Normally I just roll my eyes at inane Wall Street shenanigans and continue about my day. I understand that world about as much as Reverend Rick Warren over there at Saddleback Church (a name just rife with sexual innuendo) understands the gays— but then I started to pay attention to the state and city budget proposals being floated by Governor David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and I realized something: class warfare has begun. Oh, hells to the naw! Combined, the state and city of New York are facing a budget shortfall of almost $20 billion and to close these deficits Paterson and Bloomberg have come up with budgets that would increase license fees for high rollers like barbers and manicurists; raise tuition at state universities; increase the sales tax; cut funding for hospitals and nursing homes by $1 billion; layoff 1,000 police officers and 14,000 teachers in New York City; and raise fares for NYC transit by 23 percent.Yet with all these proposals, not one of them calls for an income tax increase for the wealthiest New Yorkers.There wasn’t even mention of imposing an oftfloated “millionaire’s tax” on those making over $1 million a year. So once again, those with the least are being expected to sacrifice the most. And here I thought George Bush had finally left office.
Oh wait, he did. Furthermore, I seem to recall electing some smooth-talking Brother to the White House who kept promising me that he would repeal the Bush-era tax cuts that favor the wealthy and use the money raised by doing so to give direct aid to states facing huge cuts in education, health care and other key areas of their budgets. But now that he’s president, Barack Obama has yet to firmly state that he will indeed repeal those Bush tax cuts—some of his economic advisers believe that it’s not a good idea to raise taxes on anyone during a recession. But seeing as every state is strapped for cash and the only way they seem to be able to raise money is to ask my broke ass to pay an extra $16 for a monthly subway pass that already costs me $81 (and that’s cutting into my drinkin’ money, dammit), I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask the wealthiest to share some of the pain. And we can start by snatching back every bit of that $18.4 billion in executive bonuses.
There are laws on the state and federal level that allow for corporate stakeholders to recoup their losses by rescinding previously-awarded executive compensation. In fact, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo used a so-called clawback provision to force AIG, another corporate giant that received Federal bailout money, to freeze executive pay and recover ill-gotten bonuses. As Bammers readies to distribute an additional $350 billion to the financial industry, he should use these same techniques to recover that $18.4 billion, which if given directly to New York could go a long way to closing our budget shortfalls.
Like I said, I didn’t sleep through all of my econ class so I get the rationale of not raising taxes during a recession. But guess what—taxes are being raised anyway in every state in America. Every fare increase for the subway, every tuition hike at state and community colleges and every public hospital that has to lay off its nurses amounts to a tax on middle- and lower-income workers who depend on these services. So inevitably, a tax of some form is going to be raised; it’s only a matter of who will bear the brunt of that increase. As we’ve seen, both Gov. Paterson and Mayor Bloomberg have busted out their big budget guns and aimed them squarely at the middle and working classes, but I’m betting that Bammy’s guns are bigger. I think it’s high-time he pulled them out and delivered on his campaign promise to fight for real economic relief for the majority of working Americans. C
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