How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich
The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda
of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent
The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance
sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks
for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying
their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."
Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"
The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"
The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which
understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead,
the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.
Modern-day Republicans have become, quite simply, the Party of the One Percent – the Party of the Rich.
"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline
and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as budget director under Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax – one that benefits the prosperous classes."
The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans
rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest
Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent.
Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the growth of the preceding dozen years," says
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the gains went to the top percentage points."
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GOP Became the Party of the Rich
The inside story of how the Republicans abandoned the poor and the middle class to pursue their relentless agenda
of tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent
The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance
sheet. Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks
for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying
their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy."
Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. "Do you think the millionaire ought to pay in taxes than the bus driver," he demands, "or less?"
The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!"
The year was 1985. The president was Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. But the party of Reagan – which
understood that higher taxes on the rich are sometimes required to cure ruinous deficits – is dead and gone. Instead,
the modern GOP has undergone a radical transformation, reorganizing itself around a grotesque proposition: that wealthy should grow wealthier still, whatever the consequences for the rest of us.
Modern-day Republicans have become, quite simply, the Party of the One Percent – the Party of the Rich.
"The Republican Party has totally abdicated its job in our democracy, which is to act as the guardian of fiscal discipline
and responsibility," says David Stockman, who served as budget director under Reagan. "They're on an anti-tax – one that benefits the prosperous classes."
The staggering economic inequality that has led Americans across the country to take to the streets in protest is accident. It has been fueled to a large extent by the GOP's all-out war on behalf of the rich. Since Republicans
rededicated themselves to slashing taxes for the wealthy in 1997, the average annual income of the 400 richest
Americans has more than tripled, to $345 million – while their share of the tax burden has plunged by 40 percent.
Today, a billionaire in the top 400 pays less than 17 percent of his income in taxes – five percentage points less a bus driver earning $26,000 a year. "Most Americans got none of the growth of the preceding dozen years," says
Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel Prize-winning economist. "All the gains went to the top percentage points."
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-the-rich-
20111109#ixzz1ob4FxK1G
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