Govt is broke cuz we cut too many taxes

There were 499,999 others in last weekend's UK march.

Half a million people marched in London last weekend because David Cameron, the UK's version of Koch whore Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, wants to eviscerate government services. Police forces are being slashed, the National Health Service sold off and half a million government jobs eliminated.

In Britain as in the United States, corporate tax evaders are a big part of the reason governments have budget deficits.

Brace yourself, boys and girls, because what happened in the UK is going to happen here. Politicians in thrall to corporate predators are severely cutting government services. Congress is negotiating big spending cuts as Governors Gone Wild are slashing and burning government services in statehouses throughout the country.

Yes, we have budget problems. No, they aren't caused by government workers' gold-plated pensions (which average $19,000 a year). As Frances Fox Piven and Cornel West write in the UK Guardian,

"Austerity" policies falsely suggest that spending on social needs is the reason why governments – at all levels – are facing massive budget short falls. No! Our debt and deficit problems are a direct result of corporate tax breaks and extortionist bank practices that have lead to a scandalous and unprecedented transfer of wealth – from hardworking Americans to the richest segments of US society.

McClatchy News offers a terrific analysis of the failure of tax-cutting fervor in a recent story, "States broke? Maybe they cut taxes too much." Reporter Tom Pugh notes that states cut taxes to create jobs, and it hasn't worked. In Ohio,

Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich calls for extending a generous 21 percent cut in state income taxes. The measure was originally part of a sweeping 2005 tax overhaul that abolished the state corporate income tax and phased out a business property tax.

The tax cuts were supposed to stimulate Ohio's economy and create jobs. But that never happened once the economy tanked. Instead, the changes ended up costing Ohio more than $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue; money that would go a long way toward closing the state's $8 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2012...

Governors Gone Wild should take note of this little fact:

...states that cut taxes the most ended up with the largest budget shortfalls and higher job losses when the economy slowed again in 2001, according to research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities...