Lonna Gooden VanHorn introduces Dick Pittenger
The article below was written by retired minister and WWII veteran
Rev. Dick C. Pittenger. A version of it
appeared in the "My Voice" column of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Tuesday,
Nov. 23, 2010
WWII Veterans' Honor Flight
By WWII Veteran and Retired Methodist Minister, Dick Pittenger
I recently shared a precious experience. Along with 150 brother and sister
World War II veterans, I went on an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.,
to visit the World War II Memorial. As I stood with the others, many of them
friends for more than 50 years, some now in wheelchairs, before the Wall of
Honor, I was almost overwhelmed with emotion.
That wall contains 4,000 Gold Stars, each of them representing 100 who never
made it home from the war, including classmates and relatives. I felt we were
there not only representing them and ourselves but also millions who died
before the memorial was built.
I remembered loved ones long gone, including five brothers, four who also served
in WWII. I then remembered President Eisenhower's justification for
retaining the federal tax rate at 90 percent on income above $400,000 a year.
He said millions had been making excess profits while G.I. Joe earned $21 a
month. He also told the wealthy that it was "in their enlightened
self-interest to help create a more just and humane society."
I believe he was thinking of those 16 million men and women he had led back
from the crucible of war, some of whom had given five years or more of their
lives to make it possible for the rest of us to live in peace and freedom and
to make our "excess profits." Ike cared deeply about his soldiers and
would be appalled that we have homeless veterans today.
Today, Ike also might point out that only rarely do the rich or their offspring
venture into harm's way to keep our freedoms secure. Perhaps that fact alone
deserves a much higher tax rate for them.
For almost 50 years, maximum federal income tax rates ran between 63 percent
and 94 percent. When Reagan was elected president, the federal debt was
$907 billion. Until then, we had paid for the social revolution of the New
Deal, WWII, the Korean and Vietnam
wars and the Great Society. One of Reagan's first acts was to lower the
maximum tax rate from 70 percent on income above $400,000 to 28 percent on
income above $29,750.
This was the most radical wealth redistribution in our nation's history,
redistributing wealth upward and making it impossible for us to run this great
country without going in the red. We began to rack up huge deficits and immediately
began to borrow.
Reagan is the only president in history to triple the national debt.
By the end of George H.W. Bush's presidency, the national debt was $4.4
trillion. After Clinton's
eight years, it was $5.8 trillion; after George W. Bush's presidency, it was
$12 trillion.
George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus of $236 billion, the sole
justification for the totally unnecessarys tax cuts he insisted on and fought
so hard to obtain. (In contrast, at the
end of President Obama's first year, he was presented with a $1.9 trillion
deficit for which he was not responsible.) This was the first time in history
that we cut taxes for the rich in a time of war.
Since the Bush tax cuts, we have borrowed an average annual amount of $800
billion, partially to return a one-time $236 billion surplus to the people, and
the Republican Party wants us to continue to borrow to pay for them.
I can't abide the blatant hypocrisy of the Republican Party.
Thanks to unwise tax cuts for the rich, causing skyrocketing federal debt
the past 30 years, millions retired at age 55. Early retirement was encouraged
in an effort to free up jobs for the generations coming up. How do Republicans
propose we now balance the budget? Why, of course, by increasing the retirement
age for middle America to 69 and by
eliminating cost of living adjustments but not by raising taxes for the rich.
Am I the only one who thinks this is wrong?
If cutting taxes for the rich creates jobs, how did we lose 9 million
jobs during the past 10 years?
Republicans say they refuse to raise taxes on the rich because it would cost
jobs at small businesses. Their small business owners include billionaires like
the Koch brothers and Warren Buffett, hedge fund managers on Wall Street and
thousands of lawyers and doctors whose only employees are already-hired office
staffs. Bernie Madoff would qualify as one of Sen. Mitch McConnell's small
business owners, but he's in federal prison.
I wonder whether the wealthy ever feel guilty that slashing their tax rates has
resulted in spiraling federal debt?
