The Sun News Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2011

Tea party plan: Enrich the rich

Initially, real populist groups like unions were willing to stay quiet as tea party politicians pushed through their anti-tax, deregulatory agenda. We assumed that another stimulus package would not happen, and thought anything to stimulate the economy was better than nothing. Many workers also held some remote hope that the tax breaks and regulatory relief given to corporations would be used to invest and create jobs, rather than outsource more labor overseas so CEOs could give themselves bonuses that are tucked away in offshore accounts to avoid paying even the reduced Bush tax rates they fought so hard to sustain.

However, working Americans fed up with suffering the brunt of the recession only to watch the wealthy further prosper are now waking up to the tea party master plan. We know now cutting taxes, especially those for the corporate class, was just the first phase of a larger plan. While Republicans ran on a balanced budget the last election cycle, their tax cuts for the rich actually put the federal government deeper into the red. At the same time many conservative governors, including Scott Walker in Wisconsin, squandered small budget surpluses with tax policies that overwhelmingly benefit the corporate rich.

While some politicians seem sincere in their efforts to reduce costs while protecting workers, governors like Scott Walker or New Jersey’s Chris Christie are using the budget shortfall that is mostly of their party’s making as a rationale for class warfare. In fact, Walker has rejected compromises with unions who offered to make economic concessions so long as workers keep their collective bargaining rights. This, along with the strategy session Governor Walker had with a prank caller pretending to be the billionaire tea party founder David Koch, shows conservatives are more intent to union bust than either balance their budgets, or put people back to work.

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Credit/Research goes to Kim