Bush's Baby Tax: A Bill for Tens of Thousands of Dollars Presented to Every Baby Born in America By George W. Bush.
Note: This January 10, 2005 BuzzFlash Editorial marks the tenth in 20 consecutive editorials BuzzFlash will be publishing through January 20th.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
You've known them in your lives. The guys who go on credit card spending sprees and then skip town leaving their families to pay off their debts. They are louses, creeps, guys who mortgage the future of their children to their high off the hog living and lavish life styles.
Everything seems fine: the Porsche, the mansion, the champagne, the first class airfare, the Penthouse hotel suites, until the debt eventually comes due -- and Mr. Grifter skips town, leaving his wife to deal with the credit card companies.
That's just what George W. Bush is doing to America. He's giving tax cuts to the wealthy during a period when the asset and income gap between the richest Americans and the middle class and poor has widened to its largest distance ever. He's enriching campaign contributors with war profiteering contracts.
He's giving the middle class a few hundred dollars back in taxes, while charging them thousands of dollars for the war in Iraq -- from the pockets of the taxpayers to the wallets of Halliburton.
Bush is the "Music Man," but the band costumes don't miraculously show up in this real life story about a flim-flam man who became president. Yes, Professor Hill may have pulled the "moral values" con on River City, but they didn't end up with a "baby tax" that will come due for all of America's children, courtesy of the Bush budget busters.
It's been the goal all along of the chief Bush domestic policy guru, Grover Norquist, to run up such a grossly unconscionable debt that the American system of public services, including education, will have to be cut off. Or as Norquist has so "eloquently" said, public services will be thrown into a bathtub and drowned.
Meanwhile, in place of the repealed "estate tax," which only
affected millionaires, we now have the "baby tax," which will
be borne by every new baby in America.
The baby tax, brought to you by George W. Bush, who took a surplus
and turned it into a record-breaking debt in no time at all.
With each birth certificate, a tax form should now be given to the newly born in America. The babies might as well start paying off the mountain of debt Bush is leaving in his reckless wake. Maybe parents can start a "baby tax" account before their newborn even arrives.
Instead of the "death tax" for the wealthy, Bush has instituted the "baby tax" for every new American.
Professor Hill, Mr. Music Man, you ain't got nothing on George W. Bush. This guy could sell you a car without a motor and get you to pay for his limousine fare home.
A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL
BuzzFlash Note: The term "baby tax" comes from the innovative framing work of George Lakoff, a professor at the University of California at Berkeley -- and a BuzzFlash favorite.