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To: altair19 who wrote (21190)	1/16/2003 3:14:26 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 104191

More on some of 'the numbers'... Posted on Sun, Jan. 12, 2003 The numbers may be crunching us By Molly Ivins Creators Syndicate I just love the fine print in the president's tax cut plan. I grant you, the overall effect is pretty spectacular, too -- a plan that has almost no stimulative effect but still opens a future of zillion-dollar deficits to drag down the economy. That's the backasswards of what we need, but it's not the fun part. Look at these little goodies: • You think because you have money in the stock market you might have a stake in eliminating the dividend tax, the centerpiece of the president's tax cut -- $300 billion over 10 years? (You probably think you have money in the stock market because your 401(k) keeps going down -- that would be 40 million Americans.) But no! This tax break doesn't apply to your dividends! The money in your 401(K) from both savings and dividends are tax-sheltered until you withdraw the money -- then all of it gets taxed as ordinary income. You don't get any tax break on your dividends -- that only goes to the investor class. According to Kevin Phillips, 1 percent of investors pocketed 42 percent of the stock market gains between 1989 and 1997, while the top 10 percent of the population took 86 percent. These people need a tax cut! They haven't been getting their share! • According to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, the effect of eliminating dividend taxation is that the average benefit for those making less than $10,000 would be $6, and the average benefit for those making more than $1 million would be $45,098. Quick, high-schoolers, let's practice up for those SATs by figuring out by what percentage $45,098 is bigger than $6. • President Bush also wants to accelerate the income tax cuts slated for 2006. Look at this folly. The top 5 percent of taxpayers would get 70 percent of the benefits on that one. The bottom 80 percent would get 6.5 percent of the benefits. Ditto with accelerating the 2004 tax cuts: 64.4 percent to the top 5 percent of taxpayers; 7.7 percent to the bottom 80 percent. • Are you one of those people who can't handle numbers -- need something visual to work with? Find the Urban-Brookings charts published in the Jan. 7 New York Times showing who gets how much of this tax cut. You can barely see the lines that measure the relief until you get above the 99th percentile. Naturally, there will be a lot of spinning on these tax cuts in the weeks ahead, with numbers being tossed around like confetti. We'll probably need John Paulos, the innumeracy guy, to referee. I recommend the Center for Tax Justice (www.ctj.org) -- its computer model is widely respected. Speaking of damned lies and statistics, one of the little games being played in Washington is that the Republicans want to switch to Enron accounting on the economy. They're leaning on both the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation to change the way they make their economic estimates. According to the R's, "static scoring" -- as opposed to your "dynamic scoring" -- overestimates the cost of tax cuts by ignoring their role in boosting economic growth. Why, claim the R's, tax cuts pay for themselves! If that's so, why are all the states going broke? Bring on Arthur Andersen and mark-to-market accounting -- that'll perk up the economy. The only good part of the Bush tax cut plan is the $400 increase in the tax credit per child -- at least that spreads it around a little. Naturally, that's the one part of the plan that right-wingers hate. As we all wade into these numerical battles over exactly how much of this tax cut goes to the very rich, the more fundamental question is whether it's a good idea -- either economically or in terms of social justice -- to have the very rich get very much richer than they already are. Contrary to the paranoid fantasists on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page, populists are not motivated by some burning resentment of the rich -- we don't spend our lives in an envious funk that someone else is better off than we are. "No skin off my nose" is the general attitude, with others coming in at "Lucky them" or "Good for them." The problem is that the rich are screwing up our democracy. Less than 0.1 percent of the U.S. population gave 83 percent of all itemized campaign contributions for the 2002 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. According to the Houston Chronicle, just 48 wealthy Texas families provided more than half the campaign funds for the major Republican state candidates this fall. How dumb do you have to be not to be able to connect the dots here? Law, policy and regulation are consistently shaped to favor the rich over the rest of us, and that is not fair. It is not right. It is not the country we want and for which we are asked to sacrifice. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045 dfw.com

To: altair19 who wrote (21190)	1/16/2003 6:00:28 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 104191

Democrats want $5 billion added for homeland security in huge GOP spending bill By Alan Fram ASSOCIATED PRESS January 16, 2003 WASHINGTON – Democrats say an additional $5 billion is needed for security in ports, nuclear plants and other facilities as the Senate debates a huge $390 billion government-wide spending bill. Majority Republicans were hoping to muscle the measure through the Senate this week and with the Bush administration urging GOP senators to stand firm, Democrats faced long odds of succeeding. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, said Thursday that while he agreed with many of the homeland security spending needs, Congress must abide by the spending limits set by the president. "I ask the Senate to exercise a real rare type of discipline," he said. Thursday's Senate vote on the homeland security addition was the first of several Democratic attempts to add billions for schools, Amtrak, prosecution of corporate fraud and drought aid for farmers. "There will be all kinds of tests by people looking every day to break out" of the spending limits Bush wants, White House budget chief Mitchell Daniels told reporters. He said it is "very, very important both for the short term and as a signal for the future that we don't break out of that." Republicans were hoping to quickly approve the 1,052-page bill this week and move a step closer to ending a partisan impasse that has stalled action on the overdue budget bills since last summer. The measure combines 11 bills covering every program from NASA to the FBI for the federal budget year that started last Oct. 1. White House officials say the bill would provide $12 billion more than in 2002, not including one-time emergencies like the immediate costs of rebuilding New York and the Pentagon after the Sept. 11 attacks. But Democrats say the measure was $9.8 billion short of what they approved last year when they controlled the Senate and wrote – but never enacted – the same measures. "The needs are still there as plain as ever," said Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., sponsor of the homeland security amendment. Addressing one politically sensitive area, Republicans squeezed $3.1 billion into the measure to help farmers and ranchers battered by last summer's drought. That was about half the $6 billion the Senate approved by a wide bipartisan margin last September as congressional elections approached. In a sign that those funds might grow, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the drought funds would go to virtually all farmers, including those from regions where growers did not suffer crop losses. Roberts, a senior member of the Agriculture Committee, did not rule out an effort to increase the measure's aid for farmers hurt by the drought. The GOP bill would also provide $763 million for Amtrak, the struggling, federally backed passenger carrier whose officials have said they need $1.2 billion this year to survive. Amtrak President David L. Gunn said if a Democratic effort to provide the full $1.2 billion fails, "Amtrak will have no other choice but an orderly shutdown of all service this spring or sooner." Bush has said holding the price tag to $385 billion is necessary with deficits back and the administration fighting terrorism and trying to revive the economy. Even so, Republicans added an extra $825 million for the costs of fighting last summer's wildfires, and the White House was expected to go along. The White House and lawmakers also added $3.9 billion for last-minute defense items, largely for classified intelligence programs, said aides speaking on condition of anonymity. In addition, the GOP included $1.5 billion to help state and local government modernize their voting systems, and $1.5 billion more to boost Medicare reimbursements to rural hospitals and doctors. To free up money for the drought, election overhaul and Medicare funds – which were not in an earlier draft of the bill – Republicans cut 1.6 percent from every other program in the huge measure. The only two spending bills for this year that have already been enacted cover the military. When the Senate finishes the measure, House-Senate bargainers will have to write a compromise that can be sent to Bush for his signature. signonsandiego.com