America, the safe haven of investment for the entire world, is failing it by creating uncertainty through the game of chicken the Republican Party is playing with the debt limit. Continued building of our debt is bad, but creating fear that we may default on it is disastrous. The debt limit is NOT something our law makers should use as a bargaining tool.
S&P has changed its outlook on America’s ability to meet its financial obligations to negative, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. S&P rates the chance that the United States of America will lose its Triple A rating as one in three. America less financially strong than other countries? America, the capitalist power house of the world, a greater risk? Buying Brazilian bonds may be less risky than buying US Treasury Bonds in the near future. All of this because of the Republicans trying to cut taxes and play games when they need to belly up to the bar and pay for the wars that their party and President, Bush, started and continued. It was the Republican financial philosophy of not putting the wars on the books and paying for them when we were spending the money that got us where we are today.
We all knew, thirty years ago, that the Baby Boomers were retiring. President Clinton and the then Republican Congress put us on the right path. It was President Bush and his Republican cronies that caused the financial mess we have today. Penalizing retires and the poor for the mistakes of the past is not the way out of this financial mess. Giving tax cuts to corporations and the rich is not the way out of this financial mess. Patriotism demands sacrifice. As was true during the American Revolution and as recent as World War II, the wealthy bore more of the burden than the poor. What I see are the Republicans, including the great majority of the wealthy and corporations shirking their Patriotic Duty.
When the General Electric Corporation uses the excuse that we are paying all we should, when they pay nothing in taxes on Fourteen Billion Dollars in profit, that is shirking Patriotic Duty. Patriotic Duty is saying, “we will pay the minimum tax rate on our profit”, regardless of what the law says.
Its time that all corporations are held to the same standard as people when it comes to taxes. How about an Alternative Minimum Tax for corporations. How about Corporations pay tax on all profits, foreign and domestic, in the same way U. S. residents must. I’m for equality of treatment for all persons, corporate and real. That would fix our financial crisis overnight. S&P would changes its outlook, and the world would stand up and notice. America would be the safe financial bet once again.
Filed under: Budget, Politics, Republicans, Stupidity, Alternative Minimum Tax, Bill Clinton, General Electric, George W. Bush, Patriotism, Republican, Republican Party, United States, Wall Street Journal, World War II
Commentary by Edwin J. Jaufmann, Jr. 