$114 billion in other provisions
pertaining to Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP* (does not include coverage-related
provisions).
*Subtract $25 billion total between DSH
payments and other provisions for spending that was cut from Medicaid and CHIP.
In total, Obamacare raids Medicare by
$716 billion from 2013 to 2022. Despite Medicare facing a 75-year unfunded
obligation of $37 trillion, Obamacare uses the savings from the cuts to pay for
other provisions in Obamacare, not to help shore up Medicare's finances.
Gee, that's a lot of money. That's money that could
have been provided to the government by making some of the largest corporations
pay something
in taxes. According to Pat Garafolo from Think
Progress;
Last year, Citizens for Tax Justice
found that 30 major corporations had made billions of dollars in profits while
paying no federal income tax between 2008 and 2010. Today, CTJ updated that
report to reflect the 2011 tax bill of those 30 companies, and 26 of them have
still managed to pay absolutely nothing over that four year period.
So maybe I'm just a whiner. Gee, corporations give
people jobs and allow Americans to live decent lives with salaries that keep up
with profits, right?
Wrong. From CNN:
Incomes
for 90% of Americans have been stuck in neutral, and it's not just because of
the Great Recession. Middle-class incomes have been stagnant for at least a
generation, while the wealthiest tier has surged ahead at lightning speed.
I've written about this before but I'll mention it
again;
In
the United States, wealth is highly concentrated in a relatively few hands. As
of 2010, the top 1% of households (the upper class) owned 35.4% of all
privately held wealth, and the next 19% (the managerial, professional, and
small business stratum) had 53.5%, which means that just 20% of the people
owned a remarkable 89%, leaving only 11% of the wealth for the bottom 80% (wage
and salary workers). http://ww2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
So now I want to ask the question: are we just idiotic
dolts in this country? For the entire period from 2008 to 2010, 30
major corporations paid no taxes! Meanwhile CEO salaries have risen
over 300%
It's even more revealing to compare the
actual rates of increase of the salaries of CEOs and ordinary workers; from
1990 to 2005, CEOs' pay increased almost 300% (adjusted for inflation), while
production workers gained a scant 4.3%. http://ww2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html
(Same article)
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
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