House Democrats’ coronavirus relief package offered the rich even more of a bailout with a provision that would eliminate the cap on the little-known SALT tax deduction. In short, the provision would give millionaires and billionaires more than $100,000 in tax windfalls for the next two years.
The Democrats’ villains today are no longer rich business tycoons who don’t “pay their fair share” while exercising their power and influence to undermine American workers and strangle individual liberty. Today, it’s only too clear that the villains they seek to destroy are the very same taxpaying, middle-class Americans that they claim to have been championing.
William Sullivan is an author whose work discussing politics, economics, history, and culture in America has been frequently featured at American Thinker for over a decade.
As Democrats shield wealth of billionaires, Biden pleads with super-rich to pay their “fair share”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden made a demagogic speech from the White House presenting his “Build Back Better” budget plan as a historic reversal of the decades-long enrichment of the corporate elite at the expense of working people.
He cited a number of indices of the wholesale looting of society by the corporations and the super-rich, including:
- US billionaires have seen their wealth increase by $1.8 trillion since the beginning of the pandemic.
- Fifty of the largest corporations in the US paid zero taxes in 2020, while collectively taking in over $40 billion in profits.
- The top 1 percent in the US evade an estimated $160 billion in taxes they owe every year.
“This is the moment to deal working people back into the economy. This is the moment to prove to the American people that the government works for them,” Biden declared.
But having made the case for the seizure of the wealth of what he referred to as the “pandemic profiteers,” he hastened to add: “I’m not out to punish anyone. I’m a capitalist. If you can make a million or a billion dollars, that’s great. God bless you. All I’m asking is you pay your fair share.”
Biden made his remarks one day after House Democrats assembled the various parts of the overall budget plan that had been drafted and approved by numerous House committees. The 26,000-page package purports to allocate $3.5 trillion over 10 years for social welfare measures, paid for in part by $2.1 trillion in tax hikes for large corporations and wealthy individuals.
The Senate is in the process of assembling its own version of the budget. What ultimately emerges from the process of internal horse-trading between various factions of the Democratic Party, manipulated by a massive corporate lobbying campaign to block any serious incursions into the profits and the personal fortunes of the ruling oligarchy, will be far more modest than even the timid measures contained in the current House proposal.
The Democrats narrowly control both chambers, and the Republican Party is 100 percent opposed to the administration’s budget plan and pledged to vote against it. In order to circumvent a filibuster in the evenly divided Senate, the Democrats are seeking to pass their budget under the budget reconciliation procedure, which requires only a majority vote in the upper chamber, 50 Democrats and the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris and cannot be filibustered.
That means Biden and the Democratic leadership cannot afford to lose a single Democratic vote. In the House, they cannot lose more than three Democratic votes. As a result, corporate interests are asserting their demands most directly via their bribed mouthpieces within the Democratic congressional caucuses.
In a concession to right-wing members of the House Democratic caucus, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi last month agreed to bring the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by the Senate up for a vote in the House by September 27, dropping her previous insistence that no action be taken in the House on that bill until the Senate had passed the broader “human infrastructure” budget bill.
The entire process—a combination of back-room deal-making and political posturing—is dominated by the demands of the Democratic Party right wing. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a multimillionaire coal company owner, and Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, whose idol is the late Republican reactionary and war hawk John McCain, have publicly declared their opposition to the $3.5 trillion price tag of the administration’s budget bill.
Manchin has let it be known he is prepared to accept a bill costing around half that amount. He has proposed imposing means testing and work requirements for extended child tax credits, child care and pre-kindergarten subsidies, tuition-free community college and other social measures included in the bill. He is dead set against provisions that promote clean energy and infringe on the fossil fuel industry, from which he has received $400,000 in campaign cash since 2017, making him the industry’s top recipient.
Last week Manchin appeared on several of the Sunday morning television interview programs to push for the House passage of the corporate-backed physical infrastructure bill and argue there was no “urgency” for the social relief and anti-climate change measures in the Biden budget plan.
This was under conditions of the Delta-variant-driven fourth wave of the pandemic, overwhelming hospitals and infecting record numbers of children in reopened schools, the termination of federal unemployment benefits and the moratorium on evictions, threatening millions with homelessness and destitution, and climate change-driven hurricanes and wildfires that have devastated millions from California to the Gulf Coast to New York City.
