“I would say first of all, that the Federal Reserve together with the Internal Revenue Service constitutes the twin instrument for reducing the American people to economic servitude, almost to the point of slavery...WAKE UP AMERICA.”-Dr. Martin A. Larson Economist and Historian

When the subject of budget surpluses and tax cuts come up, I am reminded of a poem entitled “What’s the Fuss All About” by Johnny Hathcock. The poem goes, "We have a big fat surplus, The politicians say. They all agree to spend it, But can’t decide what way. They scheme and scrounge and haggle, And waste a lot of time, Deciding how to squander each solitary dime, The only actual surplus, That’s big and fat, Is what the politician, Has beneath his hat. How to spend the surplus? Isn’t that a hot one? The knuckleheads should look again, They haven’t even got one.” Indeed, I, Vic Roberts, agree they haven’t even got one-not until the trillions of dollars national debt, which is costing us American taxpayers a billion dollars a day for interest alone, is paid off.

There are those who argue that across the board tax cuts is the only fair way to cut taxes. Naturally, across the board tax cuts return the most money to those who need it the least, those who already get out of paying their fair share of taxes because of a multitude of tax loopholes and shelters. Tax loopholes and shelters their campaign contribution controlled puppet politicians have written into the law for them, the wealthiest taxpayers. Tax loopholes and shelters resulting in many millionaires to billionaires paying little to no taxes.

I, Vic Roberts, say to the Washington puppet politicians who run our government: “Use my potential across the board tax cut refund, along with the wealthy taxpayers refunds, to secure Social Security and Medicare benefits, provide a national health care program for all of our nation’s citizens. Let us buy control of our government back from the economic royalists, the elite Wall Street bankers, global financiers and industrialists, the New World Order, with a “Clean Money” system of public financing of election campaigns.”

As a U.S. Senator, I, Vic Roberts, would work to end corporate welfare (around $455 billion in 1996 alone), and unfair tax advantages for the economic royalists. In 1998, forty-one corporations, with billions of dollars in profits, not only paid no income tax but actually received tax rebates, which made their “after-tax” income greater than their actual earnings. For instance the Enron corporation paid no income taxes in four of five years, paying only $17 million in taxes in 1997, yet it got a total of $381 million in tax rebates. It appears that the Washington puppet politicians believe they must run our country into debt to pay corporations to do business in the U.S.A. All the while these same corporations continue closing US manufacturing facilities, as they continue moving our US jobs to foreign countries in their constant search for cheaper labor and laxer environmental standards to exploit in the name of “free trade” profits.

The Washington puppet politicians version of “free trade” is in reality corporate managed trade that controls our basic freedom to make choices about our government’s management of our nation’s economy and commerce. The “free trader’s” corporate managed global market place is simply a set of rules that benefit large multinational corporations, Wall Street bankers, and global financiers at the expense of the consumers and democratic principles. Under corporate-managed “free trade” agreements democratic governments lose more and more of their power to make important choices about health and safety, the environment, and labor conditions, indeed, their own national sovereignty.

In order to combat corporate “free trade” exploitation we must have, as our nation’s founding fathers did, a system of tariffs. Tariffs being taxes on imports which protect domestic industry, and provides national revenue. Tariffs equalize costs at our border’s edge.
Due to the so-called “economic stimulus” bill, corporate tax breaks will cost us individual US taxpayers in excess of $170 billion annually in each of the next two years. Corporate welfare and tax loopholes will actually cost more than companies pay in income tax in fiscal 2002 and 2003. Corporate welfare and tax loopholes had been expanding rapidly even before the “economic stimulus” bill became law.

