Reagan Used Reconciliation To Put America On A 40-Year Road To Ruin. Biden Can Start The Repairs
- 'The Gipper.'
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- Daily Kos, Sept. 17, 2021. - Ed.
On right-wing media, the idea that Democrats might use the reconciliation to push through a funding bill that includes steps to clean up IRS enforcement and hike taxes on corporations currently paying absolutely nothing is being greeted as the ultimate horror. But every claim that Democrats are “misusing” the ability to pass a reconciliation bill that can, with a simple majority, alter taxes for the wealthy, is ignoring one big point: As NPR reports, the giant hole America has dug under the middle class was excavated using exactly this process when, “President Ronald Reagan used reconciliation to achieve his ‘revolution’ in federal fiscal policy in 1981.”
There’s a reason that when discussing issues like the growing gap in wealth between the richest and poorest Americans, and in particular the massive expansion in the gulf between what corporate CEOs make and what an average worker takes home, the charts almost invariably start with the 1980s. That’s because it was Reagan’s policies that really injected rocket fuel into this inequality. It was a change that rewarded not hard work, but wealth accumulation. And wealth … has accumulated. That 1981 change also greatly increased the opportunities and incentives to escape taxes in another way: cheating.
Most Americans have little choice about paying their income taxes because their income is all reported on W-2s or similar forms. For the wealthy, this isn’t true. That leaves open the possibility of simply underreporting income, or lying about investments, in order to evade taxes. Which they have done ... to the tune of $7 trillion over the last decade. The law already provides the wealthy with numerous options for tax avoidance—legally getting around paying what they might have normally owed. That’s not what’s going on here.
When Biden talks about beefing up IRS enforcement, this isn’t a matter of closing loopholes & taking out provisions, even questionable provisions, that allow taxes to be avoided. This is tax evasion—illegally dodging tax payments by hiding income or falsely claiming deductions that don’t exist. To put it more simply, the wealthy have cheated America out of enough money in the last 10 years that the whole nation could have run for more than a year & a half just on the amount they stole. That Republicans are coming down against policing this grandest of grand larceny should be all anyone needs to know about the “law & order” party...
- More,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/17/2052775/-Using-reconciliation-to-raise-taxes-on-the-wealthy-would-start-to-address-a-wrong-done-40-years-ago
- Daily Kos, The Wealthiest 1% have robbed nation with $7 trill in tax evasion over last 10 yrs, Sept. 8, 2021,
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/8/2051031/-The-U-S-could-operate-for-the-next-year-and-a-half-just-on-the-taxes-the-wealthy-have-dodged
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- NPR, The Democratic Push To Tax The Rich More Is 40 Years In The Making, Sept. 16, 2021,
https://www.npr.org/2021/09/16/1036853972/biden-democrats-tax-the-rich-reagan-trump-reconciliation
If Congress manages to pass President Biden's big budget package this fall with most of its spending and tax changes intact, it will represent the biggest shift in federal fiscal policy in 40 years. If it happens — still a big if — it will be because Congress can circumvent its usual rules and process tax-and-spending measures via a process called reconciliation. That process is a powerhouse capable of major disruptions and changes in government because it offers protection from filibuster. Reconciliation bills can pass with a simple majority.
That is why Biden and his allies, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, think they have a shot at raising trillions in tax revenue over the next 10 years to pay for their spending priorities. Democrats propose to raise the needed revenue through borrowing as well as through more robust revenue collections thanks to a beefed-up IRS. But the bulk of it would come from tougher tax treatment and higher tax rates on corporations, investors and others whose annual income exceeds $400,000...
- The Reagans at their ranch near Santa Clara, California.
= new reply since forum marked as read
But his "new day in America" also spurred a genuinely shitty, entitled attitude in much of the "greatest generation" and beyond.
An attitude that shrugged when Ronnie said: "It's been said I favor the rich, I don't deny it".
The "shrug" that the owners of moderate middle class homes still envisioned themselves among the "wealthy", turned a blind eye as social services were decimated under the guise of the "Cadillac welfare class" while sporting the bumpersticker that read: "I'm spending my children's inheritance"... 
My tail-end boomer and Gen-Xers were brutally criticized as lazy, undeserving-- as we wore the thrift store hand me downs, scraped for couch pennies to afford tuition and worked overnights for a token income, struggling to stay awake through classes. And sometimes still failed to pay rent, had to find other unskilled work and save up enough to afford the next semester, myself, taking just a few classes at a time to fullfill prerequisites. There's a reason it took me 7 years to complete 4 years of college.
It had nothing to do with being "lazy".
I'm not about to label any future generations like that. Frankly now that the post-middle class economy has completely cut the ability of those who had next to nothing to aspire better than working at McSquaddle's burger joint. Now that many who were so pretentious about their middle class income and home lost all that under Bush II and ended up being the "Cadillac welfare" class they pretended they could never be... discovering it's not so cushy after all.
And some of you are right here, still enjoying retirement incomes and possibilities of nursing home care in your waning years...
Out of reach now for the care staff who will be taking care of you.
It's not only many of the democrat representatives that were complicit in the wealth gap.
