Print
Marie Antoinette
Perhaps one of the most absurd statements I have seen in recent weeks comes from Republican Representative Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan. When asked why he would vote to uphold what looks like an all-but-certain veto by President George W. Bush of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, McCotter answered:
I vowed never to raise taxes on anybody, no matter how disliked they might be.
Representative McCotter obviously needs to patch up his grammar skills along with his logic and his empathy for poor families without health insurance for their children. But then this man is not exactly a speechmaking wonder. He seems to take after his president in uttering strange phrases. He has called Osama bin Laden a “gutter snipe,” a phrase I think I last encountered in a Sherlock Holmes novel. Here’s another rhetorical tongue-twister from the same speech:
President Lincoln understood that liberty is not static. It does not remain in a perpetual stasis where we can enjoy our liberty while others have it denied unto them.
And here is the ending, which tries to sound like Lincoln, but ends up imitating Bush:
If freedom is advancing or eroding in the course of human events, let us rededicate ourselves not only to accomplishing the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan so that our world can experience a new birth of freedom, let us rededicate ourselves to the proposition that we who are born into freedom also bear the responsibility where we can to extend liberty to those who also yearn to breathe free, as do all of God’s creatures.
If you can explain that one, you must work for McCotter or live on a different planet.
Clearly, the quote about Children’s Health Insurance is right in character for the lead-tongued McCotter. The second part of the quote is bizarre, to say the least. Did McCotter mean he would not raise taxes on people who were disliked? I wasn’t aware there was a tax on disliked people, but maybe there should be. Just think how much money George Bush and Dick Cheney would have to pay–and what about all those Halliburton executives?
Was McCotter offering sympathy for disliked people? Was he saying that rather than vote to override George Bush veto he would sustain it because George Bush is disliked? Does McCotter have more empathy for disliked people than he does for children without health care?
Or instead of referring to people, was he referring to taxes? Was he saying that he would never vote to raise a tax, especially if it was disliked? The plural seems to suggest he would never vote to raise taxes no matter how disliked taxes might be. But how disliked does a tax have to be to be to not “raise taxes on anybody?” There are a lot of taxes I don’t particularly like, but the consequences of my not paying those taxes would shut down the government.
Perhaps Representative McCotter has read one too many of those tax protester handouts–you know, the ones that basically say, if you don’t like a tax don’t pay it. Does Representative McCotter have another brilliant tax idea besides a tax on disliked people? Maybe we should reform the tax code so that you get to choose which taxes you want to pay–sort of a citizen’s version of the line item veto.
Each April, instead of wrestling with that incomprehensible 1040, you would get a new form, a questionnaire. It would list all the taxes you pay, federal, state and local. Off to the side would be two columns of boxes to check, one labeled “I want to pay,” the other “I don’t want to pay.” Then several weeks later you would get in the mail an envelope that would instruct you in how to pay the taxes you do want to pay.
Now that would be direct democracy. Heck with electing people like McCotter to Congress; just let us decide what we want to pay. It is not such an illogical idea. Think what would happen to the Iraq War if suddenly everyone who didn’t want to pay for it actually had the chance to do so. And all those pork barrel earmark projects? The Bridge to Nowhere would go nowhere if we followed Representative McCotter’s plan.
Perhaps most disturbing is the assumption behind the whole quote. Representative McCotter seems to assume that increasing the allocation for Children’s Health Insurance will automatically result in raising taxes. This is either the height of demagoguery or stupidity or both. The Republicans have been opposing any Democratic Party initiative with the cry it will raise taxes for a generation, but in this case McCotter has stepped way over the line, right into Fantasyland.
No one that I know of has said the bill will raise taxes. No Democrat I know of has proposed raising taxes to pay for the bill. That McCotter would make such an accusation in defense of his own vote shows how far the Republican Party has slipped. GOP representatives like McCotter will even lie to defend a vote that hurts America’s children. Not even Karl Rove would stoop so low.
Besides his dubious grammar there is Representative McCotter’s dubious logic. His official biography says he is Chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee and a lawyer. According to GovTrack one of five pieces of legislation he has sponsored is National Dog Bite Prevention Week. But then what do you expect from a party whose leader reads to children with the book upside down and who recently caused yet another controversy when he said, “childrens do learn” and the White House tried to correct the transcript.
As for Representative McCotter’s logic, saying you won’t raise taxes no matter what seems a rather stupid thing for a lawyer to say. I certainly would not want him defending me. But then, he seems to be exactly the kind of guy the GOP seems to want–after all they have a president who is just as stubborn. Maybe they clone them in some top secret facility guarded by Blackwater. Or maybe there is a reason McCotter’s second largest campaign contributor is the National Beer Wholesalers Association.
Does McCotter really mean it? After all, what if there is another Great Depression, another 9/11, another flu epidemic, a storm that would make Katrina look like a mild breeze? The country could be falling apart and McCotter would not raise taxes to save it. He’d rather have the country suffer than change his precious pledge.
It is here things get serious, because exactly who is McCotter protecting? He lives in Livonia, Michigan, a place described in glowing terms on its Internet profile:
With a population of over 100,000, Livonia is the second-largest city in Wayne County and the eighth-largest in Michigan. Yet, with its size and convenient location, Livonia is also one of the safest cities in the U.S., and a great place to raise a family. It is an economic powerhouse, with the third-highest value of property in Michigan. At the same time, Livonia’s property tax rate has continued to remain the lowest in Wayne County.
According to the Census Bureau Livonia has an unemployment rate of 2% and almost half its employed citizens are in “management, professional, and related occupations.” The median household income in 1999 (the latest date I could find figures for) was an astounding $63, 018–remember that is the median! The percentage of black or African Americans is 0.9%. The poverty rate is 3%.
Among the Claritas Prizm cluster groups living in Livonia is one suitably named “Upper Crust.” They are:
The nation’s most exclusive address, Upper Crust is the wealthiest lifestyle in America–a haven for empty-nesting couples over 55 years old. No segment has a higher concentration of residents earning over $200,000 a year or possessing a postgraduate degree. And none has a more opulent standard of living.
According to Prizm, Upper Crusters drive Jaguar XKs, spend $3,000 on foreign travel and shop at Bloomingdales. Their median household income is $110,000.
So these are the people the wonderfully principled Representative McCotter is defending–the Upper Crust. We would not want to raise taxes on people owning Jaguars and probably yachts so we could provide health insurance for children, would we, Representative McCotter? Oh no, we need to allow those Upper Crusters to buy more Jaguars and go on more European vacations. In fact what the average Upper Cruster spends on “foreign travel” would pay the health insurance costs for several families funded by the Children’s Health Insurance Bill.
North Carolina’s Health Choice for Children program–which is funded in part by the very bill McCotter voted against, states:
For those at the higher end of the income scale, there is an enrollment fee of $50 for one child or $100 for two or more children. There are also copayments of $20 for nonemergency emergency room use, $5 per physician or dental visit. For prescription drugs there are copayments of $1 for a generic drug, $1 for a brand drug for which no generic is available, and $10.00 for brand drug for which there is a generic available.
Representative McCotter’s refusal to fund the Children’s Health Care Insurance Program is not merely bad grammar or faulty logic, it is the contemporary equivalent of Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal “Let them eat cake” quote, only in this case it’s let them sit in the emergency room.
We all know what happened to Marie Antoinette–she lost her head. Representative McCotter doesn’t appear to have one to lose.
Print Posted by: liberalamerican
