LETTER: Tsongas Calls for End to Bush Tax Cuts

This was submitted by Congresswoman Niki Tsongas.

Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives passed a budget that proposed deep and permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. The Republican budget (often called the Ryan budget for its author, Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan) paid for those expensive tax cuts by eliminating traditional Medicare and replacing it with a voucher system that would cover less than one-third of seniors’ healthcare costs. 

In the days leading up to Thanksgiving, that same debate was once again played out in Congress as a special bipartisan committee (the so-called “Super Committee”) tasked with finding at least $1.5 trillion in savings to reduce the federal deficit stumbled over the insistence by some committee members that Medicare and Social Security benefits be cut to fund a permanent extension of the Bush tax cuts.

The math is clear.  We will face a serious budget crisis even if the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest expire on schedule.  But there is simply no way to extend them permanently—at a cost of $800 billion over the next ten years—without reducing hard-earned benefits for our nation’s seniors and veterans. 

This Thanksgiving’s impasse was simply one example of the larger choice that we face as a nation: Do we want to ask the majority of Americans--including our seniors, our returning veterans, and our struggling middle-class families–to sacrifice even more for the benefit of those who have the most?  Or do we want to balance our federal budget by asking everyone who benefits from living in this country to share in its future? 

Despite the failure of the Super Committee, Congress still has a responsibility to put our nation on a path to financial security.  In the months ahead we will be confronted with the same fundamental choice of permanently extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans or ensuring that the guarantees of Social Security and Medicare are preserved for future generations.

Social Security and Medicare are two of the most successful domestic programs in our nation's history.  For seventy years, Social Security has provided basic economic security that families who paid into it could rely on in times of need and has meant some measure of financial independence for generations of older Americans.  Similarly, Medicare provides the assurance for America’s seniors that the costs of doctor’s appointments, prescription drugs, as well as routine tests and treatments will be covered.

My office recently heard from a woman named Harriet in Dracut whose sole income is from Social Security.  After her Medicare deduction, her Social Security check only comes to $1100 per month and is barely enough to pay for groceries, prescription drug copays, dental work, and supplemental health insurance.  Millions of seniors like Harriet simply cannot afford any type of Social Security cut.

After years of paying into these programs, our seniors and those about to retire deserve the peace of mind knowing that their retirement security is protected and that they won’t have to deplete a lifetime of savings if they require longer hospital stays, assisted living, or a complicated surgery.  Similarly, our children and grandchildren should have the same access to a secure retirement rather than having to shoulder more and more of that burden so that we can give tax cuts to the rich now. 

I supported the unprecedented spending cuts passed in August that were part of the agreement to avoid government default because I recognize that cuts in government spending must be made in order to bring our budget into balance.  But we cannot balance the budget through spending cuts alone without doing real harm to the middle class by slashing public education, food and drug safety, air traffic control, highway and bridge safety, border security, consumer protection, and national defense. 

That is why tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans must be allowed to expire as planned at the end of next year—returning tax rates for the top 2% of Americans to their levels during the 1990’s when we enjoyed both record budget surpluses and robust economic growth.  Additionally, we need to close the kind of corporate tax loopholes that enabled Exxon-Mobil to pay no federal taxes in 2009 even as it made billions of dollars in profit.

Proposals that extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while also seeking to make cuts to Medicare and Social Security essentially prioritize protecting the most fortunate among us at the expense of our nation’s safety net for everyone else.  Attempts to privatize these programs, or to turn them into block grants or vouchers that transfer those costs onto those least able to afford it, must be rejected.