In the House, three right-wing Democrats on the Energy and Commerce Committee—Reps. Scott Peters (Calif.), Kathleen Rice (N.Y.) and Kurt Schrader (Ore.)—on Tuesday voted against the leadership’s proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate hundreds of prescription drug prices with the pharmaceutical companies, using international prices, generally half of those in the US, as the standard. The Biden administration and Pelosi estimate this would save the government $700 billion, which they propose to use to extend Medicare coverage to include dental, vision and hearing. The three Democratic “no” votes prevented the committee from including the provision in its portion of the overall bill.
According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the top industry contributor to Peters’ campaign war chest in 2021-2022 is pharmaceuticals/health products, which has donated $88,550. His top contributors are Pfizer ($10,800), Eli Lilly ($10,500), Amgen ($7,900) and Gilead Sciences ($7,750).
Schrader’s top industry contributor is oil & gas ($34,000), followed by pharmaceuticals/health products ($24,000).
The second highest industry contributor to Rice’s campaign is insurance.
Biden and the Democratic congressional leadership have bent over backwards to accommodate and placate these forces. On Wednesday, Biden met separately with Manchin and Sinema. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain said the $3.5 trillion package could be scaled back by cutting back the size of some of the programs or reducing their duration.
The House budget package as it currently stands raises the top individual income tax rate from 37 percent to 39.6 percent (where it was prior to Trump’s 2017 tax windfall for the rich). It increases the corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 26.5 percent, which is lower than Biden’s proposed 28 percent and far lower than the 35 percent rate prior to the 2017 Republican tax bill. It raises the capital gains tax rate from 20 percent to 25 percent—still a far lower rate than for the equivalent wage income and lower than Biden’s initial proposal.
More significant than the minor tax increases on the wealthy that are contained in the House bill is what is omitted. The bill addresses only income, not the wealth hoarded by America’s oligarchs. Income comprises only a negligible portion of the fortunes of the billionaires. Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, in 2020 received a salary from Amazon of only $81,840. Their money comes from stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets that are largely untaxed.
The House bill drops a proposal in Biden’s original plan that would close a loophole allowing the wealthy to pass accumulated assets down to their heirs without ever paying taxes on the rise in the value of those assets from the time of their initial purchase. It also leaves in place so-called “carried interest,” the loophole that treats the money taken in by hedge fund managers as a capital gain, rather than normal income, which is taxed at a far higher rate.
The Wall Street Journal gloated over the Democrats’ failure to challenge this notorious gift to hedge fund billionaires, publishing an editorial headlined “Democrats Blink on Carried Interest.”
None of this prevented Biden from giving his full endorsement to the House bill.
The Washington Post cited Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, as saying: “If the [House] Ways and Means plan was enacted as is, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk would still pay an effective rate of $0 on most of their income if they pass their assets onto their heirs.”
ALL BILLIONAIRES ARE DEMOCRATS. ALL BILLIONAIRES WANT OPEN BORDERS FOR MORE CHEAP LABOR AND NO CAPS ON IMPORTING CHINESE AND INDIANS TO WORK OUR TECH JOBS CHEAP.
Obama’s State of Delusion ... OR JUST ANOTHER "Hope & Change" HOAX?
”The delusional character of Obama’s State of the Union
address on Tuesday—presenting an America of rising living
standards and a booming economy, capped by his declaration
that the “shadow of crisis has passed”—is perhaps matched
only in its presentation by the media and supporters of the
Democratic Party.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“The general tone was set by the New York Times in its lead editorial on Wednesday, which described the speech as a “simple, dramatic message about economic fairness, about the fact that the well-off—the top earners, the big banks, Silicon Valley—have done just great, while middle and working classes remain dead in the water.”
OBAMANOMICS:
The report observes that while the wealth of the world’s 80 richest people doubled between 2009 and 2014, the wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (3.5 billion people) was lower in 2014 than it was in 2009.
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
In 2010, it took 388 billionaires to match the wealth of the bottom half of the earth’s population; by 2013, the figure had fallen to just 92 billionaires. It fell to 80 in 2014.
THE OBAMA ASSAULT ON THE AMERICAN MIDDLE-CLASS
“The goal of the Obama administration, working with the Republicans and local governments, is to roll back the living conditions of the vast majority of the population to levels not seen since the 19th century, prior to the advent of the eight-hour day, child labor laws, comprehensive public education, pensions, health benefits, workplace health and safety regulations, etc.”
http://mexicanoccupation.blogspot.com/2015/01/oxfam-richest-one-percent-set-to.html
“In response to the ruthless assault of the financial oligarchy, spearheaded by Obama, the working class must advance, no less ruthlessly, its own policy.”
