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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DMaA who wrote (211204)	12/19/2001 5:45:26 PM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Respond to of 769670

Correct. But interest on the debt is one payment that the government must make. It is not optional, it is not discressionary, it cannot be deferred if we have an economic downturn. ... I believe that there is plenty of slight-of-hand going on in Washington.... And very little of it benefits you or me. Somewhere to the north of $200 billion in special corporate perks/tax loopholes/special interest pork in the budget every year. Why should the government bestow it's largesse (our tax dollars) one one industry, but not another? What makes them think they can pick the winners and losers? (They sure don't have a convincing track record in that regard!) One of the Big Three auto makers hasn't paid any taxes for six years (yet has been profitable for each of those years), another has paid an average rate of around 6%... because of special provisions. I'd love to have a tax rate like that.... The top 1% of the largest 'farms' in the US get 60%+ of all crop subsidy payments ($70 billion over the next decade if projections hold... and they may not: agricultural subsidies nearly doubled from '99 to '00). Why should the American public pay five times the world rate for sugar just to enrich a dozen multi-millionaire cane farmers in FLA and LA? And, what in God's name is the mohair subsidy about? $40 billion just paid to the airline industry, yet it bought nothing. Not one route was guaranteed, not one job guaranteed saved. If some of the airlines had gone bankrupt (some still will over the next 6 months) nothing would have changed.... Only airline investors were bailed out. In the event of bankruptcy, the assets would have been acquired by other airlines, other investors, after discharge of debt... the routes would still have had value, the planes still valuable, the American public was not about to take up driving to get from one coast to the other... only special interests were bailed out, not the public interest. $200+ billion was given to the broadcast TV industry in free bandwidth (the public owns the airwaves you know), all in pals-ey backroom deals... yet if I want to open up a paging company, or an MDS outfit on similar bandwidth you know I'll have to pay market rates. Yep, slight-of-hand. It's only the public's tax money, therefore it's nobodies.