I was thinking about the contrast between my two grandmothers’
kitchens at breakfast time. Grandmother Heath was up before dawn.
She stoked up the fire in her cook stove with cobs and a chock of
hickory and set the percolator on the back burner. It would burble
and sing and the aroma of strong coffee would fill her kitchen and
waft through the house calling the family to breakfast. Each perc
re-circulated and strengthened the brew. Grandmother Heath’s
breakfasts fueled you for the days’ work. The Heaths were farmers
and Democrats with a big Capital D.
My Grandmother Hays had a new modern “dripolator”. She
would rise at a more convenient hour, usually after her husband had
gone down to switch on the electric range and heat the water on the
back burner. Grandmother would do her hair, and descend in time to
fill the top receptacle of her coffee maker from the kettle. The smell
it created as it trickled down through the grounds was as timid and
weak as the uniformly insipid brew that it produced. Grandmother Hays’
breakfasts barely assuaged the pangs of morning hunger. The Hays were
town dwelling people of business and Republican with an emphasized
R.
It struck me that their contrasting approaches to breakfast is much
like the contrasting approaches to economic crisis of our two political
parties. One produces a barely colored hot beverage, the other a potent
brew with strength and the power to lead you to the breakfast table.
It is time for breakfast in the American economy.
It is time to advance a Democratic economic stimulus package with
a tax cut as its centerpiece but a tax cut to benefit the people who
need it most in a faltering economy. Wage earners or self-employed
people making $70,000 or less a year each pay the first 15% of each
dollar they earn to the Federal government in payroll taxes. Yes,
I know that on paper one half of that amount is assessed against the
employer, but the economic effect is the same as if the entire tax
were deducted from the employees pay. The payroll tax funds Social
Security, SSI and Medicare and, when “loaned” to the Federal
treasury it funds the operations of government. Rents, royalties,
dividends and interest an capital gains income do not bear this tax
nor is it assessed against any wage, salary or self-employment income
above the $70,000.00 cutoff.
Workers who do not earn enough to incur the income tax still bear
this 15% burden, Wage earners in the lowest income tax bracket bear
a real tax burden of 29%. A Democratic economic stimulus package should
include a plan to abolish the $70,000.00 Social Security Tax cap on
earned income, the $125,000.00 cap on Medicare Taxes and impose the
tax equally on all income while cutting the rate in half. It is a
policy of tax reform rather than a naked rate cut and one that would
benefit those who need relief most, wage earners and small business
while funding the extension of Medicare to cover prescription drugs.
A Democratic economic stimulus package should be designed to increase
purchasing power and strength at the bottom from which it will percolate
up rather than pouring money in at the top to trickle down where it
will be absorbed by layer after layer leaving the foundation of the
economic structure resting on dry and unstable sand. It is time to
come to breakfast.
