The GOP makes a priority of tax breaks for the rich, corporations

Wednesday, Sept. 14, 2011 | 2 a.m.

President Barack Obama sent his jobs bill to Congress on Monday, and it was immediately greeted by resistance among Republican leadership in the House of Representatives.

One would think that Republicans would support a payroll tax cut that would put money back in people’s pockets, giving them more to spend and thus helping the economy. What they don’t like is the way he plans to pay for it.

As The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday, Republicans were critical of the president’s proposals to cut tax breaks for corporate jet owners, big oil companies and the wealthy. Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, dismissed the proposals, saying there was no appetite in Congress for a “tax increase on job creators.”

That has been a typical refrain among House Republicans — don’t touch the “job creators” — at the expense of the middle class and poor. It wasn’t all that long ago that Republicans nearly shut down Congress with their demands for tax breaks for the rich and major corporations. Yet even with those subsidies, major corporations aren’t doing much job-creating these days despite reaping record profits. The tax breaks that have gone to the “job creators” haven’t worked.

Meanwhile, things haven’t gone well economically for the average American. The Census Bureau reported Tuesday there had been a 2.3 percent decline in the real median income of American households last year, and the poverty rate hit 15.1 percent, the highest it has been in nearly 20 years.

In a speech Monday, Obama said the nation needed to decide its priorities. He has called for taking away the needless subsidies and providing tax breaks for businesses that actually hire people. He also wants to increase spending in education to retrofit schools and keep more than 250,000 teachers from being laid off. His plan also calls for putting people back to work by funding needed infrastructure projects across the country.

“Do we keep tax loopholes for oil companies, or do we put teachers back to work?” he said. “Should we keep tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, or should we invest in education and technology and infrastructure?”

Republicans have vilified government spending in the name of reducing the deficit. They want to gut the federal budget — as long as that doesn’t mean cutting their pet programs such as tax breaks for the rich. The nation needs a long-term plan to reduce the deficit, and that should occur as the country comes out of the economic crisis. What the country needs first is something to stimulate the economy.

In a meeting with the Las Vegas Sun’s editorial board on Monday, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said the president’s proposal would have an immediate effect.

“Put people to work right away, and then we’ll work on the deficit,” she said.

Indeed. Republicans seem to have forgotten that millions of Americans are out of work. The president’s plan would help the entire country, and that’s where Congress’ focus should be — not on protecting tax breaks for the rich.