A group of Ivy League professors is urging wealthy Americans to donate their gains from the controversial Bush tax cuts that should have expired at the end of 2010, only for Republicans in Congress to force an extension. At their site Give It Back For Jobs they explain:
When the Bush administration took power in 2001, it enacted massive tax cuts that disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans. These beneficiaries represented the very segment of American society that had already seen their share of national income balloon over the prior generation.The cuts were defended in the name of the unexpected budget surpluses produced by the growth of the Clinton years. Even so, President Bush could not convince enough of the Senate that the cuts were affordable to make them permanent, and so they were set to expire next year.
It is now clear that the budgetary consequences of these skewed tax cuts have been dire. At the same time, the anemic expansion of the 2000s produced dramatic growth for the richest but stagnant incomes for most Americans.
Nevertheless, the current Republican Party insists on extending these cuts and holds the working many hostage to the wealthy few. President Obama, unwilling to gamble on the middle class’s account, has acceded to Republican demands.
Quite possibly, the President had no good alternative. All the Bush tax cuts, not just those for the wealthy, were scheduled to expire at the end of this month, jeopardizing an already fragile economic recovery.
But we citizens need not abandon ourselves to this failure of government. Instead, ordinary Americans, acting together, can create shadow fiscal policy. By acting together, we can set the country moving toward a just prosperity. Here’s how.
Americans who have the means should refuse to surrender to Senate Republicans. We should act, together, to give back our Bush tax cuts, by making donations to organizations that promote fairness, economic growth, and a vibrant middle class. Give It Back for Jobs enables joint action, by all visitors to this site, to redirect our Bush tax cuts to the wise and just programs that our government would promote if it had not been hijacked. As more and more Americans do so, Give It Back for Jobs will begin to replicate good government policy, outside the government and free from the grip of Senate Republicans.
We can, in this way, begin to redeem candidate Obama’s promise that “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
So step up y’all and give back at Give It Back For Jobs
