Brock: Tea Party Misses the Boat
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
A CEO, a Tea Party activist and a union member are sitting in front of a plate of 12 cookies. The CEO grabs 11 of them and says to the Tea Party activist, “Watch out for that union guy. He’s trying to take your cookie.”
What’s your response? Do you buy what the CEO is telling you - or do you tell him to give back some of the cookies he’s grabbed?
We have seen a massive redistribution of wealth in our nation. Since 1979, the after tax income for the top one percent of Americans has grown 281 percent, while for the bottom fifth of us, it’s grown just 16 percent.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTAnd let’s be honest about the bottom line: we cannot cut our way to prosperity. Folks have tried, it didn’t work. We cannot continue to allow our roads and bridges to crumble. We cannot abandon the children in our schools. And we cannot continue to slash away at our social safety net it supports little kids, seniors, and people with disabilities, and it’s already threadbare. These are our obligations as a state.
What the General Assembly should do
We know that the fairest and most responsible way to raise revenue to address these tremendous obligations we have as a civilized people is to rely on a graduated progressive personal income tax, yet Rhode Island has not had the leadership to travel this route. We have seen the personal income tax chipped away at year after year and our reliance on regressive taxes like property and car taxes grow. We have seen tax breaks for the super wealthy and corporate tax giveaways. Legal corporate tax avoidance continues to pervade our state and our nation. As a progressive Democrat, these are not the tax policies that I support.
There are three things we must do this year to make a difference. First, the General Assembly needs to take a good hard look at our tax expenditure report, which details state spending through the tax code. Last year, we gave away $1.67 billion dollars in revenue through exemptions, preferential rates and credits. Instead, we need to make sure those tax breaks are helping our economy and helping working families in Rhode Island by actually creating jobs – or those tax breaks should end.
Second, we need to pass combined reporting – which will end legal tax avoidance by huge multi-state corporations who can hide the money they make in Rhode Island and don’t pay taxes on it. Passing this bill will level the playing field between these huge companies and Rhode Island’s mom and pop businesses – because those small businesses don’t have tax accountants helping them hide money in Delaware.
Finally, we encourage the General Assembly to reform our personal income tax structure, and start by passing the Patriot Tax this year. By enacting a two-percent surtax on incomes over $500,000 we can secure $88 million in revenue. That’s $88 million that won’t be squeezed from the sales tax or from cuts to our schools or health care for low income children.
The Governor and the General Assembly need to build a budget that works for our economy and reflects the priorities and values of our state. The Rhode Island I want to live in prioritizes health care for children over tax breaks for CEOs.
‘Unproductive attacks and vitriolic discourse’
In times of great fiscal stress it is easy to turn on one another. It is easy to fall into unproductive attacks and vitriolic discourse that does nothing but divide us. Scarcity inspires fear, but as civilized nation I believe we can do better. And a look at our nation’s history shows us not only that we can, but we have done better. During the Great Depression we saw people come together to help one another. The top tax bracket reached 80% and climbed to 94% by 1945 because our nation needed to invest in job creation, infrastructure and education in order to turn our economy around and claw our way out of a tremendous fiscal crisis. No one is asking for a 94% tax bracket now – but once in America, it was the law, because it was the patriotic thing to do.
Our current fiscal circumstances call for that same shared sacrifice. Middle and low income Rhode Islanders are sacrificing; they are going without. People making over half a million dollars a year, and corporations showing millions or billions in profits, those most able to afford it, need to sacrifice too.
Quite simply, it violates our nation’s value of fairness to ask a child to sacrifice their school, or the quality of their education, while not asking our state’s top earners to do their part, and help Rhode Island weather the financial storm.
I believe that the working people of Rhode Island, Tea Party activists or not, are compassionate people. That is why I ask them to think about what we give up when we allow corporations to avoid paying taxes and give away millions in tax breaks for the elite. In the richest nation in the world we can make sure that everyone can heat their homes; that our neighbors don’t go to bed hungry and that going to the doctor is not a luxury item.
And if you think we can’t, just take another look at the CEO with 11 cookies.
If you valued this article, please LIKE GoLocalProv.com on Facebook by clicking HERE.
Kate Brock is the Executive Director of Ocean State Action.
Related Articles
- Who Are the Tea Party Candidates in the Election?
- LIVE ELECTION UPDATE Tea Party Urges Voters to Reject All Ballot Measures 1:00 PM
- Breaking: Senator Whitehouse Blisters Tea Party
- The Tea Party vs. Ocean State Action: No Contest
- Tea Party Protests Nancy Pelosi Visit to RI
- Tea Party Gearing Up for Next Battle with Unions
- Tax Day Revolt: Tea Party Rails Against Taxes
- Top 10 of 2010: Moderates, Tea Party and Helen Glover
