There should be no cuts to any important services and benefits, no increases in taxes for ordinary folks, and no tax audits of the poor and middle class until trillions of offshore stolen money is recovered, says TCBH! journalist Dave Lindorff

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By Dave Lindorff

Hold everything!

I mean it. Stop talking about cutting school budgets, Social Security benefits, Medicare, Veteran's pensions. Stop cutting subsidies to transit systems, to foreign aid. Stop cutting unemployment benefits. Stop it all.

There can not be any justification for budget cutting while wealthy criminals, corrupt politicians and business executives are hiding what reportedly totals between $29 trillion and $32 trillion in offshore tax havens.

A massive data dump by the Washington-based   International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) , working in conjunction with   dozens of news organizations around the globe , has exposed the secret files of over 120,000 dummy offshore companies that have been used for years to hide the wealth -- much of it ill-gotten, all of it tax-dodged -- of the world's rich and mega-rich.

Before we go further, let's think about those numbers, which are really mind-boggling. 

The US annual federal budget for 2012 was $3.7 trillion. The total US economy, largest in the world by far, was $15.8 trillion in 2012. That federal budget deficit that we hear so much about, which is growing by $1 trillion a year, totals about $16 trillion. 

Now by comparison, the Philadelphia school system -- fifth-largest in the country --  is in crisis, with 27 schools being closed down because of a budget shortfall of $304   million. That shortfall (the direct result of tax breaks given to wealthy corporations in the city), is approximately   one ten-millionth of a percent   of the amount of money criminal politicians and business leaders -- many and probably the vast majority of them, Americans --  are reportedly squirreling away abroad in hidden accounts each year!

The total shortfall in the US Social Security system, that is leading a huge number of politicians in Washington, Republican and Democrat, to claim that the sky is falling and that the system will go "bankrupt" in 2036, is $8.6 trillion. Even that huge deficit, caused by the large number of Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 reaching retirement age over the next two decades, could be totally erased by simply taking back a quarter of the money illegally shipped abroad by our and other countries' ruling elites.

Given that the US economy is roughly one quarter of the global economy, we can assume that at least a quarter of the hidden offshore money, or about $8 trillion, belongs to Americans, but in truth...

For the rest of this article by DAVE LINDORFF in ThisCantBeHappening!, the new independent 3-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative newspaper, please go to:   www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1668

Authors Website: http://www.thiscantbehappening.net

Authors Bio:

Dave Lindorff, winner of a 2019 "Izzy" Award for Outstanding Independent Journalism from the Park Center for Independent Media in Ithaca, is a founding member of the collectively-owned, journalist-run online newspaper www.thiscantbehappening.net. He is a columnist for Counterpunch, is author of several recent books ("This Can't Be Happening! Resisting the Disintegration of American Democracy" and "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal"). His latest book, coauthored with Barbara Olshanshky, is "The Case for Impeachment: The Legal Argument for Removing President George W. Bush from Office (St. Martin's Press, May 2006).