By John Lawrence / Will Blog For Food / August 30, 2011
Grover Norquist has never been elected to office yet Republican politicians are pledging their obeisance to him. Norquist is one of the most powerful unelected men controlling US politics.
His motto is “I want to shrink government down so small that I can drown it in the bathtub.”
Elected representatives are supposed to swear an oath to uphold the Constitution; instead they are swearing an oath or, if you prefer, making a pledge, to Grover Norquist that they won’t vote for any legislation that will raise taxes.
BUT, there is a big exception looming on the horizon.
As it turns out, Norquist is ambivalent whern it comes to raising taxes on poor and working people. President Obama wants to extend a temporary tax cut of 2% on employees’ share of FICA or social security taxes, but Republican politicians are balking. The FICA tax is a tax that affects mainly poor and middle class workers. There are no deductions or exemptions so everyone that works for a living pays FICA taxes on the first dollar they make. Even if they make less than $5 a year they will pay FICA taxes on that $5.
On the other hand the rich only pay FICA taxes only on the first $106,000 of their income. Anything they make over that, they pay no FICA taxes on at all.
Hedge fund managers and others whose income is mainly capital gains – in other words unearned as opposed to earned income – pay absolutely nothing in FICA taxes.
Self-employed people are especially screwed by FICA taxes as they pay both the employer’s and the employee’s share or in other words double which presently amounts to 15.3%. This double payment for the self-employed is thanks to President Reagan and Alan Greenspan. They invented the social security Ponzi scheme which involves taxing the working class, transferring the money to the General Fund (so income taxes need not be raised on the rich), and then piling up worthless IOUs in the Social Security Trust Fund.
The fact that they are worthless can be easily deduced from the fact that Republican politicians now say social security needs “reform” although $2.5 trillion supposedly exists in the Trust Fund, a fact they will never mention.
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