Or both. For when it came time to vote on a measure to repeal a smallish tax break for the oil industry, Traitor Joe, the senators from the party of Hoover and a few other Democrats voted to kill the bill.
Look at the vote (a "nay" vote is a vote to kill it) and you'll see some surprising senators who stood up for the oil industry. John Kerry. Chris Dodd. Why the hell are they standing up for BP, Exxon and Shell?
It wasn't that big of a tax break, either, maybe $3.5 billion a year.
It just goes to show, though, that when it come to doing anything to tackle the deficit, the Congress is going to put the burden on the backs of the middle class and the working poor.
Which is why you've probably seen a lot of chatter on the blogs over the last few days about how the Republicans are trying to build momentum to having the Federal government default on the national debt. For the Republicans know that the ensuing economic chaos will destroy the middle class and greatly expand the ranks of the working poor. Oh, the rich will take their lumps, but at the end of the day, they'll be, by comparison, far richer.
Which, after all, is what the party of Hoover has been pushing for ever since the end of the 1890s.
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2 comments:
Why did they kill the bill? Two words: "Campaign donations."
Bought politicians tend to stay bought when there are enough zeros attached.
I think it's been clear since roughly the Reagan era that at least some Republicans are trying to crash the US financial system. Foreign wars line their pockets while increasing the US debt, cutting taxes on big corporations gets them kickbacks while maintaining the US debt, and when the system does crash, they'll finally be able to get rid of all the political suicide stuff like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid that they've hated for 70 years but aren't able to tackle for fear of losing a zillion votes. It's another use of the shock doctrine: in an emergency you can justify just about anything and not have the blame stick to you as long as the source of the emergency isn't extremely clearly linked to you.
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