Tax breaks for stock options, Congressional indifference to abusive offshore corporate tax shelters, and other tax breaks, have allowed many companies to earn billions in profits, yet pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. Microsoft enjoyed more than $12 billion in total tax breaks over five years and actually paid no tax at all in 1999, despite $12.3 billion in reported profits. WorldCom Inc. paid no taxes at all for two of three years in which it reported profits of $15.2 billion. In 1997, IBM reported $3.1 billion in US profits and instead of paying taxes got an outright tax rebate. General Motors paid no taxes at all in three out of five years, despite $12.5 billion in reported US profits. El Paso Energy reported $1.6 billion in US profits while getting $254 million in tax rebates. Colgate-Palmolive paid no tax in three out of five years, despite $1.6 billion in reported US profits. Along with scandalous outright corporate welfare, big business also enjoys exceedingly low tax rates when compared to individual middle class taxpayers.

In 1996, over 16,000 of the richest America’s had an effective tax rate of less than 10%, which is lower than that of a middle class family. Much of this was accomplished through the latest trend in tax dodging, offshore accounts. Stanley Works Company estimates it will cut its tax bill by $30 million a year through the use of an offshore account, and Cooper Industries expects to lower it’s income tax bill by $54 million. Ingresoll-Rand pays $27,653 a year to maintain a Bermuda offshore account, which allows it to avoid at least $40 million a year in taxes. Incidentally, because Bermuda has no corporate income tax, there are around 12 thousand firms calling the tiny islands of Bermuda home. Tyco International reported that their offshore account saved it more than $400 million in one year alone.

The IRS report: “They believe that one to two million individual taxpayers are evading taxes by secretly depositing money in tax haven accounts.” Considering how easy the Washington puppet politicians have made it for greedy corporations and wealthy individuals to use the offshore account tax-dodge, it is easy to understand why offshore account tax-dodging has become a mega-trend, costing us US citizens trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue, a loss that we taxpayers will compensate for with the burden of heavier taxation being placed on us.

In response to the tax-shrinking epidemic the Internal Revenue Service, with an operating budget of over $10 billion, has expanded its collection personnel. In an effort to compensate for the loss of revenue from the big money tax-dodgers the IRS has added more than a thousand collection agents. The new agents are being used to increase the number of audits on the middle class and low income taxpayers; a tactic being used to help compensate for the loss of revenue from corporate tax-dodgers and their wealthy cohorts.

Low-income taxpayers were 10 times more likely to be audited in 2001 than were affluent taxpayers. IRS audits of low income people jumped from 171,864 in 1992 to 325,441 in 2001-an increase of nearly 200%; conversely, IRS audits of people with incomes of over 100,000 fell by 39%. More than half of the audited returns involved people earning less than $32,000 a year, while audits on those with incomes of over $100,000 fell to an all time low. Earned INCOME Tax Credit filers have 1 chance in 47 of being audited, while those who earn over $100,000 have 1 chance in 145 of being audited. With more audits on the poor, and the downturn of the economy, many taxpayers get behind on their taxes simply because they cannot afford to pay them; thus, creating IRS property seizures. Incidentally, the IRS has been known to collect taxes from taxpayers that were not even owed.

The average US worker and taxpayer is subsidizing economic globalization and multinational corporations profits, as well as subsidizing obscene CEO salaries. With the help of their campaign contribution bought and controlled Washington puppet politicians, the economic royalists, the New World Order and their cohorts, are finding ways around paying their fair share of the seemingly insatiable tax demands that are being placed on us American taxpayers.

It has been said that taxes are the price we pay for our civilized society. Based on that statement it is only right to expect, indeed demand, that all in our society pay their fair share of income taxes to maintain our civilization; however, many wealthy Americans legally pay little to no taxes. The IRS estimates that tax-avoidance and evasion schemes will cost the US Treasury $195 billion a year, or nearly $2 trillion ($2000 billion) over the next decade. According to recent IRS statistics more than 1000 tax filers with reported incomes of over $200,000, including 101 millionaires, paid absolutely no income tax, with many others being taxed at rates far below that of the average taxpayer. Also, the taxes paid by corporations on profits reported to the IRS dropped from 26 percent to 20 percent between 1990 and 1997, while the average American taxpayer’s income tax rate increased by 2%; thus corporations paid $60 billion less in income taxes while individual taxpayers paid $80 billion more in income taxes. Because of tax-avoidance and evasion the federal tax burden continues to get heavier on the individual tax paying citizen.

