Carpe Datum

Seeing Red

Sometimes, the staggering level of dishonesty coming from our government at every level is just too much, but you have to start facing it at some point. The budget deficit is a great place to begin. Simply put, Bush's tax cuts have been an unmitigated disaster, as liberals (like Paul Krugman) knew they would be all along. Like with the war, Democrats were just simply left with their mouths hung open at the audacity of this administration, bludgeoning their way through to disaster time and again.

Some Democrats thought it was politics as usual and tried to compromise. These poor, well-meaning politicians were nevertheless depicted as little short of traitorous when the elections came around by Republicans. And, as usual, the so-called liberal media did little to stem the tide, continuing to portray Bush as a "uniter", trying to reach out across the aisle to those stubborn old Democrats, who are in the minority anyway and lost the presidential election (uh...even leaving aside Florida, who won the popular vote again?).

And even now, Republicans try to paint the deficit problem as being caused by out-of-control spending. Ok, wait a minute. First point. Weren't all the smart-ass conservatives always trying to point out that tax cuts would *increase* tax revenue by stimulating the economy, the stock market, etc? They claimed it did during the Reagan era (and they were totally wrong then, too ... if you want the boring details, I'd be happy to provide them, but I do try to keep my 10 readers awake whenever possible). You know, the whole supply-side economics, Laffer curve nonsense? So, ummm, conservatives ... uh, wha' hoppin'?

Well, screw it, Krugman explains it better than I can:

Even conservatives are starting to admit that George Bush isn't serious when he claims to be doing something about the exploding budget deficit. At best — to borrow the already classic language of the State of the Union address — his administration is engaged in deficit reduction-related program activities.

But these admissions have been accompanied by an urban legend about what went wrong. According to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage Foundation and other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing because Mr. Bush isn't sufficiently conservative: he's allowing runaway growth in domestic spending. This myth is intended to divert attention from the real culprit: sharply reduced tax collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.

Is domestic spending really exploding? Think about it: farm subsidies aside, which domestic programs have received lavish budget increases over the last three years? Education? Don't be silly: No Child Left Behind is rapidly turning into a sick joke.

In fact, many government agencies are severely underfinanced. For example, last month the head of the National Park Service's police admitted to reporters that her force faced serious budget and staff shortages, and was promptly suspended.

A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities does the math. While overall government spending has risen rapidly since 2001, the great bulk of that increase can be attributed either to outlays on defense and homeland security, or to types of government spending, like unemployment insurance, that automatically rise when the economy is depressed.

Why, then, do we face the prospect of huge deficits as far as the eye can see? Part of the answer is the surge in defense and homeland security spending. The main reason for deficits, however, is that revenues have plunged. Federal tax receipts as a share of national income are now at their lowest level since 1950.

Of course, most people don't feel that their taxes have fallen sharply. And they're right: taxes that fall mainly on middle-income Americans, like the payroll tax, are still near historic highs. The decline in revenue has come almost entirely from taxes that are mostly paid by the richest 5 percent of families: the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These taxes combined now take a smaller share of national income than in any year since World War II.

This decline in tax collections from the wealthy is partly the result of the Bush tax cuts, which account for more than half of this year's projected deficit. But it also probably reflects an epidemic of tax avoidance and evasion. Everyone who wants to understand what's happening to the tax system should read "Perfectly Legal," the new book by David Cay Johnston, The Times's tax reporter, who shows how ideologues have made America safe for wealthy people who don't feel like paying taxes. [...]

And this was part of a larger con. What's playing out in America right now is the bait-and-switch strategy known on the right as "starve the beast." The ultimate goal is to slash government programs that help the poor and the middle class, and use the savings to cut taxes for the rich. But the public would never vote for that.

So the right has used deceptive salesmanship to undermine tax enforcement and push through upper-income tax cuts. And now that deficits have emerged, the right insists that they are the result of runaway spending, which must be curbed.

While this strategy has been remarkably successful so far, it also offers a big opportunity to the opposition. So here's a test for the Democratic contenders: details of your proposals aside, which of you can do the best job explaining the ongoing budget con to the American people?

I don't really have a favorite among the Democratic candidates. My sympathies are certainly with Dean, because he seems to be the most outspoken and the most passionate, and I believe these times call for passion. But the other frontrunners would be fine, too, Kerry, Clark, or Edwards. Bush must go, and it doesn't matter which Democrat wins. And any Democrat should be a shoo-in, especially given that Congress will definitely remain solid Republican (thanks in part to continuous gerrymandering ... I mean redistricting in Texas and Colorado), and most people seem to like gridlock.

At least with a Democrat in office, we could stop the bleeding and veto the extension of these incredibly stupid budget policies, we could stop all the right-wing nutball judges from being appointed, we can turn the executive branch back into a simalcrum of a service-oriented organization instead of a partisan hack fantasy workshop for fuckwits. Maybe we could get our foreign policy back on a sane track and off this pre-emptive strike bullshit. Maybe we could live in a country where hope is the main thing and not fear.

Posted by Observer at January 28, 2004 06:59 AM