Benefits of Tax Cuts Paper

According to an article by Gene C. Gerard in the People’s Weekly Worldonline newspaper, the rich will always be rich and will be getting the benefit of more tax cuts over the next 13 years. The article goes on to say:

The Joint Committee on Taxation has estimated that over the next 13 years these tax breaks for the wealthy will deprive the country of $197 billion in revenue. And a study by the Brookings Institution determined that 97 percent of the Pease and PEP tax breaks will go to those households with incomes above $200,000. And more than half of these breaks will benefit the 0.2 percent of families with annual incomes exceeding $1 million. Once these tax cuts are fully implemented in 2010, the average millionaire will save $19,000 annually in taxes.

Families with yearly incomes between $100,000 and $200,000 will receive an average tax cut of only $25. And families earning less than $100,000—the vast majority of Americans—will not benefit at all.

Shortly before these tax cuts became effective, Republicans in Congress voted to cut $11 billion over the next five years from Medicaid, the health care system that serves America’s poor. Substantial reductions made in childcare assistance will result in 255,000 children living in poverty losing federal assistance.

Congressional Republicans cut $343 million in funding for foster care programs. These reductions will make it more difficult for grandparents who are raising their grandchildren to receive assistance. Over $12 billion was cut from federal college loan programs, making it more difficult for poor and middle-class Americans to afford a college education. In fact, over the next five years these tax breaks from the Pease and PEP tax cuts exceed the savings from all of the reductions in low-income assistance programs that Congress voted to cut (Gerard, 2006, para. 4–7).

In this discussion, draft a speech to be aired on major TV and radio networks that sells the benefits of these tax breaks to the American people. Forget that you are one of the taxpayers who will not benefit from the tax breaks, and present an argument in favor of them.