Our shrinking rebates
Well, back two weeks ago I wrote that President Bush recommended that Congress rebate taxpayers $800. Last week, the House of Representatives cut that amount to $600 so they could give money to people who don’t have any taxable income (effectively negating the meaning of “rebateâ€). Today in the Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Lueck, writes that the now the Senate has sunk their hungry gums around our rebate, too;
Sen. Baucus proposed a $500 rebate for people who report at least $3,000 of income on a 2007 tax return, including Social Security income, as well as wages, a move that would provide rebates to millions of seniors not eligible under the House compromise. Married couples would be eligible to receive $1,000. He also revived a top Democratic priority — an extension of unemployment-insurance benefits — that was dropped from the House plan.
So, in just two weeks time, the rebate of our money that we earned and gave to the government has been slashed 37.5% . A married couple expecting $1600 from President Bush will be getting $1000 from Baucus instead.
Doing what the Left do best – be so fair to everyone that everyone ends up with scraps. Spreading out the misery in equal doses. And being so slow about it, that by the time the checks the mailboxes, this latest “crisis” will be over.
Jeffery Birnbaum in the Washington Post writes that the K Street lobbyists couldn’t muster their forces soon enough to tear the rebates up for the special interests, so they’re focusing on the Senate;
Other interests are bearing down on Baucus and his committee as well. Late last week, Baucus and his staff met with representatives of organized labor, including Rod Bennett and Donald J. Kaniewski of the Laborers’ International Union, Christopher D. Heinz of the carpenters union and the building trades department of the AFL-CIO, and Jeffrey Soth of the International Union of Operating Engineers.
A tax rebate for low- and middle-income workers — a foundation of the stimulus package — “is good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough,” said Bill Samuel, legislative director of the AFL-CIO. Yesterday, in fact, the finance panel released its proposal, which adopted an important request from organized labor. It would extend unemployment benefits by 13 weeks, among other additions to the president’s package.
Except that’s not AFL-CIO’s money. It’s our money – us – the American taxpayers.
The Wall Street Journal reports that those crooked-ass insurance brokers at the AARP are licking their lips, too;
The AARP, an advocacy group for retired people, has pushed for the elderly to be included. But “it’s going to be hard to get people to take advantage of it,” said David Certner of AARP, if they don’t normally file tax returns.
Well, numbnuts, if they don’t pay taxes, they don’t get a rebate. How hard is that to understand?
But it’s part of a larger problem. Americans are convinced that all money belongs to the government and we only get to keep what they let us have. Every once in a while they throw us a bone, and we clap like a room full of retarded children because we get to keep our shiny toys for a little while longer.
So here we sit like a bunch of birdlings waiting for the government to come by and drop some worm ooze in our open mouths – if the vultures from the special interests don’t get to the worm first.
