That's the type of arithmetic the faux deficit fighters in Washington are trying to sell the American public yet again. The GOP is quick to plug the corporatists' line that unions, especially public unions, are to blame for America's budget woes. But hold on,
Koch boys, look at this chart:
What we have here is an increasingly smaller contribution to total tax revenue by the rich. Federal income taxes are now at their lowest in sixty years (dark blues). The most regressive type of taxes, payroll or employment taxes payed by working people, are at their highest (light blue). What passes for wealth taxes in the United States, given that capital gains are taxed at only 15% unlike earned income--excise, estate, and gift taxes (reds)--are shrinking in relative size. The same can be said for corporate income taxes since corporations play elaborate internal accounting games to avoid paying income taxes. A
government report (GAO) says that in 2005 28% big corporations
payed no income tax. From 1998 to 2005,
two-thirds of corporations did not pay income tax. Granted the figure includes "mom & pop" companies that do not make a lot of money, but the study also includes 998 corporations categorized as "large".
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| Rambo: expensive |
The other side of any budget story is how the money coming in is spent. The story does not get any better. The United States has wasted, not spent, an estimated
$200 billion on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Wasted means exactly that, money that cannot be accounted for, or paid for supplies or services that were never delivered. The report of the congressional commission to study procurement during the conflicts found "criminal behavior and blatant corruption"* were responsible for the $200 billion wasted on reconstruction and other projects in the two countries. Secretary Gates, in a moment of belated candor shared by General Dwight D. Eisenhower, told Army cadets at West Point that they were probably seeing the last large, foreign land wars the US will ever fight because empire building and policing is
simply too expensive. A fact previous empires have also experienced to their detriment. So the next time the
Koch Bros. tell you your union is the problem, tell them to step off in the Pech Valley.
*an Afghan businessman told Dexter Filkins writing in the New Yorker magazine, "Right now, this country is all about raping and pillaging as much as you can, because there is no faith in the future." It costs $140,000 a year to keep a NATO soldier in the field. Some of that money undoubtedly reaches the Taliban through bribes, extortion and corruption. Richard Holbrooke, the American special envoy who died recently, said conversations with President Karzai about corruption are "completely useless".