Post-script written by Lonna Gooden VanHorn
Rev. Pettinger's column was one of the best I have read regarding the
ridiculousness of the rich clamoring for the extension of their Bush tax cuts,
and the incredible fact that so many poor and middle-class people, the very
people Republican objectives would hurt the most, have been hoodwinked by right
wing-pundits and politicians -- most of whom are themselves affluent and are
lobbying for said tax cuts in blatant (and, in my opinion, unpatriotic)
self-interest -- into believing the cry that doing away with the Bush tax cuts
for the wealthy and our already over-subsidized corporations amounts to
"class warfare," and that only by continuing said
tax cuts do we have any hope of solving the economic problems which, in
actuality, were brought about, at least in part, by the
Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Forgotten is the fact that after seven years Bill Clinton finally managed to bring
us to a budget surplus by raising taxes slightly after the ruinous Reagan/Bush
I tax cuts tripled the national debt.
"One of Reagan's first acts was to lower the maximum tax rate from 70
percent on income above $400,000 to 28 percent on income above $29,750.
This was the most radical wealth redistribution in our nation's history,
redistributing wealth upward and making it impossible for us to run this great
country without going in the red."
When Bush, Jr. came into office he squandered Clinton's surplus and he and
Congressional Republicans demanded additional tax cuts for the rich even though
they began two wars during his watch, wars which, prior to those in Iraq and
Afghanistan, were always financed through increases in
taxes. David Stockman, Budget Director under Reagan, blames the deficit
-- then and now -- on tax cuts, and says the first thing we should cut is the
military budget which is larger than that of all other nations military budgets
combined and most of which has nothing to do with fighting the
war on terror. It was not through 9
years of expensive wars, but through
intelligence gathering and the utilization of a very small military
contingent that Obama finally succeeded
in killing bin Laden, yet Republicans refuse to include any kind of real
oversight, let alone reductions, to any part of the bloated, wasteful, and
often counter-productive military budget.
Not only were personal income taxes much higher on the rich until the Reagan
years, but under Eisenhower corporations paid more than 50% in taxes, and there
were not then the off-shore headquarters or tax breaks that reduced those rates
to the pittance many large corporations pay in taxes now. Reagan's
corporate profit friendly policies also facilitated moving companies and jobs
to other countries. As former Republican Senator from Kentucky,
Marlow Cook, another WWII veteran wrote in a 2004 letter to the Courier-Journal
when giving his reasons for voting for John Kerry over George Bush, " Lyndon Johnson said America could
have guns and butter at the same time. This administration says you can have
guns, butter and no taxes at the same time. God help us if we are not smart
enough to know that is wrong, and we live by it to our peril."
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1021-30.htm
Bush, Jr. and his insistence on unnecessary tax cuts for the rich took us
immediately into balooning debt again, but that fact was largely ignored, and
the consequences of those earlier tax cuts and policies were conveniently
blamed on Obama notwithstanding the fact that even John McCain's economist
admits the country would be in much worse shape than it is if Obama
had not taken the steps he did to stimulate the economy.
Rev. Pettinger wrote, "If cutting taxes for the rich creates jobs,
how did we lose 9 million jobs during the past 10 years?" Jobs
that were lost after Bush cut taxes. As
economist Robert Reich writes the rich do not need their tax cuts
continued. The top 1% of taxpayers "are now getting almost a
quarter of all national income, the highest percent since 1928 (sic. the year
before the crash.) They don't deserve it (they got the lion's share of the
benefits of the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, and have had no reason to expect a
continuation of their windfall). And giving it to them blows a giant hole
in the budget (the Joint Tax Committee estimates the cost of extending
the Bush tax cuts for the top 1 percent to be $61 billion in 2011 alone. )"
http://robertreich.org/
Lost in all of the hoopla is the fact that Obama actually cut taxes for the
poor, middle-class and small businesses. Do no "average" people
remember they paid less in taxes last year?
America
seems, now, to have become a country of people populated, largely, by those who
feel "entitled" for themselves, but who feel little responsibility
for the unfortunate, or for the well-being of future generations.
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