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VCR alert: I caught the last few minutes of this on
Newshour tonight. Magruder was
penitent and reflective. Sam Dash was all spit and vinegar, saying that if this
Congress were alert it would be checking this president’s attempts to take on
more presidential power than allowed by the Constitution. What the President Knew Msnbc/Newsweek has not posted this commentary, below, online:
wonder why? Aside from the
similarities to Nixon’s famous arrogance and detachment, Bush has a lethal trait: he is a regular guy who doesn’t
care about regular people. Of
course, Bush isn’t too worried about the regular people because they did not
put him in the White House. They
just think they did. KWC Jonathan Alter: “Let Them Eat Cake’ Economics, in Newsweek’s July 28 edition: When Al Gore exaggerated
the details of his dog’s prescriptions, it helped cost him the presidency. They very same people who eviscerated
him for it are now saying, hey, cut President Bush some slack – he wasn’t lying
about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear ambitions, only exaggerating. This flap won’t hurt Bush in 2004,
except to undermine his credibility on other issues. So, when, for instance, he says, “This nation has got a
deficit because we have been through a war,” people might begin to wonder
whether he is telling the truth. They might wonder if the
13 percent state-college tuition hike in Maryland or the $1 billion state-tax increase
in Ohio or the state Medicaid crisis now raging from coast to coast might have
something to do with priorities in Washington. If Bush loses, it won’t be on yellowcake uranium but on “let
them eat cake” economics. Yes, the president
acknowledges that the economic downturn might also have contributed something
to the eye-popping $455 billion budget deficit announced last week, the largest
ever. But God forbid he admits that his huge tax cuts are in any way
relevant. That would risk saying
something inconvenient and true. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says that Bush’s
tax cuts have cost the Treasury nearly three times as much as the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, reconstruction after September 11 and homeland security
measures combined. Tax cuts = 9/11 + war x 3. And the numbers get much worse in the
years ahead as baby boomers retire.
In other words, even if the tax cuts help stimulate a modest recovery,
we have dug ourselves a deep hole.
It’s a hole that the
states – required by law to balance their budgets – are now being forced to
fill. The tobacco-settlement money
is gone, the “rainy day” funds exhausted.
Under intense pressure from the governors, Washington ponied up $20
billion in emergency aid, but added tax breaks for corporations that will cost
the states billions. The House
just passed a plan for health savings accounts that will set the states back a further
$33 billion if enacted. And that’s
not even counting the monster haunting every governor, every night – “unfunded mandates.” To take just one example that is
relevant in school districts across the country: special education. Congress pledged it would pay for 40
percent of the cost; it actually covers 17 percent. In California alone, where nearly half of the budget goes to
K-12 education, that’s more than a billion dollars the state has been stiffed
on. I’m no Gray Davis fan,
but let’s be honest about the facts.
While some states have been mismanaged, most are simply contending with
rapidly growing numbers of hurting people who need their services. Those services are now being slashed
almost everywhere. Nineteen states
– all of them facing sharply increasing demand – will have smaller budgets than
last year, not just smaller budget increases. But telling a laid-off mother with three kids that she can’t
see a doctor will not be enough.
Governors and state legislatures are taxing everything that moves. Even the most conservative states are
doing so. Republican Gov. Bob
Riley of Alabama, a devout Christian, says raising taxes on the wealthy to help
the poor is what the Bible compels.
He’s had enough of so-called religious politicians who turn Christi’s
commandments on their head. Explaining all this
politically is a “bank shot,” to use a billiards term. It requires
trusting the voters with complexity. Will they see that their new $400 child credits are chump
change compared with all the new fee hikes and service cuts? Will they understand that they’re
paying more in state and local taxes so that a guy with a Jaguar putting up a
McMansion down the block can pay less in federal taxes? Will they connect those 30 kids cramming
their child’s classroom to decisions in far-away Washington? It’s hard to tell, but
the Democrats had better try to develop that connective tissue. The reason I have not yet off John
Edwards is that he is quietly devoting his campaign to this theme. In New Hampshire last week, he raised
Bush’s unfunded mandates in education: “The result is that your property taxes
have to be raised, and that’s a huge mistake.” President
Bush is a regular guy who doesn’t care a whole lot about regular people. The first is a political asset; voters
like his guyness. The second is
his greatest vulnerability, and he offers more evidence for it almost every day. Remember how he
promised last winter to get rid of a loophole that allows U.S. companies with
homeland-security contracts to unpatriotically incorporate in Bermuda to avoid
taxes? The loophole’s still
there. Remember how he promised to
expand national-service opportunities for patriotic young Americans by 50
percent? Last week – despite bipartisan
action in the Senate – he still hadn’t lifted a finger in the House for a
measly $100 million to keep AmeriCorps from being slashed by 40 percent,
leaving kids untutored and after-school programs facing closure. Who is he for first? The
question is not just if the president tells the truth but if the truth – finally – will be told about him. The WP’s David Broder writes that recent polls show
that more people show an inclination to challenge exactly what Bush has been
delivering since his Inauguration, government for the few by the few. Excerpted
from A Tax Strategy for Democrats @ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48550-2003Jul25.html …“In a memo he sent
out earlier this month, Greenberg, a sometime adviser to Bill Clinton and Al
Gore, argued, on the basis of a June poll of 1,000 likely voters, that the Bush
tax cuts and the Republican approach to taxes command only "lukewarm
support." Further, he said, "The
voters are angry about taxes, not because they think their taxes are too high,
but because the wealthy and corporations do not pay their fair share." Rather than making the
past three years of tax cuts permanent, as Bush proposes, voters prefer shutting "the loopholes and tax shelters used by the wealthy and
corporations" and requiring high-income people to pay Social Security
taxes on all of their earnings, Greenberg said.” …“It was only when Greenberg asked other questions that the
outlines of a possible Democratic counterstrategy appeared. One clue came with
a query about
"what bothers you the most about taxes." Forty-six percent said it
was "the feeling that the wealthy and corporations don't pay their fair
share," compared with 31 percent who said it was the complexity of the tax
system and only 14 percent who said, it was "the large amount you pay in
taxes" that bothers them most. When a variety of
possible tax changes were outlined, the only ones a majority said they strongly
favored were closing the tax loophole that allows corporations to set up
offshore tax havens in places such as Bermuda and collecting Social Security
taxes on a person's entire earnings, instead of capping them at $87,000 as is
done now. Canceling recent tax cuts for the top 1 percent of earners enjoyed as
much support as making all the tax cuts permanent. And moving to a flat tax -- the dream of
conservatives such as Steve Forbes and Grover Norquist -- finished near last. While Greenberg is
criticized by some moderate Democrats for encouraging the populist tone of
Gore's general election campaign, the tax reform issue is one on which centrist Democrats see
eye to eye with him.
The Democratic Leadership Council's Will Marshall said, "We have always maintained that progressive
taxation is the right way to pay for government. We've called for a commission to end corporate
tax subsidies. The Bush administration has launched a full-scale assault on
progressive taxation, moving toward a flat tax. Democrats have to fight
that." Nader could again be the spoiler,
but at this point it seems less important who the final contender is against the
big money guy than how the debate and message are framed. KWC |
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