You may be Mitch-taken

You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts. Daniel Patrick Moynihan



U. S. Senator Mitch McConnell likes to keep the people of the Commonwealth informed by occasionally penning missives to the editors of local papers published throughout the Bluegrass state, such as the one printed in the Oct. 1st edition of the Appalachian News-Express. Funny thing is if I didn’t know he was merely keeping us informed, I’d swear this was meant to better the Republicans’ chances in the upcoming election.

Take the whole to-do over what to do about federal taxes. McConnell, et al, would like to see the Bush era tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy made permanent under the assumption that this is the way to decrease the unemployment rate. That flies in the face of reality, though, because after these tax cuts were enacted, unemployment rates inexplicably went from 4.2% in 2001 to 9.2% today.

McConnell tries to give the impression that if the Bush era tax cuts aren’t extended, everyone will pay higher taxes. He does this by averaging the tax bills out among all tax payers, while overlooking the tax breaks planned for the bottom 98% of tax payers. In fact, by concentrating on tax breaks for the lower tiers of wage earners, the Democrats have the tax burden for this group at its lowest level since 1957.

One other curious prediction by McConnell is that if the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy are allowed to lapse, Kentucky wage earners will see over the next ten years a drop of $3000 per year in disposable income. He doesn’t mention that income for the bottom 98% of wage earners has been in decline since the tax bill was passed in 2001.

McConnell also takes aim at the law the Grand Old Tea Party (GOTP) has dubbed Obamacare. McConnell forecasts higher costs and decreased choice. Never mind that since McConnell led the charge against the last attempt to pass healthcare reform in 1994, its costs went up astronomically and the number of Americans without health insurance sky-rocketed.

Additionally, McConnell overlooks the estimate by the Congressional Budget Office that healthcare reform will result in a reduction in the federal deficit by 1.3 trillion through 2029. This is odd in light of the fact that reducing the deficit seems to be a pet project of the GOTP, even if extending the tax breaks for the rich would add around a quarter of a trillion dollars to the federal deficit.

By the way, McConnell, et al, have set a precedent that will in all likelihood preclude the repeal of Obamacare even if the GOP gets complete control of the Congress. It only takes one senator to keep a bill from ever being voted on, and even if no one senator does that, it now officially takes 60 senators to get a bill passed, thanks to the lock-step manner in which the GOP usually votes.

What the GOTP and Senator McConnell are penning their hopes on is the voters will either forget or forgive their role in creating the mess the country is in and reward them by putting them in charge once more. Risky, in my opinion, since they seem intent on business as usual if this happens