If at all possible, I will find a transcript? Yes, a Transcript! and post it here. (or you can now watch it all! or listen)
Some points – and I must paraphrase.
Thirty years ago, the average family with one income earner had more disposable income than the average family with two incomes does today.
During the Bush years, the 400 something top income earners saw their income double, even as their tax rate was cut in half – effectively sitting at 16% now. At the same time, the average worker’s income effectively dropped. Middle class Men, lost 11% of their income, women lost 4%.
During Bush years, 8 million citizens slipped from the middle class to below the poverty line.
We don’t need tax cuts for billionaires! We need to create jobs for the middle class and rebuild this economy.
During the 8 years of Bush, we lost 600,000 private sector jobs. There was a Net Gain of 1 million jobs – all in the government sector.
In Education – out of 30 countries, the United States ranked 25th in math and 21st in science.
170,000 students who graduate high school and want to go to college, can not afford it. We are not investing in our future, but we want to give tax breaks to the already rich.
75% of the youth who apply for the armed services do not qualify because of low mental capacity, prior criminal activity or obesity.
We couldn’t get one Republican vote to give a $250.00 check to people making $14,000 a year on social security or disability – but they want us to give thousands of dollars in tax breaks to people who are already rich and don’t need them.
Capital Gains tax would continue at 15% – so people who make their living off their investments would pay less taxes than Firemen, Teachers and Policemen.
Some links to Estate tax issue that the Senator raised :
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered – not gambling in stocks, but service rendered. The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means. Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective – a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, “The New Nationalism” (August 31, 1910)
The absence of effective State, and, especially, national, restraint upon unfair money-getting has tended to create a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power. The prime need is to change the conditions which enable these men to accumulate power which is not for the general welfare that they should hold or exercise. We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. – Theodore Roosevelt, speech at Osawatomie, Kansas, “The New Nationalism” (August 31, 1910)
An oft-cited book he talked about was “Third World America
Corporate America is already sitting on 2 Trillion dollars of cash on hand – I don’t think that further tax breaks are going to make them create jobs.
An article demonstrating how this “Deal” was pretty one-sided and hurts low-income people while loading up the already rich. And an article covering the “Long Speech.”
The Republicans are showing who they fight for – the top 2% and even more for the top .3% – the top one third of one percent!!
Links of Interest:
http://www.washin…gtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conten
http://online.wsj.com/arti
http://www.washingtonpost.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/in
http://www.nytimes.com/200
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/13/us/politics/13tax.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
an article on the highlights – http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/12/14-6
And for a foot note, a bumper sticker : “Sarah Palin 2012 – the world is going to end then anyway!”