October 2011 Archives

The Richmond Times Dispatch reports that Virginia's localities are bracing for more budget cuts and even less support from the state government.  With Governor McDonnell still unable to find funding, he is continuing to shirk responsibility and pass the burden from the state down to the local level.  Chesterfield is one such locality:

That's the headline of a new report released yesterday by the nonpartisan Commonwealth Institute, revealing the income gap in Virginia has grown dramatically, reaching a 30-year high. Virginia now boasts a bigger disparity between rich and poor than all but one other state.

The news likely isn't that surprising to the vast swaths of Americans who have been struggling to make ends meet while the top 1% do better than ever. While our economy actually grew the last couple of years, working people didn't feel the gains because nearly all of the economic growth went to pad corporate profits instead of increasing American workers' incomes. While the rich get richer, the American Dream seems further away to middle-class Americans who work harder than ever to get nowhere.

The Founding Fathers understood the danger to democracy posed by concentrating great wealth in the hands of just a few. James Madison said "the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few." Republican President Abraham Lincoln decried the influence of the "money powers" and "Bankers" who "endeavor to prolong [their] reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few, and the Republic is destroyed."

GOP Presidential candidate Herman Cain is stopping in Lynchburg and Richmond this weekend, and has proposed scrapping the current federal tax system and replacing it with a 9% flat tax on personal and corporate income and a 9% national sales tax. ProgressVA has assembled a fact sheet on his economic proposals, highlighting impacts that have been largely overlooked as he has surged in the GOP nomination field:

Economists agree: Cain's plan constitutes a regressive tax policy that would hit the poor and the middle class significantly harder than the rich.

According to Politifact, "Most economists agree that a national sales tax would raise the relative tax burden on low- and middle-income earning taxpayers." William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, explains that's because lower earners spend more of their income than high-income households, who retain more disposable income for savings. (Source: Politifact)

Furthermore, top individual earners would see a reduction in their federal tax rate from 35% to just 9%, as well as an elimination of taxes on investment income, like capital gains. "It would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere, and it would bankrupt the country," said Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger. (Source: ThinkProgress)

Yesterday, Senate candidate George Allen solidified his attacks on middle-class families, releasing his "Freedom To Work For Less" agenda that would roll back protections for workers. While targeting struggling workers, the Allen campaign did not release any plans to hold accountable the CEOs and big banks responsible for tanking our economy. (Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, The Roanoke Times)  Even Ronald Reagan, the man who inspired Allen to enter politics, believed that it is important for the wealthy to pay their fair share - while Allen would keep the burden on working Virginians. 

Not many Virginians are millionaires. But, a whole lot of our congress members are - and they shouldn't be paying taxes at a lower rate than the rest of us.  They shouldn't be making average Virginians pay more so that they can pay less:

Its been weeks since President Obama sent his Jobs Plan to Hill, along with a plan to pay for it by closing tax loopholes and making sure millionaires pay their fair share. But (surprise, surprise), Congress is dragging its feet. Every day Congress refuses to pass the President's tax cut and jobs plan costs small businesses and working Americans.

Tell Congress to stop dragging their feet and pass the President's proposal to put Americans back to work.