THIS USE TO BE A JOKE!

"If Republicans think that lower taxes are always better, then why don't they just try to get rid of all taxes? If republicans think lowering taxes always causes the economy to grow, then they should be arguing that 0% taxes would surely lead to tremendous growth?" ----This is how democrats often responded to hearing republicans talk about taxes and the seemingly endless need to constantly lower them. I never cared for this response. I thought it oversimplified, a reasonable concern about excessive taxation. I thought that it was a snide response; terse and dismissive. I felt that way, until republicans like Rick Santorum started suggesting that the way to emerge out of this recession was to eliminate all taxes, entirely on manufacturing. And he isn't the only one. Serious republicans are suggesting absurdly low levels of taxation, without regard to whether the levels they suggest could even partially fund our nation. And all of their reductions seem to be curiously focused on THE RICH. It seems that Taxes are only for the poor and the middle class. Hedge fund managers pay 0% Taxes. Last year over 1400 millionaires and billionaires paid ZERO in taxes. When conservatives want to attack democrats, or MSNBC, they love to point out that General Electric, MSNBC's parent company paid absolutely NO taxes last year. As if it matters that democratic leaning corporations are also being exempted from paying their fair share. This is not a liberal or conservative issue; its a finance issue. We have a nation and it must be funded, yet we are placing an increasing share of that burden on the backs of the middle class and poor.

What amazes me is that when republicans look at our nations deficit, they blame social security-which is not a driver of our deficit. They blame healthcare for the elderly and indigent but they don't seem to identify the failure of the government to collect taxes from large mega-corporations, hedge fund managers, and billionaires, as problematic. Perhaps we have a deficit because we haven't been collecting taxes from the wealthy for over a decade (that is hyperbole of course, but how long have we been letting Hedgefund Managers pay a 0% tax rate, and how many years have companies like G.E. paid, 0% in taxes....how many years have they just paid much less then the average small business).

Medicare certainly needs reform, but republicans have suggested plans that eliminate the program-and each proposal is more covert then the one before. The Ryan Plan made it clear that we should transform Medicare into a Voucher program, but seniors saw through that one too easily. Now we have Herman Cain's 999 plan, which is simply a plan that eliminates the funding mechanisms by which we pay for medicare and social security (effectively eliminating them). And adding to the pile up of absurd proposals is Rick Santorum's new 000 plan, which proposes 0% taxes for manufacturers! The idea of starving the beast, i.e. our nations government- has long been a policy goal for the GOP but this latest round of proposals is nothing short of catastrophic. The GOP is guilty of the worst kind of pandering. All politicians placate voters, to some extent, but a line is usually drawn at promising voters the impossible. The GOP has crossed over that line and discovered a new boundary to violate. They are not only willing to embrace the inane, but they are now willing to promise voters policies that would collapse our country and destroy all of the progress our nation has seen in the past few decades. What was America like before, Medicare? What was retirement like for seniors prior to social security?

In the last few years we have managed to make a virtue out of something that was once considered a shameful vice. The desire to avoid paying taxes was once considered to be the greatest of sins in a democracy. Those who were caught evading taxes were labeled "TAX DODGERS", but today we seem to have another sentiment. The GOP has been so successful at demonizing the idea of taxes that we no longer look down on, or blame those that avoid them. In fact, its become something to brag about. It simply needs to be said, that this use to be a joke. The idea of not paying any taxes, was once a sarcastic refrain democrats hurled at republicans, but now its republican policy!