THE BENEFITS OF GOING AFTER TAX AVOIDANCE SCHEMES

Have you ever had a roommate that eats all your food and leaves the utilities on? To be sure, they pay a significantly larger share of the rent because they have the room with a balcony and their own bathroom. But then they eat your food, ask you to drive to them places (since "you're going anyways"), bring home "guests" on a regular basis, borrow money they forget to pay back, and then remind you of the one time they brought home beer when it's time to pay the utilities.

When you bring up what you've spent on gas driving them around, what you've spent on food they've eaten, and what utilities cost since they moved in and started turning up the air/heat they simply say that they pay more in rent. Then they add that you need to start watching your budget because they only eat snacks and take shorter showers than you.

Unless you're a complete fool these roommate situations don't last very long.

I bring this up because the rich and their congressional Ooompa Loompas in Congress have been complaining for years about the rich paying more in taxes and how our budget is in shambles because America spends more money than it takes in every year. They ignore that just 12 short years ago we were running budget surpluses that could have effectively paid off our national debt (then $5.7 trillion) by 2011.

Then America's rich decided to eat our groceries and bring home guests (as it were).

Like the roommate described above, conservatives like to point out that the rich pay "more of the rent" but then ignore how our nation's finances went down the crapper once they decided to mooch and go cheap when it comes to paying the daily bills. To solve the imbalance conservative members of Congress demand cuts in federal spending programs, but only if they are  programs that support America's working class.

Rarely, if ever, do conservatives say we need to go after federal spending programs (tax exemptions, write-offs, and other subsidies) that primarily benefit the rich. In fact, if you add up all the subsidies and taxes that benefit primarily the rich (again, tax exemptions, write-offs, and other subsidies) it's clear that budget expenditures for tax cuts and subsidies transfer more than $1 trillion of our nation's wealth to help subsidize the lifestyles of America's rich and famous each year.

More specifically, if you add it all up, tax avoidance for America's richest class cost our nation about $1.4 trillion dollars. Indeed, if we did something about tax avoidance schemes (exclusions, credits, capital gains, loopholes, tax subsidies from special deductions, etc.) that allow corporations like GE to make more than $44 billion between 2008 and 2010 but receive almost $5 billion in tax refunds we would have no annual budget deficits.

It would also go a long way in reversing the great tax shift - from corporations to individuals - that has been going on for decades.

But let's not lose sight of the real story here. Taxes avoided by America's richest class through assorted subsidies and tax avoidance schemes would effectively pay our annual budget deficits and stabilize our nation's finances.

It's time to get us back on the budget surplus path by going after the spending programs (tax avoidance schemes) that took us away from it.

- Mark