OWN Sunday Breakfast Hash: “Worst. Sequel. Ever.”
With few exceptions, sequels always pale when compared with the original.
There are usually more car chases, faster edits and the awkward repackaging of the same jokes from the original.
So as we watch the debate over who will serve as the leader of the free world, it is abundantly clear Mitt Romney and the Republicans’ latest feature can fairly be described as ‘Dubya II: More Bushier.’
But make no mistake if you’re a member of the middle class, their production is a horror show.
It is massive tax breaks for the wealthiest, paid for by raising taxes on the middle class.
In fact, multi-millionaires like Romney will enjoy a windfall under this regressive tax plan.
The guts of Romney’s plan are:
- Reducing the top income tax bracket from 35 percent to 28
- Eliminating taxes on dividends and capital gains
- Ending the estate tax
Every single one of these policies would increase the deficit in order to larder even more wealth onto the richest people in America. The Koch Brothers, the Kardashians, the Donald Trumps, Romney himself, and of course Wisconsin’s favorite billionaire, Diane “Divide and Conquer” Hendricks.
Hendricks, you may remember, paid no state taxes in 2010, giving her even more freedom to write Gov. Scott Walker a $500,000 campaign check — the largest campaign expenditure ever written to a Wisconsin candidate for office.
And what does this mean in real dollars?
If you are a part of the top one-tenth of one percent, earning $3 million a year, Romney’s scheme would cut your taxes by $250,000.
And who picks up the tab?
According to the eminently-respected, non-partisan Tax Policy Center, the Romney vision ‘would boost after-tax income by an average of 4.1 percent for those earning more than $1 million a year, while reducing by an average of 1.2 percent the after-tax income of individuals earning less than $200,000.’
Not to mention the spending cuts to education, health care and public infrastructure that would be required if Romney were to keep his austerity promises related to the federal budget.
In the Grover Norquist-run, modern teaparty-dominated, Republican Party, it may be of little surprise standard-bearer Romney wants to continue the failed, bankrupting tax policies of George W. Bush that reward the rich and corporations and stick the middle class with the tab.
After all, it’s been almost five years since these same policies nearly bankrupted the country and plunged us into a Second Great Depression.
Romney and the Republicans seem dead set on a sequel.