Economy: Republican Jobs Plan …


UNDER THE RADAR

ECONOMY — REPUBLICAN JOBS PLAN IS JUST A $10 TRILLION GIVEAWAY TO CORPORATIONS AND THE RICH: Despite their best efforts to avoid discussing any policy agenda whatsoever, some Republicans have recently been touting their ability to come up with “positive solution after positive solution” on job creation and the federal deficit. They point to their “new” House Republican Study Committee approved plan — the Economic Freedom Act of 2010 — as proof of that claim. The problem is that the plan is neither new nor a solution: it “is actually a huge doubling down on the Bush agenda of budget-busting tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations that won’t effectively create jobs.” A new analysis from the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the plan would add close to $7 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. By completely eliminating capital gains taxes and reducing the corporate tax rate to 12.5 percent from 35 percent, along with other tax cuts to further enrich the wealthy, 61.5 percent of the tax benefits under the plan would go to the richest one percent of households in 2012. Further, “under the plan, the average middle-class taxpayer receives a tax cut of $467. The average taxpayer in the richest one percent (with an average income of $1.4 million) receives a tax cut of $157,500.” Despite Republican claims to the contrary, the evidence is clear: tax cuts for the wealthy “fail to spur economic growth.” Instead, their jobs plan leaves the economy in the worst possible position: with both ballooning deficits and extremely inefficient, anemic job growth.