so much that they laid siege upon the Congressional Research Service so that the Service would remove Hungerford's work from their shelves. The worst of it is that they achieved their goal. They obtained the removal of a study approved by a non-partisan organization, about which the Mayor of New York and previous Republican Michael Bloomberg shared his deep disappointment. Bloomberg feels that his ex-party is the prey of bigots and imbeciles who suffocate everything which reminds them more or less of the rational mind.
No later than last week, the party’s useless fools went as far as humiliating their own leader in the House of Representatives, John Boehner. Well aware that he had lost the presidency as well as seats in the Senate, and also aware that the great majority of Americans want an agreement, expecting an end to Bush's tax breaks, he presented a plan by way of a compromise. Not only did the furious extremists of his own party fight this but they then applied themselves to crushing him, even though they knew perfectly well that if there isn't an agreement by Dec. 31, along with the consequences previously mentioned, the risk will follow that the United States of America may default in March. In essence, calling them irresponsible is really a euphemism.