An entire tax-avoidance industry has evolved. Hundreds of the best tax minds in the nation reap millions of dollars annually by helping corporations and the nation’s wealthiest citizens avoid paying their fair share of taxes. With their tax evasion advantage it is easy to understand how less than 3 million of the richest Americans has more wealth than the poorest 100 million. Tax evasion is also a major contributing factor in 470 billionaires having as much wealth as half the people on earth.

Why are those responsible for a fair tax system not taking aggressive action against such use, misuse, and abuse of our nation’s tax laws? Why? It is likely to be closely associated with the fact that the politicians who write the tax laws, and control the tax system, are evermore beholden to those wealthy tax-dodgers who supply them with vast sums of political money, money used to propagandize their way into public office. If we taxpaying citizens are to ever have a fairer system of taxation we must have a “Clean Money” system of public financing of election campaigns. The controlling power of money must be eliminated from election campaigns (Please visit my web page on Campaign Finance Reform).

When giant corporations and conglomerates are not getting corporate welfare through rebates they are getting some of the lowest tax rates in the nation. Many of the country’s biggest corporations and conglomerates pay little or nothing in federal income taxes. In 1998 General Motors company showed a profit of $952 million, yet, it got a rebate from the IRS. Out of a mere 250 corporations that were surveyed, 41 paid less than 0 in federal income tax in at least one year between 1996 and 1998; in those tax free years, the 41 corporations reported a total of $25.8 billion in pretax US profits, yet, they received $3.2 billion in rebate checks from the US Treasury. Another 133 major corporations paid only 8.5% of their $209 billion in US profits in federal income taxes. The tax rate on 12 big oil corporations was only 5.7%, that was before the $1.3 trillion Bush tax cuts and the “stimulus” bill became a consideration. The average US worker and taxpayer is subsidizing corporate economic globalization that is not free trade, but is corporate managed trade.

Those mega billions of dollars in tax breaks for multinational corporations are contributing heavily to our nation’s trillions of dollars national debt, a debt that we taxpayers are already paying a billion dollars a day in interest payments alone. The Federal debt has skyrocketed far beyond what most people can even imagine. The current “general fund” national debt alone is almost $6 trillion. Incidentally, it would take the government more than 188,000 years to accumulate that amount had it been borrowing at the rate of one dollar per second. At recent debt levels the working individual’s share of the national debt is well over $56,000 each, and the national debt is continuing to rise at an alarming rate, as our government continues to operate without a balanced budget. The federal government has operated with budget deficits for 28 of the past 32 years, and there is a projected $100 billion budget deficit for the 2003 federal budget.

If Congress complies with President Bush’s request to extend the national debt by $750 billion in borrowing authority, it is expected that the additional $750 billion will last until 2004. Continued deficit spending will rob the Social Security Trust Fund, which working taxpayers have paid into. Incidentally, it is worth noting that the Washington politicians are not depending on Social Security for their retirement income since they are covered by exceedingly generous benefits through their own Federal Employees Retirement System.

The Washington politicians must be forced to cease corporate welfare that targets huge tax benefits to narrow interests while imposing additional tax burdens on individual taxpayers.
In the 2000 election cycle the petroleum industry invested a reported $29 million (how much unreported?) in the political process, which invested in each recipient Republican politician’s candidacy an average of $36,000, while the average investment of $14,000 was made in each recipient Democratic politician’s candidacy. Naturally, those huge political investments are being greatly rewarded through new legislation providing subsidies and tax break provisions that are worth billions of dollars to the oil and gas interests.

