TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2010
Rossi: Despite deficit, rich need BIGGER tax cut

Most Americans support ending Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. A CBS News poll finds that a majority of Americans, 56%, say the tax cuts for the wealthy should expire for households earning more than $250,000 per year, as Democrats have proposed. Thirty-six percent of Americans say they should not be allowed to expire.

Now, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports that even if Congress lets high-income tax cuts expire as scheduled but preserves the "middle-class" tax cuts -- as President Barack Obama and many Democrats, including Sen. Patty Murray propose -- wealthy households will STILL receive substantial tax cuts, significantly LARGER in dollar terms that what middle-class Americans will get (see chart).

That's because the 2001 Bush tax cuts for the lower tax brackets benefit not only people whose incomes fall within the brackets but also those whose incomes exceed those brackets. Specifically, recent estimates from the Joint Committee on Taxation show that extending just the middle-class tax cuts would provide more than $6,300 in tax cuts to households with incomes above $200,000, on average, compared to $1,132 in tax cuts for households with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000.

But that's not enough for Sen. Murray's Republican challenger Dino Rossi, who quickly casts aside his stated concern about the federal deficit when it comes to allowing the richest Americans to pay even lower taxes. In today's Seattle Times, Rossi disingenuously calls on Sen. Murray to support permanent extension of Bush's tax cuts for the rich "to stop the largest tax increase in U.S. history," and says working families "can't afford to send more of their hard-earned money to Washington, D.C., to prop up the federal government's overspending."  (Apparently, the working families to which Rossi refers are the ones who make more than $250,000 a year, because everybody else would maintain their tax cuts under Sen. Murray's plan.)

Here's a guy who says he's so concerned about the $1.4 trillion federal budget deficit that he opposes funding for specific job-creating projects in Washington state, opposes extending jobless benefits to the real victims of this recession, and even opposes Sen. Murray's deficit-neutral legislation to save teacher and public employee jobs because it is paid for by repealing a tax break for corporations that ship jobs overseas.

Instead, he vaguely blames the "overspending" of President Obama and Sen. Murray.

The truth is, the tax cuts for the rich that George W. Bush rammed through in 2001 -- using the same "budget reconciliation" 50-Senate-vote method that the GOP excoriated Democrats for using with health care reform -- are the biggest single contributor to the federal deficit. If not for the Bush tax cuts, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that were initiated during Bush's tenure, and the effects of and responses to the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, there would be NO deficit.

Sen. Murray voted against the 2001 Bush tax cuts, calling them irresponsible gifts to the wealthiest Americans, who benefited disproportionately. But given the recession-related struggles of middle-class and low-income Americans, she supports extending their tax cuts set to expire at year's end. She wants to allow tax rates to return to pre-2001 only for households that earn more than $250,000. As explained above, those households, will STILL preserve a substantial tax cut, but given the current federal budget deficit, Murray said it makes no sense to award even lower tax rates to the nation's highest-income earners.

"That's the trickle-down theory of the past. As we know, it hasn't worked out very well," Murray told the Times, pointing to the budget surplus of the Clinton years turning into huge budget deficits. She said she is "fearful of spending a lot of money that we don't have" by extending all the Bush-era tax cuts.

So who's the real deficit hawk?

TUESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2010
Return to work at Coke
Teamsters thank community for support during strike

The following has been posted at the Teamsters Local 117 website:

SEATTLE, WA -- 500 Western Washington Coke employees who went on strike last Monday will return to work unconditionally in a gesture that demonstrates their willingness to bargain a fair and equitable contract in good faith. Negotiations between the Washington Teamsters United and Coke are set to resume this Wednesday and Thursday, September 1 and 2.

"Over the last week, we have demonstrated to Coke the value of our professionalism and our labor," said Blaine Parks, a 32-year driver for Coke’s production and distribution facility in Bellevue. "We have also sent a strong message to Coke that its employees expect the company to take the collective bargaining process seriously."

Union representatives expect the 500 area Coke employees will resume normal operations Tuesday morning to catch up with the backlog created by last week’s work stoppage.

"We are optimistic that Coke will return to negotiations prepared to bargain in good faith," said Tracey A. Thompson, Secretary-Treasurer of Teamsters Local 117 and chief negotiator for Washington Teamsters United. "Issues like the health care for Coke employees and retirees are too important to our members and their families not to be addressed in a straightforward and forthright manner."

The Union says it will continue to pursue the Unfair Labor Practice charges it brought against Coke before the National Labor Relations Board as well as the class-action ERISA lawsuit on behalf of Coke employees who had their health care benefits revoked by the company shortly after the work stoppage began last week.

Approximately 500 Coke employees in Western Washington went on strike on Monday, August 23, over charges of employee surveillance, intimidation and bad faith bargaining. Contract negotiations between the Union and Coke have been underway since April. The employees’ contract expired on May 15, 2010.

 

^{Copyright © 2010 --  Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO}