David Koch And Americans For Prosperity Push Tea Party Activists To Help Cut Taxes For Billionaires
David Koch And Americans For Prosperity Push Tea Party Activists To Help Cut Taxes For Billionaires
Earlier today, I pointed out that Big Business — deciding that its chances of repealing the estate tax aren’t looking good — has thrown its support behind Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl’s (R-AZ) estate tax “compromise.” (Remember, due to a Bush budget gimmick, the estate tax vanishes in 2010, only to come back in 2011 at a 55 percent rate for estates over $1 million.)
Instead of embracing the Obama administration’s proposal to make the 2009 estate tax permanent (45 percent for estates over $3.5 million, or $7 million for a couple), Lincoln and Kyl want to cut the tax to 35 percent and increase the exemption to $5 million (or $10 million for a couple), which amounts to a $250 billion giveaway to the heirs of multi-millionaires.
But even the colossal, unwarranted tax cut that is Lincoln-Kyl is not enough for far-right, anti-tax crusaders like Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform or the American Family Business Institute, who are standing firm in their commitment to see a full repeal of the estate tax. And these organizations are getting an assist from Americans for Prosperity (AFP), founded by libertarian oil-tycoon David Koch.
As David Weigel reported, Koch appeared at AFP’s annual Defending the American Dream summit over the weekend, where AFP activists were told that they are on the verge of saving mega-millionaires mega-bucks, if only they can cause Congress to slow down more than it already has:
Activists learned that they were on the cusp of saving the long-planned, one-year elimination of the estate tax. If Democrats fail to pass a bill extending the estate tax in 2010, one of the key Republican victories of George W. Bush’s presidency would be realized. And the more the Tea Party movement could slow down the works in Congress, the better the chance of Democrats forgoing that bill. “If we run out the clock,” said Phil Kerpen, AFP’s policy director, “the estate tax is gone in 2010, and it would be tricky for Democrats to try and bring it back.”
This is exactly what the Bush administration was banking on in setting the estate tax the way that it did. By having the tax come back in full-force for 2011, the long-term cost of abolishing it was hidden. However, the Bush administration figured that Congress wouldn’t have the stomach to reinstate the tax after a tax-free year, and thus would simply reauthorize the 2010 law every year, for an effective repeal.
And AFP is encouraging its membership to play right into that strategy — with the double-whammy of bogging down the rest of the Democratic domestic agenda — despite the fact that 99.8 percent of estates will owe no estate tax at all. Fortunately, Democrats in Congress seems pretty determined not to let the 2010 lapse occur at all.
At the summit, Koch said that in creating AFP “we envisioned a mass movement, a state-based one, but national in scope, of hundreds of thousands of American citizens from all walks of life standing up and fighting for the economic freedoms that made our nation the most prosperous society in history.” And evidently one of those economic freedoms involves needlessly giving millionaire families (like the Koch family) billions in tax breaks, despite the country’s budget situation.
6 Responses to “David Koch And Americans For Prosperity Push Tea Party Activists To Help Cut Taxes For Billionaires”
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This would be like the real Boston Tea Party defending the East India Tea Company. Simply amazing how the Reds and Blues distort history for their nefarious purposes.
October 5th, 2009 at 6:06 pmDavid Koch is doing what is right. The rich and powerful need more money and power; the poor and weak need to be poorer and weaker. This is how society progresses.
October 6th, 2009 at 3:34 amThousands of American’s should die because of a lack of health care; in order for millionaires to get some more money to speculate in stocks and commodities.
Roads should become decrepit, energy production investments should be halted, children shouldn’t get a decent education in order to provide millionaires with some more money.
(This is not snark; I am a Conservative and this is what me and my kind know to be the moral and good thing to do.)
You are all idiots. It’s the phenomenon of seeing a parade then trying to march in front of it and call yourself the leader of it.
I still don’t have my check from this guy claiming to have funded us, whoever he is.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:38 pmNo one is dying in the streets but they will be if the gov’t takes over. If you are over 60 watch out.
The grass is always greener but believe me, Canada and UK medical systems SUCK.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:39 pmCommunism is never the ‘moral and good thing to do’.
And further more, it’s the huge elitist wealthy families from europe who want to control us with this cap and trade and medical care boondoggle so you are in effect supporting their utopian totalitarian ideas when you support gov’t health care.
October 6th, 2009 at 1:40 pmNow who’s supporting the rich? You are.
Hello…you are so phony, First of all the rich create jobs, the rich have always paid higher taxes, the rich give to charities. Other than whine what have you ever done for your fellow man.. I would warrant not much! Every person should keep what he has earned and if you have not earned it, it will never be yours, not really. Just legal thieves is all you will be. I am sick and tired of people wanting handouts, why? because their momma and daddy had them.. not because they deserve it or worked for but because they were born and thing they should be rewarded for it. Just like when my kid said one time when I told her no to something she wanted, “well I didn’t ask to born”, I told her “if you had I would have said NO”! So go cry a river for your dem buddy’s, then they can put it on TV.
October 6th, 2009 at 7:49 pm