Credit card companies invested a reported $37.7 million (how much unreported?) in the 2000 Federal election cycle, 61% of which went to Republicans. Naturally, as usual, that investment paid off. With the passage of Roll Call 25 of Bill HR 333 the credit card companies received the benefit of the most pro-industry and anti-consumer bankruptcy legislation in US history. The passage of this stringent legislation makes it even more difficult for us of the American struggling masses to remove the burden of heavy debt when financial misfortune comes into our lives. Meanwhile, the Washington puppet politicians were passing a $1.3 trillion tax cut plan, a plan with most tax cuts going to those who already have a multitude of tax loopholes and shelters, the wealthiest taxpayers; many of whom are multimillionaires and billionaires who enjoy all the benefits of our nation’s tax dollars while they themselves remain virtually tax free.

As a result of corporate welfare and tax advantages given to the rich they pay less taxes leaving us middle class individual and family taxpayers to make up the difference. Since 1950 the average US household tax bill has risen four fold in real terms; that is federal taxes only.

I, Vic Roberts, advocate a ban on federal tax breaks that subsidize the exporting of American jobs to foreign countries. Why does the United States tax code give corporations tax incentives to establish plants and jobs in tax haven countries rather than keeping or expanding their plants and jobs in the United States? Why does our nation’s tax code make tax breaks a factor in decisions by American companies about where to make products they sell in the United States? Tax breaks for exporting jobs must be eliminated; we must not continue paying US based multinational corporations to make goods in foreign countries for the US market.

As if we American citizens do not have a heavy enough tax burden already, there are those
New World Order influenced organizations, such as the World Economic Form, who are advocating adding on a World Tax as well. The World Economic Form called for the New World Order controlled U.N. to directly impose a tax on citizens of sovereign nations, and to strongly induce service by people in one or more international social service programs as well. It seems to me that the World Economic Form is openly advocating the NEW WORLD ORDER’S ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT through the UNITED NATIONS. Incidentally, $2 trillion of our US tax dollars have already gone to the UN, with billions more being added annually.

The economic royalists controlled Washington puppet politicians, the thieves of our national treasury, has turned their backs on us, the overtaxed, and overworked laboring class people, small business operators, and family farmers, yes, we of the American struggling masses. Tax laws are written by puppet politicians who have considerable net worth; politicians with little to no understanding, or care, for what we of the American struggling masses must do to make ends meet.

When the income tax law was first introduced in 1913 it affected less than 10 percent of the people. It was a 3 percent flat tax and the total legislation was sixteen pages. The average American family now pays more in taxes than it does on food, clothing, shelter, and medical care combined. We now pay the IRS around 2.5 times more than we did in 1990. While the average state and local tax on the richest families is only 7.9% of their income, the poorest families pay a whopping 12.5% of their meager incomes is state and local taxes. These tax burdens put a substantial squeeze on the budgets of our nation’s lower and middle income families.

To understand why the average middle income family today finds it difficult to survive on a single income we need only to examine their tax burden. Throughout the 1950s and 60' the total tax burden for the average family never exceeded 25% of income, today the tax burden is as high as 45%, thus, crushing our savings and investment possibilities. As if the struggle for survival for us laboring class people, small business operators, and family farmers, yes, we of the American struggling masses is not tough enough already, the New World Order’s, campaign contribution bought and controlled, Washington puppet politician’s are constantly searching for new ways to tax us even more. Why? I, Vic Roberts, believe the New World Order controlled Washington puppet politicians are purposely keeping us of the American struggling masses poor through taxes. I think the economic royalists, the New World Order, believes that a poverty stricken American struggling masses are less likely to revolt against their subjugation as they continue to gain their mastery over our lives.

Most of us Americans do not realize how much we pay in taxes because the puppet politicians keep it well hidden from us. Hidden taxes allow the puppet politicians to raise rates without us citizens detecting who is to blame. The system is so good at getting our money that most of us actually end up over paying our taxes, which leads to the annual ritual of the tax refund check. In 1999 the average income tax refund was more than $1570; taxpayer money used by the government interest free; interest free while many of us were paying interest on debts our tax refund money could have paid.

