Rule by 50%+1

I think the editors of the Wall Street Journal are asking the wrong question in considering the completely partisan nature of the tax reform bill making its way through Congress:

Part of the explanation is ideological. The Democrats as a party moved sharply left during the Obama years—on economics nearly as much as on identity politics. They have made income inequality their main economic priority rather than growth, and the fact that the slow-growing Obama economy increased inequality hasn’t changed that obsession.

One result is that there isn’t a pro-business Democrat left in the Senate, except perhaps on energy policy in fossil-fuel states like West Virginia and North Dakota. Democrats are now the party of Thomas Piketty, the French economist who thinks tax rates should return to pre-Kennedy levels to reduce inequality.

Democratic economists who might have offered an alternative view have no choice but to go along if they ever want to serve in another Democratic administration. They all saw what Elizabeth Warren and the Democratic left did to block Larry Summers from getting the job of Federal Reserve Chairman.

The other explanation is the political calculation that opposition will help Democrats retake the House and Senate in the 2018 midterm elections. President Trump is unpopular, and they figure his polarizing behavior will drive enough Democrats in the polls to save Senate incumbents even in states that Mr. Trump carried in 2016. Heidi Heitkamp (North Dakota), Joe Donnelly (Indiana) and Claire McCaskill (Missouri) figure that the safer play is to oppose all things Trump and mobilize the base vote.

Perhaps they should be asking what sort of tax reform would garner Democratic support? They appear to be assuming that Democrats would oppose any tax reform on partisan grounds. That closely parallels the situation with the Affordable Care Act.

Our government isn’t supposed to work this way. Congress is supposed to forge consensus, build coalitions, and make compromises. Government by 50%+1 of both houses of the Congress may be comforting for the winners but it also consolidates and embitters opposition. It’s no way to govern a country as large and diverse as the United States.

15 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    Schumer told Wall Street before the election that he was confident Clinton would pass a capital gain’s tax cut once elected. So there are business-friendly Democrats; they just don’t think it motivates their voters. The incentives also tend to be against supporting Republicans passing tax cuts because the Republicans will still be seen as the party of tax cuts. It’s really a question of how Democrats elected in Republican constituencies can demonstrate they are moderates, which can be impossible.

  • So there are business-friendly Democrats; they just don’t think it motivates their voters.

    I’m not sure that’s it. I think it’s more a leadership issue. Business-friendly Democrats may feel that they need permission.

  • Modulo Myself Link

    Regardless of what one thinks of the ACA, it was something new. Whereas tax cuts are really really old, as old as being pro-business or trusting a CEO in the private sector over some government worker.

    I don’t think there are many Democrats who think of themselves as anti-business, but they simply don’t believe in the Reagan-era binary between private and public sector. And why should they?

    All you have to do is look at the Bush presidency, where all of these corporate leaders were going to make the country serious again. How did that turn out? I think you can trace the full delusion of Fox and the GOP back to the crash of finding out there were no WMDs in Iraq and just being fine with it.

  • Andy Link

    For almost a decade Democrats used the Bush tax cuts as a political cudgel but when push came to shove a majority of Democrats voted to make almost all of them permanent. More Republicans voted against the measure than Democrats. Suddenly, Democrats stopped talking about how bad the Bush Tax cuts were.

    I think each party has few core principles – most of what guides their behavior is wholly dependent on perceived partisan advantage and incoherent dogma.

  • Gustopher Link

    Anything that starts like this:

    Part of the explanation is ideological. The Democrats as a party moved sharply left during the Obama years—on economics nearly as much as on identity politics.

    Is almost certainly wrong from start to finish. Yes, I am aware that Elizabeth Warren exists, but she is no more liberal than Ted Kennedy was, and she isn’t the party. The ACA was the conservative alternative to the 1990s health plan, so if anything we have the Democrats moving to the right on their signature legislation.

    And “identity politics” generally means “how dare they nominate a black guy or a woman”.

