taxes – Hank Kalet

Read their lips, no new taxes — on the rich; the rest of you, you’re on your own

The Republican plan for addressing the long-term deficit can be summed up this way: Leave the rich alone and pass along the costs to the rest of us.

As Ryan Grimm of the Huffington Post reports:

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said on Sunday that House Republicans would oppose President Barack Obama’s payroll tax cuts for both employers and employees, arguing that the policy had already failed to provide a sufficient boost to the economy. “It hasn’t worked,” Ryan said, suggesting the current temporary tax cut should be allowed to expire, which will amount to a 50 percent tax hike on workers making less than $106,000 per year.

He also said he opposes the president’s proposal to require millionaires to pay the same tax rate as the middle class, known as the Buffett plan. “Class warfare might make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics,” Ryan said.

Again, to sum things up: Raise taxes on the middle class and oppose any hike in taxes for the rich. And gut so-called entitlement programs.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Do the math

Today’s math lesson comes to us, courtesty of Daniel Froomkin at Huffington Post. As he points out:

The Big Five oil companies this week announced they had made a whopping $36 billion in profits in the second quarter of 2011.

Here’s the second-quarter profit tally:

ExxonMobil, $10.7 billion
Shell, $8.7 billion
Chevron, $7.7 billion
BP, $5.6 billion
Conoco Philips, $3.4 billion

These are astonishing numbers when you consider that our economy is locked in a massive stall — and it should make the folks realize that budget reform is possible and that it can come without shredding the programs and services that the poor and middle class have come to rely on.

What do these obscene profits have to do with the deficit discussions currently paralyzing Washington? The oil industry gets “$4 billion to $8 billion a year in deficit-increasing tax subsidies” that remain in place, as Froomkin says, “the incentives those subsidies were designed to create ceased to make economic sense.”

The subsidies should end — and could, given their profits, without much pain to the oil industry.

But that would be bad form, right, given the amount the industry spends on the political process. I mean, if you pay to get a politician elected you have every right to expect him to do your bidding. Right?

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

More extensives tax reforms needed in New Jersey

Gov. Chris Christie’s slash-and-burn budgeting appears to be having little impact at the local level — or at least not the impact promised.

South Brunswick, for instance, is expected to raise its municipal tax rate almost 10 percent, on top of a big increase in school taxes that will cost taxpayers a combined $400 a year (the owner of a house assessed at $200,000).

And South Brunswick is not the only community looking at a tax increase. East Brunswick, despite reducing spending, is looking at a tax hike, as are numerous towns throughout the region — the Princetons, Lawrence, East Windsor — and the state.

The governor says the property tax hikes are the fault of local officials, but when so many towns are cutting spending and still ending up with tax hikes one has to wonder if there isn’t some larger issue at play.

My sense is that the system has collapsed. I’ve been complaining that the state’s government structure was unsustainable and broken, but it has been functioning. That seems no longer to be the case. The governor is proposing a tool kit that contains some nominally useful tools but still leaves the basic set of problems in place. A more comprehensive structural change is needed that includes a review of the corporate and income tax rates, the inefficiency of having 566 towns, nearly 600 school districts and more than 1,400 total taxing districts, and a frank discussion about priorities.

New Jersey continues to provide some useful and necessary services. We could save money if we were willing to further gut our social safety net, but then we would put our residents in the same position as my friend Lynn, who moved to North Carolina and has now been kicked off the unemployment insurance roll because the governor down there views unemployment insurance as an incentive to laziness. That seems a dubious tradeoff.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Translation of the funding fight

Bob Braun’s column today cut through the nonsense and offered a basic translation of the arguments made yesterday before the state Supreme Court. The issue, as he pointed out, is a political one:

Here’s the real question: Will a court under siege buy into the governor’s political views about spending or will it find the collective nerve to tell Chris Christie his oath of office requires him to obey all constitutional mandates, including the one to maintain a thorough and efficient school system?

It’s simple: Without the justices’ permission, the governor’s budget, adopted by the Legislature, cut $1 billion from a school aid formula the court, just a year before, ruled constitutional if funded. To cut that billion, Christie—and lawmakers—had to make choices.

Like not raising taxes on rich people. A political choice.

Braun’s point, essentially, is that all budgeting choices are political choices, meaning they come down to specific policies and priorities. The governor opted to slash school spending rather than ask New Jersey’s top tax bracket to pay a bit more to fund government.

As Braun points out — and I’ve written numerous times — our elected officials at all levels of government balance myriad interests in crafting budgets. What is a permissible level of taxation? Who should pay? How? What kinds of programs should we provide? Which should get more money and which should get less? These are political questions and need to be hashed out in the political arena, honestly and openly.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.

Lautenberg votes for workers

The president’s tax compromise was approved in the U.S. Senate earlier today — not a surprise, really, but still a terrible policy decision on the part of all involved.

Should the House of Representatives follow suit, as it is expected to do, then we will continue to funnel money to the rich when what we should be doing is creating jobs for everyone else. And it going to have longterm budgetary and political consequences.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey deserves kudos for his no-vote, as do 12 other Democrats, five Republicans and Bernie Sanders.

Send me an e-mail.
Read poetry at The Subterranean.
Certainties and Uncertainties a chapbook by Hank Kalet, will be published in November by Finishing Line Press. It can be ordered here.
Suburban Pastoral, a chapbook by Hank Kalet, available here.