Paul Fishkin of Madison sent along an editorial from the Toledo Blade, my colleague John Nichols' old paper, that warns readers to be "careful" spending that tax rebate check from the U.S. government.
The edit, as have many others, points out that the check that some taxpayers are getting isn't really a rebate at all.
Rather, it's an advance on the refund you expect after filing next year.
And, as the Blade points out, if you normally end up paying at filing time in April, you could owe an extra $300 to $600 in 2002.
The bright idea by Congress was to dump a sizable sum of spendable dollars on American consumers and hope that it would bolster the slumping economy. The Blade points out that the instant check was a Democratic idea, which was quickly picked up by the GOP and blessed by President Bush as he pushed his $1.3 trillion tax cut.
"But millions of Americans think they're getting money back, not an advance against what they'll ultimately owe," the editorial warned. "It's confusing, it's misleading and it's poor public policy to misrepresent it, even if unintentionally."
Actually, the Blade should have gone further. The entire tax cut itself, not just the so-called rebate checks, is outrageously poor public policy.
It's akin to a family, sitting on a huge debt and little insurance for the future, suddenly getting a big windfall of money and then blowing it all rather than paying off some bills and salting a little away for retirement.
But that's exactly what Bush and his compliant Congress did with this boondoggle. The government has a $4 trillion debt, its Social Security and Medicare programs need to be bolstered to take care of rapidly approaching needs, and education and the environment need attention. So what do they do with a surprisingly nice surplus? Spend it all on a tax cut that only a select few will get to enjoy in the first place.
And then Bush has the audacity to come to Milwaukee and promise veterans attending last week's VFW convention that all is well and he will still deliver a huge military budget increase as he promised during his presidential campaign last year.
The only way he can do that now is by once again borrowing from the Social Security trust fund.
Either that or add some more to that debt we have.
Remind you of Reaganomics? Weren't economic times just a little bit better during the previous two presidential terms?
Copyright 2001 The Capital Times
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