Hostile Takeover How Big Money and Corruption Conquered our Government--and How We Take It Back

CHAPTER 1 Taxes In the spring of 2003,1 American soldiers began massing on Kuwait's border with Iraq, preparing for what some experts feared could be a horrendous Iraqi counterattack2 should President Bush order an invasion. It was a tense time in a nation both on the verge of war and strapped for resources to defend itself against terrorism thanks to massive budget deficits. Every day, it seemed, there was a reminder of how serious the situation was. Color-coded alerts warned that another 9/11 could occur at any moment, as police and fire departments reported severe budget shortfalls; more than a year after the World Trade Center attacks, air marshals were still protecting only a fraction of the 35,000 daily flights in the United States;3 in an urgent plea to the White House, federal officials warned that budget shortfalls were leaving the nation's nuclear material dangerously unprotected from al Qaeda;4 and possibly worst of all, many soldiers awaiting the command to invade Iraq did not have adequate body armor to protect them.5 So when House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) gave a major speech on March 12-just weeks before the invasion-the average onlooker might have expected a demand for national sacrifice, a patriotic call to make sure the country was protected and our troops were safe. Instead, we got a glimpse of just how far our political leaders will go to reward the wealthy. "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes," DeLay proudly declared.6 Nothing? Not securing our country, not preventing another 9/11, not protecting American troops heading into battle? No, to DeLay, the impending violence was just another excuse to reward the rich donors who fund political campaigns. You might think this comment was the strange babbling of an unhinged lunatic and was greeted with outrage or at least dismissive scorn. You would be half right: the source of the comment was, in fact, a babbling fool-Tom DeLay is the same slime who, according to his hometown paper, justified dodging the draft during Vietnam by claiming he really wanted to join up but was unable to find a spot because too many poor minorities were enlisting.7 But in today's Washington, the absurd notion that cutting taxes is the noblest and most important mission of the government-even in a time of war-is so commonplace that few reporters thought DeLay's comments newsworthy enough to write about. Big Money's Hostile Takeover of our political system has made DeLay's logic the rule, rather than the exception. Look, no one likes paying taxes, and everyone wants them lowered. But at the end of the day, we have to pay for things we need-things like roads, bridges, schools, police, firefighters, national security, and the military. The ever-present question, then, is not whether taxes need to be paid, but how they should be paid and by whom. By the beginning of the twentieth century, America seemed to have reached a consensus answer. As Christian Science Monitor columnist David Francis noted in 2003, the United States opted to "rely on a simple rationale: the well-to-do pay a larger share of their income in federal taxes than the rest of Americans, because the rich can afford it." In return, "the government protects their wealth and property."8 Thus, the birth of a progressive income tax structure. It seemed simple enough-the Rockefellers and the Mellons would pay a higher tax rate than their servants because they could afford to. In return, the wealthy were the disproportionate beneficiaries of a safe, secure, well-run national infrastructure. The income tax on corporate profits was also established at the beginning of the century-a simple way to make sure business does its fair share. Then, in 1916, the estate tax was created.9 ThSirota, David is the author of 'Hostile Takeover How Big Money and Corruption Conquered our Government--and How We Take It Back', published 2006 under ISBN 9780307237347 and ISBN 0307237346.