Americans for Prosperity made a contribution to Flagstaff’s local paper last week: A full-page ad calling out our Democratic Congressman for alleged inaction on the trillion dollar national debt that’s coming down the pike due to Republican tax legislation enacted last December. AFP has money to burn for ridiculous propaganda, but Flagstaff Democrats aren’t taking it. Two rebuttal letters appeared in today’s Arizona Daily Sun.
From local attorney Patrice Horstman:
Sunday’s Daily Sun included a full page ad funded by the dark money-loving and Koch Brothers-funded Americans for Prosperity, which blamed Rep. Tom O’Halleran’s votes for trillion-dollar spending.
Yet it was the Trump-led Congressional Republicans that passed a tax bill that has been reported to have driven up the federal deficit and pushed the national debt to a percentage of annual economic output levels not seen since just after World War II. According to the analysis by the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, “Trillion-dollar deficits will return permanently by next year — three years earlier than projected — and debt will exceed the size of the economy within a decade.”
So campaign rhetoric/ad blasts from this ilk are lying about who and why our national debt is skyrocketing. Be informed and vote the rascals out!
From party First Vice-Chair Harriet Young:
In this era of political deception, the ad that ran in the Arizona Daily Sun yesterday asking the rhetorical question of Tom O’Halleran “What are you waiting for?” is an avatar of tortured logic. It is also a prime example of the power of money in politics.
Indeed, a large portion of the population views the debt, run up by the current GOP majority in both the US House and Senate, as dangerous. That same majority of Americans wants a secure retirement via Social Security and affordable health care in retirement via Medicare for which they have paid taxes their whole life. Where’s the disconnect?
What’s missing is that Republicans want to cut taxes for the billionaire/millionaire class, something they just accomplished with their Trump tax cut bill. In their usual whack a mole style, they now want to eliminate Social Security as a benefit program and have that money flow to Wall Street for the stock brokers to play with. This will look like a budget balancing tactic. Medicare also will go out to seniors as a fixed amount voucher to cover medical expenses. But seniors will have to pay out of pocket if the voucher is too small. Voila! Budget balanced.
So, in a time when the GOP controls all branches of the federal government, just as they do in Arizona, they puff up and demand a man of conscience and compassion to fix their mess. The GOP can fix their own mess if they restore the tax breaks they’ve given to the likes of The Americans for Prosperity supporters. These sham educational foundations that gather tax exempt donations pushing for political goals drain billions of dollars from the tax base while attacking responsible legislators who worry about the 99 percent, not the 1 percent. Then they want to cut programs that the people have paid for their whole lives.
What are you waiting for, taxpayer? Stop voting for tax dodgers.