So, there was a study that asked conservatives what programs they would actually like to cute- and surprise, most conservatives don’t want to cut spending! Or rather, they want to cut spending in the abstract, but a majority opposed cutting spending on any given specific program. Well, OK- foreign aid managed to sneak across the 50% line, but nothing else did. And nothing got the level of consensus I expected. This is rather like finding out that 60% of liberals oppose health care- smaller government has been a core conservative political philosophy from the get-go.
The problem is one of not connecting the dots. The conservatives do have a point here- per inflation adjusted dollar in taxes paid, the average American taxpayer is getting a much worse deal today than he was fifty, or even thirty, years ago. We’re paying more in taxes and getting less service. What happened? What’s different between now and fifty years ago?
One theory is that the Government got taken over by a bunch of incompetent crooks. I’d like to point out, if you’re advancing that theory, that 30-40 years ago we started electing conservatives again- before that point it was pretty much solidly New Deal liberals in charge. Eisenhower? The guy who expanded social security, spent billions on infrastructure improvements (the highway system), and shut down an unpopular war started by the previous administration (Korean)?
But I don’t think that’s it- I don’t think the government is any more corrupt or inefficient today than it was fifty years ago. I think what happened was simpler, if subtler, than that. I think what changed was the tax rate- specifically, the tax rate on the richest segment of our population.
When Ronald Reagan took office, the top tax rate was 70%. Back in the fifties, when Eisenhower was president and everything was so great? It was 90%. Today, it’s 35%.
Right or wrong (and for the record, I say “right”), fifty years ago, even thirty years ago, we were subsidizing the average tax payer. The average tax payer was getting government services that they weren’t paying for- the wealth were. The obvious way to get back to the “good old days” would be to just raise the taxes on the rich again.
If you want to make the case that we shouldn’t be subsidizing the poor and the middle class from the rich, by all means do so- but do so honestly. Step up, and either state which programs you wish to cut, or advocate raising taxes on the middle class (the poor don’t have any money anyways- taxing them is trying to get blood out of turnip).
The conservatives do want to cut government spending (at least on everyone else)- what they don’t want is to do is take the blame for cutting popular programs. Thus the “starve the beast” approach- accumulate so much debt that we are forced to cut the popular programs in a financial crisis. Which is why the conservatives cheered when Bush added trillions in debt for unfunded wars and unfunded tax cuts (why they went ape shit when Obama dared to do a stimulus package simply to avoid another Great Depression is a different matter).
At this point, I feed obliged to address the perennial bugbear in budget debates: pork. Here’s the thing: it’s real easy to say “we should cut pork”, because all pork means, apparently, is money spent on targeted programs from some one else some where else. Stuff doesn’t get added to the budget unless someone with some political pull (which usually means a congressman at least) puts it in there- and they’re going to fight against pulling it back out again.
You might think that spending $400 million dollars to build a bridge to an island with 50 people on it would be a good example of pork that no one would object to dropping- but Senator Ted Stevens and Rep. Don Young would disagree with you. The Democrats pull similar sorts of stunts as well (maybe not quite as bad- I can’t think of a Democrat who would place holds on 70 appointees just to blackmail the White House into sending some pork to their home state). The point here is that one person’s pork is another person’s vital and important project brings jobs and needed improvement to their state/district. And asking other people to sacrifice for your convenience isn’t likely to work very well.
So this is where we sit. We have three choices. One, we could back to the way things were, and raise taxes on the rich. Two, we can cut services and programs, including things that are popular (at least in a limited area) and will be resisted. Or three, we can raise taxes on the middle class, which is even less popular than choice #2. I don’t see a choice #4. So the Republican’s unwillingness to choose, publicly, which of three choices they support, renders them either delusional, or deceitful.
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