Ten years of the Bush Tax Cuts have cost us $2.5 trillion. They were a $2.5 trillion dollar gamble that if we pushed enough money into the pockets of millionaires, billionaires and giant corporations, some of it would fall out and land on the rest of us. We know what happened – that money stayed in those overstuffed pockets. But, as Think Progress says, it didn’t have to be that way:
Here are ten alternatives we could’ve pursued instead:
– Give 122.7 Million Children Low-Income Health Care Every Year For Ten Years
– Give 49.2 Million People Access To Low-Income Healthcare Every Year For Ten Years
– Provide 43.1 Million Students With Pell Grants Worth $5,500 Every Year For Ten Years
– Provide 31.5 Million Head Start Slots For Children Every Year For Ten Years
– Provide VA Care For 30.7 Million Military Veterans Every Year For Ten Years
– Provide 30.4 Million Scholarships For University Students Every Year For Ten Years
– Hire 4.19 Million Firefighters Every Year For Ten Years
– Hire 3.67 Million Elementary School Teachers Every Year For Ten Years
– Hire 3.6 Million Police Officers Every Year For Ten Years
– Retrofit 144.6 Million Households For Wind Power Every Year For Ten Years
– Retrofit 54.2 Million Households For Solar Photovoltaic Energy Every Year For Ten Years
These are the choices Penn ACTION highlighted on June 9 and 13, when we organized visibility events to remind our neighbors that tax cuts are not free. On the 9th, a few of us gathered in temperatures in the high 90s at a Newtown hotel where Rep. Mike Fitzpatrick was speaking about creating jobs. We were outside reminding him of the millions of jobs in education and healthcare that were lost to ten years of the Bush tax giveaways. Most recently Rep. Fitzpatrick voted for the Ryan Plan to destroy Medicare and Medicaid. That plan makes the Bush era tax cuts permanent at a cost of about $5T. What else could we do with that money? Rep. Fitzpatrick doesn’t seem to be interested in finding out.
On June 13, we gathered again, this time in Yardley, to highlight the Congressman’s vote for the Ryan Plan, which Paul Krugman of the NY Times calls “ludicrous and cruel“:
In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
So the pundits who praised this proposal when it was released were punked. The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness.
Penn ACTION is working to keep the facts out there: the Ryan-Fitzpatrick Plan is an attack on middle-class and working families. It throws $5T away on making the disastrous Bush tax giveaways permanent. It pays for that wasteful spending by ending Medicare and Medicaid as we know them, replacing them with schemes that dump the burden of increasing medical costs squarely on the elderly, disabled and their families.
Join Penn ACTION today to find out how you can help us get America back on a path that renews the American Dream by creating jobs for everyone instead of tax cuts for billionaires.