New Federal Reserve report
US median income has plunged, inequality has grown in Obama “recovery”
The yearly income of a typical US household dropped by a massive 12 percent, or $6,400, in the six years between 2007 and 2013. This is just one of the findings of the 2013 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances released Thursday, which documents a sharp decline in working class living standards and a further concentration of wealth in the hands of the rich and the super-rich.
Billionaires Increase Net Worth by $434B During Coronavirus Lockdowns
AFP/Getty
25 May 2020356
3:06
The net worth of the United States’ billionaire class has increased by $434 billion during lockdown orders implemented by most states to slow the spread of the Chinese coronavirus.
Between March 18 and May 19, the nation’s more than 600 billionaires have increased their net wealth by 15 percent from $2.9 trillion in March to now nearly $3.4 trillion, even as more than 36 million Americans are jobless.
The analysis of Forbes data, conducted by researchers with the left-leaning Americans for Tax Fairness group, detailed how the wealth of Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft Co-Founder Bill Gates, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffet, and Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has increased by $75.5 billion since the nation’s coronavirus lockdowns began in March.
These five billionaires’ growth in net wealth, alone, accounted for 21 percent of all the wealth growth over the last two months among the more than 600 billionaires in the U.S.
(Americans for Tax Fairness)
(Americans for Tax Fairness)
Jeff Bezos, alone, has increased his net wealth by almost $35 billion, or 30.6 percent, since the beginning of the coronavirus lockdowns that forced small and medium-sized businesses to close while big businesses like Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon and Amazon-owned Whole Foods, and Walgreens were allowed to remain open as they were deemed “essential.”
While Bezos has grown his wealth, whistleblowers at Amazon have been fired after they revealed outbreaks of the coronavirus at their warehouses.
In an exclusive interview with Breitbart News, a whistleblower said he was fired after he exposed a coronavirus outbreak.
“We all should have been quarantined with pay,” said former Amazon worker Chris Smalls said. “The building should have been shut down immediately. But that didn’t happen. By the end of the week, Saturday, March 28th, they decided to quarantine me and only me, none of the employees, not even the person I ride to work with every day. So that tells you right there, they put a target on my back to silence me, but what I did was I mobilized a walkout on March 30th that resulted in my termination.”
Economists have noted that the wealthiest of Americans, members of the top one percent, are paying a lower tax rate than all other Americans. In 2018, the richest Americans paid a 23 percent tax rate — a 47 percent drop since 1950, when their tax rate was 70 percent.
House Democrats’ coronavirus relief package offered the rich even more of a bailout with a provision that would eliminate the cap on the little-known SALT tax deduction. In short, the provision would give millionaires and billionaires more than $100,000 in tax windfalls for the next two years.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
The Unholy Alliance of Big Business Billionaires and the Democratic Party:
Destroying tax-paying middle class Americans.
Years ago, one of the most hated people in this country was Samuel Insull. Insull was a gaffe-prone liberal elite utilities magnate, with a gaffe being where a liberal slips up and tells the truth. A hundred years ago, while testifying before Congress, Insull was timidly asked by a congressman whether treating his employees more humanely might increase productivity. I can almost picture Insull doing the liberal sneer as he retorted that, "In my experience, the best way to increase efficiency is to have a long line of men at my gates". For slipping up and telling the truth, years later FDR hounded Insull to the ends of the earth, eventually having him extradited from Greece only to have this scoundrel acquitted.
What has changed since then? Have liberals stopped the open borders that make it hard for Americans to find work and lower wages? Nope. Liberals now spend untold fortunes on public relations to hide what they are doing. Liberalism is now so awful that liberals must hide the truth and destroy anybody with the temerity to speak the truth.
Even worse, since the cultural revolution of the 1960's, liberals have had two parties while we Americans have had no representation at all, at least up until Trump. The fact that Trump thought average people should have our interests protected and promoted is precisely why they were willing to lie, cheat, steal, maim, and murder to remove Trump from office. When Democrats do an electoral sweep, liberals win, and when Republicans win big, America and Americans lose. This is the way liberals want to keep things. Liberals are painfully aware that when Americans have a choice, liberals don't have a chance.
The Unholy Alliance of Big Business Billionaires and the Democratic Party
Destroying tax-paying middle class Americans.
Ten years ago, Democrats were insisting that wealthy business tycoons and Wall Street fat cats who didn’t “pay their fair share” were the single greatest threat to America. “We are the 99 percent!” was soon to become the battle cry of millions of Obama voters who believed that big businesses were preying upon everyday Americans, and that they were too influential in shaping politics.
Last year, those same multi-billion-dollar corporations and their fat cat leadership were vital allies of the Democrats, central players in a “well-funded cabal” that was “working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change the rules and laws, steer media coverage and the flow of information” so that the Democratic nominee would win the election. Those aren’t the words of a right-wing conspiracy theorist, as you may know, but the words of TIME magazine detailing “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election.”
