Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Friday, September 10, 2010

Meet the New Obama Tax Cuts…

Atrios:
I have no idea why we're talking about the "Bush tax cuts" instead of talking about how Bush's tax cuts are expiring as he intended, and meet the new and improved "Obama tax cuts."


Steve Benen:
[T]he tax policies of the Bush/Cheney era were a failure. They didn't create jobs, they didn't generate vast economic growth, and they contributed to massive explosion in federal debt…. [L]et's turn the page. That policy didn't produce the desired results, and now it's coming to an end. Going forward, we'll have a new policy -- Obama tax cuts, on top of the cuts he approved last year, would make lower rates permanent for the middle- and lower-class. Obama would allow a modest increase to the top rate for the wealthiest Americans -- just as he promised to during the election -- but the rich would still get a cut on the first $250,000 they make, thanks to the way marginal rates work. Congressional Democrats, especially those worried about re-election, would therefore take a stand in support of the "Obama tax cuts" for the middle class.

When Republicans slyly imply time and time again that Democrats will "Raise Your Taxes" Democrats must find a way forcefully to reply that this claim is a lie. Atrios and Benen are pointing out a way to do so. After the disastrous uncompensated Bush Tax Cuts expire as they were intended to do, the "Obama Tax Cuts" (every Democratic politician, friendly pundit, and Netroots blogger repeat catchphrase ad nauseum, please) would lower taxes across the board, but only on the first two hundred and fifty thousand dollars any American manages to make. That means that the vast majority of Americans will pay lower taxes permanently. And even the most prosperous Americans would pay lower taxes on that first two hundred and fifty thousand dollars they make. To pay for this, and to fund the other public goods which only government can properly provide, more prosperous Americans would have to pay a fair share of what they make beyond a quarter of a million to reflect their disproportionate benefit from the maintenance of our system of laws and public infrastructure. What could be more sensible and fair? Republicans always imply that Democrats are somehow being deceptive when we struggle to find ways actually to pay for civilization rather than simply eating civilization as the Republicans do. It seems to me this is an opportunity to expose the fact that it is the Republicans who are being deceptive, to undermine the knee-jerk greedhead appeal of their generational anti-tax anti-government rhetoric a bit, and to get a foot in the door toward re-progressivizing federal taxation. No doubt we will have to find our way back eventually to something more like the prosperous Golden Age Eisenhower era progressive tax rates if we are soundly to fund the levels of public investment and service required to maintain a more equitable consensual social democracy and switch from an extractive-petrochemical to a sustainable economy. But, baby steps before giant leaps.

No comments: