Rather than go there, Scrat (I believe it can and should be done, just so you know, and taxes would have to go up, waaaay up, especially on people like me--and just suspicioning here--you) let's get back to something our new friend McGentrix posited in another thread (without the snarkiness)--what the tax cut
could buy.
Here's an itemized list of things the tax cut might have paid for. They are diverse, pressing, some would say essential -- not just to low-income Americans, but to many of us who, having had a choice, might have directed the billions elsewhere...
Tax-cut total:
$330 billion
Amount needed to provide health insurance for all 9.2 million currently uninsured children for one year:
$13 billion
Amount needed to provide health insurance for all 41.2 million uninsured Americans, including children, for one year:
$98 billion
Amount needed to close state budget gaps across the country:
$78 billion
Amount needed to hire an additional 100,000 teachers to reduce class size, provide grants to repair 6,000 schools and assist with new-school construction, and provide additional math and reading help for over 9 million eligible low-income students:
$300 billion
Amount needed to end homelessness for chronically homeless people within 10 years:
$1.3 billion per year to create and sustain 150,000 units of permanent supportive housing
Amount needed by the Environmental Protection Agency to complete cleanups at high-priority toxic waste sites through the Superfund program:
$92 million
Cost of Head Start for all 1.8 million children, up to 5 years old, who currently need but don't receive it:
$25 billion
Cost of continuing to provide grants to potentially jeopardized regional poison control centers and maintain a toll-free poison information phone number between 2005 and 2009:
$142 million
Cost of USDA testing of 12,500 cattle samples for mad cow disease, in addition to homeland security measures such as physical security upgrades at lab facilities and background investigation of workers:
$21.7 million
Budgeted cost of continuing to enable states to meet energy emergencies due to extremes in temperature, either during severe cold weather in the winter or sustained heat waves in the summer:
$1.7 billion
Cost of measures to improve food safety in 2003, including hiring additional FDA inspectors, and developing new ways for federal inspectors to detect food-borne illnesses in meat and poultry and determine the source of contamination:
$101 million
Estimated homeland security costs for full support of state and local emergency personnel in their efforts to prevent and respond to acts of terrorism for three years:
$12 billion
Cost of providing housing assistance nationwide for victims of domestic violence from 2004 through 2008:
$100 million
Cost of hiring 100 new public-school teachers:
$3.125 million
Cost of hiring 100 state child-care workers:
$2.08 million
Cost of fully immunizing 100 children against preventable diseases:
$64,433
Price of 250,000 new fire trucks:
$56.2 billion
Identified funding needs for community-based services in the care and treatment of HIV/AIDS in 2002:
$2 billion
Identified funding needs for HIV prevention and surveillance prevention programs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:
$1 billion
Identified funding needs for HIV/AIDS research at the National Institutes of Health:
$2.9 billion
Estimated cost of funding Older Americans Act programs for seniors -- such as transportation, delivered meals and elder abuse prevention -- for 10 years:
$39 billion
Cost of providing needed assistive technology and durable medical equipment for 1 million individuals with disabilities for 10 years:
$39 billion
Cost of compensating federal employees called to active duty in the uniformed services or National Guard for the difference between their civilian and military pay:
$89 million over the 2004-2008 period
Yearly cost of direct treatment for mental illness in both the private and public sectors in the U.S.:
$92 billion
Estimated cost of spending for countermeasures against smallpox, anthrax, botulinum toxin, plague and Ebola under Project BioShield:
$5.6 billion between 2004 and 2013
Cost of 60 million doses of an improved smallpox vaccine:
$900 million
Annual cost of providing services to foster children, including educational assistance, job placement, health services and room and board:
$200 million
Amount needed to establish a National Housing Trust to provide communities with funds to build, rehabilitate and preserve 1.5 million units of affordable housing over the next 10 years:
$5 billion
Cost, per recipient, of Job Corps, an education and training program benefiting disadvantaged youth and young adults:
$17,000
Federal funding requested in 2004 to maintain the National Domestic Violence Hotline:
$3 million
Federal funding requested in 2004 for the national Abandoned Infants Assistance program:
$45 million
Cost of assisting states in covering the excess costs of providing special education services to children with disabilities:
$8.9 billion
Annual cost of providing funding to public libraries through state formula grants so that libraries can promote wider access to learning and information:
$1.6 billion between 2004 and 2009
Cost of providing grants for treatment, counseling and referral for runaway and homeless youth subjected to sexual abuse in 2003:
$15 million
Annual cost of funding the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children:
$20 million
Here is the
source for these numbers.
Now if we were
reallllly progressive, you and I (and anybody else who wants to) could make out a list that comes to $330 billion, and perhaps leave some left for debt service.
Maybe fax it or e-mail it to our elected representatives. Or something like that.