I, Vic Roberts, believe there is something tragically wrong with a system of taxation which permits a few individuals and families to own colossal material wealth while masses of citizens live in poverty. There is something iniquitous about a system of taxation that encourages monopolization of industry, and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, as demonstrated by the statistics that the richest 400 Americans have a combined net worth of over a trillion dollars, which is greater than the annual gross national product of China.

As if the rich do not already have enough tax loopholes and shelters protecting their money from fair taxation, the Washington puppet politicians have now repealed the estate tax. Roll Call 84 of HR Bill 8, which repealed the estate tax, gave huge tax breaks to the wealthiest 2% of the population, with half the benefits going to the wealthiest two-tenths of one percent of the people. Due to the repeal of the estate tax, taxpayers will have a heavier tax burden in order to compensate for the loss of estate tax revenue to those inheriting estates of over a million dollars. Through the repeal of the estate tax the wealthy elite maintains control of our nation’s wealth based on heredity rather than merit. The estate tax helped to ensure that children of each new generation began on a more equitable bases with their contemporaries.

While the average American’s income rose by 9%, the income of the wealthiest 1% rose 140%. Reportedly, the financial wealth of the top 1% of US households now exceeds the combined household financial wealth of the bottom 95%.

The Washington puppet politicians continue to ignore the economic truth, "The rich keep getting richer while the middle class and the poor keep getting poorer.” Many of the Washington puppet politicians are justifying their actions and inactions with the economic myth and illusion that, "You too will soon join the ranks of the favored elite when your great “American Dream” becomes a reality.” For most, the so-called “American Dream” is an economic myth that has trumped economic reality, a myth that is being perpetrated by New World Order propagandists; in truth, for many, the illusive “American Dream” has become a nightmare.

Why are the Washington puppet politicians creating such a plight for us American laboring class people, small business operators, and family farmers, yes, we of the American struggling masses? Because that is the will of the Mafia of the financial world, the New World Order; those evil empire Imperial Gods of the Global Economy. I, Vic Roberts, believe the New World Order is manipulating their, legally bought and controlled through campaign contributions, Washington puppet politicians to tax the poor to give to them, the organized rich, which is a tactic used to make proletarians of us all who are not disciples for their planned United Nations One World Government.

If elected to the US Senate, I Vic Roberts, will work diligently to make our nation’s tax code more favorable to us of the American struggling masses. I advocate taxing capitol gains at the same rate as labor. I advocate putting excise tax on Wall Street transactions; also I would work to eliminate tax loopholes and shelters that benefit the wealthy.

In regards to Social Security taxes, you will probably be interested in the words of US Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill when he said, "The Social Security trust fund did not have any assets.” It is my understanding that the SS Trust Fund is supposed to have assets of $1.2 trillion. Where is the discrepancy? Based on my knowledge of the issue, Secretary O’Neill is being accurate when he implied the SS Trust Fund Bonds are not real assets as people are being lead to believe. The SS Trust Fund Bonds are being accumulated as a replacement for surplus Social Security taxes paid by workers. In other words, Social Security tax dollars are traded for bonds, which are, as the Secretary implied, worthless pieces of paper. Those bonds will remain worthless pieces of paper until they are replaced with actual tax dollars. Indeed, Secretary O’Neill is accurate when he said “the SS Trust Fund does not have any assets.” To the point, Social Security taxpayers are being defrauded with fake bonds.

Your campaign contribution to Vic Roberts for the US Senate is an investment toward more equitable tax laws for us of the American struggling masses. Your contribution is an investment toward political leadership for the common good of our citizens, and the general welfare of our great nation; representation for the demise of the New World Order’s evil empire.

In the words of a great lady, Mother Jones, "Let us pray for the dead but fight like hell for the living.”

Vic Roberts IL (2004) US Senate candidate

Click here to send email to Vic Roberts: vicforcongress@chipsnet.com

The text of this web site is a direct communication from Vic Roberts, Congressional candidate.

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