The Boston area’s Tax Day Rally will be held Saturday, April 15, 1pm at Cambridge Common. Read about the plans here. What’s it all about?
Taxes: Who pays them?
Already large corporations and billionaires pay far below their fair share of taxes. Hundreds of profitable corporations on the Fortune magazine list of the biggest companies pay significantly below the legal tax rate. One hundred of these profitable companies – like Exxon, Boeing, Goldman Sachs, General Electric — paid no taxes at all in at least one year from 2008 to 2015. Some of them paid no total federal tax at all over that entire period! The new “big, big cuts”proposed by the White House would mean that corporate taxes would shrink to a miniscule portion of the national tax burden. Trumpcare may be a $600 billion giveaway, but Trump’s tax plan is a $6 trillion giveaway. Already, corporations only pay 9% of total federal taxes. Guess who’s going to make up the difference in one way or another?
Who reaps the benefits from the way tax revenues are spent?
Already the U.S. war budget is over 50% of the discretionary Budget. President Trump’s budget would bring military spending to about 60% of all discretionary spending. In order to build his Wall, fight more disastrous wars, and line the pockets of military contractors, the president is cutting tens of billions of dollars from programs that support our families. Just the annual increase in the military budget recommended by the president is larger than Russia’s entire military budget for 2017!
Who loses?
Hefty cuts to the National Institute Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Labor Department, the Office of Energy Efficiency and the elimination of the Chemical Safety Board and payments to the U.N. Green Climate Fund all constitute an immediate attack on our climate, environment and health. In addition, the president’s budget slashes funding for renewable energy research and for climate and earth science programs at NASA. The budget eliminates the Home Energy Assistance Program, the Appalachian Regional Commission, The Legal Services Corporation, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. Together with other large cuts to the Departments of Agriculture, Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, Labor and Education, the White House budget seriously undermines rural development projects, affordable housing efforts, senior programs, emergency food relief, job training programs, education, transportation, safety at work, homeless programs – and completely eliminates legal assistance and emergency heating programs. Combined with upcoming draconian cuts to Medicaid and health coverage, it spells great suffering and even death for millions. The White House Budget then eliminates all future federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
We need an alternative to this death budget from the president and the upcoming budget from speaker Paul Ryan. The People’s Budget created by the Congressional Progressive Caucus is just the alternative we need. It significantly reduces the federal deficit while instituting fair taxes. It provides $200 billion a year to repair our bridges, schools, transportation systems and build a renewable energy infrastructure – all creating millions of new jobs. It relieves the burden of student debt and holds the core military budget steady, while cutting funds for new nuclear weapons and zeroing out slush funds used to get us into wars without congressional approval. And it seriously addresses the very real and imminent danger of climate change.