  • Gustopher Link

    50%+1 in the House, with the gerrymandering in a lot of states, ends up not even being a majority of voting Americans. And, for the second time in twenty years, we have a president who didn’t even win a plurality of the votes.

    Rule by minority is probably not good for America.

  • PD Shaw Link

    @Gustopher, it’s a survivorship issue. The Democrats lost somewhere around a thousand elected officials during Obama’s Presidency, leaving a remainder that was further to the left. The party appears to move left, because it lost its right.

  • Andy Link

    That’s an excellent way to put it PD.

    I’d also note that the Democratic leadership, composed primarily of members from the left side of the party, “moved to the right” on the ACA only because they had to. The Democratic leadership was forced to take out things the liberal wing really wanted in order to get (barely) enough votes from moderate members to pass it. Moderate Democrats were the reason there was no public option much less single payer. Thus the party itself didn’t move right when it came to the ACA – it crafted the most liberal bill possible that could actually pass. It just happened to be somewhat similar to one of many GoP proposals that were introduced but never supported over a decade earlier.

  • steve Link

    “It just happened to be somewhat similar to one of many GoP proposals that were introduced but never supported over a decade earlier.”

    That was not coincidence. It was modeled on Romneycare and the Heritage plan that attracted support from about half of the GOP Senators at the time. IIRC.

    Tax reform is not something that the Dem leadership is that interested in as it is not a winning issue for them. That said, tax reform and not just a tax cut could, I think, have gotten some support. A corporate tax cut coupled with a VAT so as to stay revenue neutral, or maybe elimination of exemptions for the estate tax or elimination of tax expenditures for corporations or such could have worked. It just would have had to be reform that didn’t end up overtly helping the wealthy more than everyone else.

    Steve

  • I think he was being sarcastic.

  • mike shupp Link

    Josef Goebbels would be so proud of his students!

    We’ve had this … interesting … political development for going on nine years now where Republicans as a bloc refuse to vote for judges nominated by Democratic presidents, vote in opposition to domestic legislation proposed by Democrats, deliberately attempt to reverse health and environmental regulations promulgated by Democrats, etc.

    And the Wall Street Journal explains that Democrats fail to cooperate with Republicans on the new tax bill because it doesn’t interest them. Is this what the Economics 101 textbooks are going to say in 2120?

  • Gustopher Link

    Andy — the most liberal proposal that could pass, with a Democratic majority, was a far cry to what they thought they could pass in the 1990s.

    I wish we had passed the Republican 1990s plan in the 1990s — we would have had a broad consensus in support. That’s a moment where the Democrats should have been more pragmatic, and recognized that the Republican plan was better than the status quo.

  • Gustopher Link

    PD Shaw — I would counter that the same thing has happened to the Republicans, but on a larger scale.

    Who is a moderate Republican these days? I cannot think of any, just far right and very far right.

  • Andy Link

    “I wish we had passed the Republican 1990s plan in the 1990s”

    This is the myth though. The “Republican plan” was actually only one of several GoP plans offered as potential alternatives to what most now call Hillarycare. It was submitted as an actual bill but it got little support among Republicans which is why it never came up for a discussion in any committee much less a vote. This idea that the framework for Obamacare is what the majority of Republicans supported in the 1990’s is a manufactured myth. It was never the most popular alternative to Hillarycare put forward by the GoP, it was one of a couple of prefered alternatives by a relatively small faction of GoP centrists.

    “Who is a moderate Republican these days? I cannot think of any, just far right and very far right.”

    There are very few left, if any. The GoP isn’t anything like it was 15 or 20 years ago. Then centrists are gone or on their way out. But then again, the moderate Democrats are gone too. They sacrificed practically all their moderates to pass the ACA.

    And so here we are.

  • Andy Link

    For Steve and Gustopher a short history.

    Look, I’m no fan of Republicans and IMO they (meaning today’s GoP) have few good or cogent ideas when it comes to health care reform. But this notion that the GoP was ready to pass the functional equivalent of Obamacare in the 1990’s is simply not true.

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