What changed in those ten years? When did the Democrats go from loathing big corporations to loving them, and when did big corporations go from being loathed by Democrats to carrying their water and undermining the political will of everyday Americans to curry their favor? After all, if it were the will of everyday Americans to elect a Democratic president in 2020, why would a “well-funded cabal” be needed to “change the rules and laws” or manipulate the “flow of information” to achieve that outcome?
I remember the precise moment where it had become obvious that Obama was betraying his constituents on this issue. Barack Obama, tasked with tearing down the structural power of big business billionaires, spent 2011 demonizing Bank of America and its leadership for their greedy practices, like charging customers a monthly fee for debit card usage. As you can imagine, Bank of America executives were shocked by Obama’s “audacity” to invite them to help finance the 2012 Democratic National Convention. To entice the bank’s executives, Democrats even moved the president’s acceptance speech to Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, where they courted wealthy donors and sold them million-dollar skyboxes that allowed them to sit high above the masses below that hated their guts because the president had whipped them into a jealous frenzy.
Obama spent his days winking at Occupy Wall Street protestors, and his nights undermining them entirely by ensuring that big corporate lobbyists would have a seat at the Democratic policymaking table. And it seems to have worked, because in 2016 and 2020, big money donors, particularly in the securities and investment industry, provided financial support to the Democratic presidential candidates that dwarfed the big money donors’ contributions to Donald Trump.
One can only imagine the furor about how dark corporate money was influencing the outcome of the election if the contributions in those years were so decidedly in Trump’s favor, but since they weren’t, Democrats haven’t seemed to notice. But one might think that they should have, because Democrats’ historic distaste for these globo-corporate profiteers, who are currently financing Democratic political victories to advance their own self-interests, is ostensibly rooted in something fundamental to the Party’s professed nature, and that is the protection of American workers.
But the Democrats’ labor priorities saw a marked change in recent years from their labor union roots. No longer were they seeking wage protections for the employees of XYZ Widgets in Lansing, or to protect the workers of entire American industries. No, they began arguing that it is a human rights imperative to allow any foreigners, and particularly those from impoverished nations, to enter America illegally, and thus illegally compete for and undercut the wages of American workers.
This benefits illegal aliens, the big businesses who reap excess profits on illegal labor, and Democrats who are importing new voters. But, lucky enough for Democrats, their constituents seem to have forgotten altogether that they were once in favor of protecting the wages of American workers and taxpayers, who unquestionably suffer due to illegal immigration.
This symbiotic arrangement between big business and the Democratic Party is parasitic and destructive to the unwilling host that is the American citizenry, and not only in a financial sense. Giant, multi-national corporations are now the leading spokespersons for Democrats’ social initiatives and policy propositions. It’s incredibly likely that the first multi-national corporation that comes to your mind is one of countless that have entered a coalition of businesses supporting of the Equality Act, a radical proposition that is laden with vague language that is incredibly susceptible to broad abuses by politicians with power, and which will utterly destroy religious liberty in America.
With the Equality Act, the federal government is now seeking the broad authority to demand that a confused young boy must be allowed to shower with your sixteen-year-old daughter after volleyball practice, or that nuns must finance abortions. Global corporations, headed by multi-billionaires who have profited tremendously by undermining American voters and workers, have signed on in droves to support this broad, seemingly illimitable assault on individual liberty.
What unites the Democratic Party today isn’t the protection of blue-collar workers, as it once was, but the coddling of former college students who incurred large debts to get their socialist indoctrination, and who want their neighbor, the plumber, to pay those debts for them. Big business profits and lobbying are no longer a problem, of course, now that the profits are being used to benefit the Democratic Party and its platform exclusively. Big-tent concepts like tolerance and liberty are out of fashion, replaced by demands for coerced acceptance of countless provable and evil untruths, such as the notion that white people are inherently arrogant and ignorant, or that a boy is no different than a girl, or that to be an American citizen means nothing more meaningful than managing to get your feet on American soil.
And Democratic Party simply no longer seems to care about the obvious and objective madness in any of that.
The Democrats’ villains today are no longer rich business tycoons who don’t “pay their fair share” while exercising their power and influence to undermine American workers and strangle individual liberty. Today, it’s only too clear that the villains they seek to destroy are the very same taxpaying, middle-class Americans that they claim to have been championing.
William Sullivan is an author whose work discussing politics, economics, history, and culture in America has been frequently featured at American Thinker for over a decade.
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