( You may remember Rick Scott as the guy who ran the company convicted of the largest Medicare fraud in the history of America , who then took his money and ran for Governor of Florida , where he prevented the state from expanding Medicaid for low-income Floridians .)
Scott is the second-richest guy in the Senate and , true to form , he ’ s now echoing the sentiments of the richest guy in the Senate , Mitt Romney .
“ There are 47 percent who are with him ,” Romney said of Obama voters back in 2012 , “ who are dependent upon government , who believe that they are victims , who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them , who believe that they are entitled to health care , to food , to housing , to you name it . These are people who pay no income tax .”
Most low-income working people in America actually pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes than do many billionaires and multi-multi-millionaires .
Working people pay Social Security taxes , Medicare taxes , property taxes , sales taxes , and other taxes in the form of fees for everything from a driver ’ s license to road tolls to annual car inspections .
Billionaires , on the other hand , have bought politicians to write so many loopholes into the tax code that most — like Donald Trump — will go decades without paying a single penny in income taxes .
But that level of inequality isn ’ t enough for Senator Scott , who ’ s committed to out-neoliberaling Ronnie himself . He wants everybody in Romney ’ s “ 47 percent ,” even people making $ 7.25 an hour or less , to subsidize billionaires by paying income taxes on their meager wages .
His logic is nuts . The simple reality is , if you want more Americans to pay income taxes , all you have to do is raise working people ’ s pay . This isn ’ t rocket science .
We saw it work out in a big way between 1933 and 1980 , before Reagan ’ s war on labor , when unions helped wages — and income tax payments — steadily rise for working people . Those rising wages literally built the middle class , which peaked in 1980 and then began its long slide under Reaganomics .
In the early years of the Reagan administration , before his neoliberal “ trickle down ” and “ supply side ” policies started to really bite Americans , only 18 percent of Americans were so poor that their income didn ’ t qualify to be taxed . As “ Right to Work for Less ” laws spread across America and Republicans on the Supreme Court made it harder for unions to function , however , more and more working people fell below the tax threshold . When Romney ran for president in 2012 , it was 47 percent of working people who had fallen out of the middle class and were then so poor that they lived below the income tax threshold .
Today , just a decade later ( and after the $ 2 trillion Trump tax cut ), it takes two working adults to maintain the same lifestyle that one worker could provide in 1980 . That ’ s why an estimated 61 percent of working Americans this year will make so little money that they ’ ll struggle to pay the rent and buy food , and their income won ’ t be subject to taxation .
But Rick Scott ’ s solution to this situation isn ’ t to raise the income of working-class people so they make enough to pay for food , rent , and qualify to pay income taxes .
Quite to the contrary , he ’ s suggesting that low-income people should be hit with their very own special income tax — in addition to the dozens of other taxes they ’ re already paying — so multimillionaires and billionaires like him and his friends can see their own taxes go down a tiny bit .
“ All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game ,” Scott says in his 11-point plan , “ even if a small amount . Currently over half of Americans pay no income tax .”
But for Ron Johnson , even that ’ s not quite enough of a club to beat working-class Americans over the head , particularly those who are retired and no longer working . He ’ s targeting the older folks , in fact , for his punishment .
He wants to open the Social Security and Medicare trust funds to an annual vote by Congress by moving those programs from the “ mandatory spending ” category to the easily changed or deleted “ discretionary spending .” “ Defense spending has always been discretionary ,” Johnson said on a recent radio show . “ VA spending is discretionary . What ’ s mandatory are things like Social Security and Medicare . If you qualify for the entitlement you just get it no matter what the cost .”
While Scott ’ s plan would have Congress both impose an income tax on the lowest-wage workers in America and require Congress to vote every 5 years on whether Social Security and Medicare should even continue to exist , Johnson is in more of a hurry and wants to move that vote up to every single year .
“ What we ought to be doing is we ought to turn everything into discretionary spending so that it ’ s all evaluated so that we can fix problems or fix programs that are broken that are going to be going bankrupt ,” Johnson said , echoing a Republican refrain dating back to the 1930s that “ any day now ” Social Security is going down the drain so we should just hand it over to Wall Street now .
Democrats should flip the script — essentially , pull a Reagan on the GOP — with a plan of their own , only this one with some real middle-class tax cuts .
For example , Democrats could propose ending the income taxes on Social Security , unemployment benefits , and income from tips .
Before Reagan , the first two were totally tax-free and the IRS had never pursued tips until he directed the agency to do so in 1988 .
After all , the money you receive when you retire or become disabled and begin to draw Social Security is money that you already paid in , in large part , throughout your working life .
Therefore , when Franklin Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935 , the money people got from Social Security was not taxable and not even tracked by the IRS .
When Congress passed legislation in the 1930s enacting unemployment insurance , they established a trust funded by employees , using money their
The Trial Lawyer x 89