Two Democratic turncoats do not sensible government make

The defection of two so-called Democrats in Washington’s State Senate to turn a 26-23 Democratic majority into a 25-24 Republican-controlled body has been euphemistically referred to as evidence of ‘bi-partisanship,” although most real Democrats would probably say that this is evidence of how Republicans resort to fraud, theft and double-dealing to get what they can’t from fraud, theft and double-dealing. 

The ostensible rationale behind the actions of the treacherous pair is that they believe that it is fiscally prudent that there be divided government to insure that their fellow Democrats do not get carried away with spending. Of course, if they really thought this, they would simply vote against any revenue increases (their real concern, see). But by providing the Republicans de facto control of the state senate, the Republicans can control what bills reach the floor of the legislature. Of course, there is also the little matter of what the voters who voted for this pair wanted, but to answer that we have to return to the path of fraud, theft and double-dealing which Republicans and their two Democratic toadies are treading.

The State Supreme Court, meanwhile, ruled that the state was negligent in its first priority—funding state schools—and has been for some time. What to do? According to USgovernmentrevenue.com, which tracks federal, state and local spending and revenue (and I don’t entirely trust its figures), after increasing slightly in 2009 and 2010 thanks to federal stimulus funds, the state budget has not only stagnated, but actually decreased slightly in 2012 from 2011. Revenue has kept “pace,” but only insofar that it requires more deep cuts. 

In order to meet the required education funding responsibilities, there has to be either deep cuts in non-education programs, or revenue increases. It is patently unfair to place more of the burden on low and middle-income people by increasing the already too high sales tax rate. The same goes for property taxes. The common sense method of raising revenue is doing away with at least some of the $6-7 billion a year in tax breaks that the richest corporations (like Boeing and Microsoft) receive in this state (and country). Microsoft’s profits are a mindboggling 33 percent of its total revenue, yet the company pays virtually no business taxes to the state. 

Ditto for Boeing; while they received $3 billion in tax breaks to leave a handful of 787 jobs here, that didn’t stop the company from laying tens of thousands of more workers.  The continuing problems with the Dreamliner—two Japanese air carriers grounded their 787s due to electrical issues—can be blamed on the foolishness of outsourcing major components of the aircraft to foreign countries with poor quality control mechanisms in place; both Boeing and the state would have benefited had the company kept those jobs here.

Of course, the reason why the rich and huge corporations receive all the “breaks” in this state may have something to do with the belief in “supply side” economics, which argues that lower taxes increases incentive to make more money; one would have thought that by now “voodoo economics” was exposed as the fraud it is. The reality is that lower taxes increases economic output if it is in the hands of those who actually spend on consumer goods. This is why lower taxes work best when targeted to the middle and lower income brackets—not the wealthy, who prefer to squirrel away their largesse.

I was amused the other day by an opinion piece in Forbes that decried the recent lapsing of some of the Bush tax cuts, insisting that low taxes on the wealthy works to improve the economy and increases actual tax revenues—without, of course, providing an example of how this would work. The piece studiously avoided addressing examples from recent history—the Clinton and Bush years. During the Clinton years, GDP and job creation soared, the budget deficit was in control, and the top tax rate was 39.6 percent. During the Bush years, the tax rates for the top “earners” were reduced by at least 3 percent, and deficits soared, job creation was virtually nonexistent, 3 million manufacturing jobs were lost, real wages for working people decreased while the largesse of the wealthy skyrocketed, and GDP “growth” was mainly an illusion of various financial bubbles. 

Naturally, the right prefers to talk about cutting social programs to balance budgets, but there seems little understanding of what exactly happens when that happens. Take for instance the cutting of so-called “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare. Last year, the New York Times David Brooks claimed that these programs were going to “bankrupt” the country.  The problem is that the right looks at these programs that they won’t need in the wrong way. What these programs do is reallocate income (in the form of taxes) to another group (retirees). Thus the money is merely recycled back into the economy; it doesn’t just “disappear” in a black hole. Otherwise, that money might be sitting useless in some overseas tax haven by some rich person who considers this “patriotic.” 

The upshot of this is that I have very little faith in our so-called “representatives”—at least those on the right—have our best interests in mind, mainly because they really don’t understand what they are doing anyways.