I think that Rahm Emanuel is one of the most paradoxical characters on the American scene. On the one hand he was the worst Congressman I’ve ever had and an absolutely ghastly mayor for Chicago, only made to look good by the incumbent. On the other he was a pretty effective Chief of Staff and a great leader of the Democratic House re-election campaign. The moral there is ignore what he says about policy but pay close attention to what he says about politics. In his most recent Wall Street Journal op-ed he muses on the present posture of Congressional Republicans:
Nearly 60% of Americans are bothered “a lot†that corporations and rich people don’t pay their fair share, according to a Pew Research survey—and only a third are bothered by the amount they pay themselves. Navigator Research finds 69% support raising taxes on the rich (those making $400,000 or more), on corporations or both to support infrastructure investments—and that includes a majority of Republicans earning less than $50,000 a year. Taken as a whole, 58% of Americans back Mr. Biden’s plan, including 25% of Republicans, according to a Morning Consult poll. This isn’t Ronald Reagan’s coalition anymore—and that works to the Democrats’ advantage.
As public attitudes change, Republicans are in a precarious position—and they know it, as revealed by their rhetoric, or lack thereof. The Trumpist base is hip that they don’t get much directly from the sort of tax cuts that Reagan championed, that George W. Bush signed in 2001 and 2003, and that Mr. Trump touted in 2017. A party hoping to refashion itself as a champion of blue-collar voters and the struggling middle class is quickly realizing that the other elements of its economic agenda don’t resonate either. Republicans can rail against waste, as they’re doing. But complaints about deficits are ridiculous when Messrs. Trump and Bush both sent the federal government deep into the red.
That puts the GOP in uncharted political territory. Richard Nixon understood how fiscal policy overlapped with cultural grievance. His Southern strategy centered largely on the dog whistle that Democrats wanted to tax “you†and give money to “them.†Now Mr. Biden, who has fought against that canard his whole career, has flipped the script: He’s suggesting that he wants to tax a very different “them†and give it to “you.†And that’s working to dissolve the glue that for decades kept Wall Street’s mandarins and middle America’s social conservatives aligned.
It isn’t that Democrats have never been able to win the tax fight. President Clinton raised taxes on the wealthy to close the deficit in the 1990s. President Obama did the same to fund the Affordable Care Act. But raising taxes in both cases proved unpopular, despite being the right thing to do. Mr. Biden doesn’t have to shroud his tax plan in rhetoric about fiscal responsibility. He can lead with it, as he’s doing. That change marks a profound shift of the so-called Overton window—namely, what’s achievable in any given policy fight.
“Minarchism” is the political philosophy that teaches that government should be absolutely minimized. Not just that the “government that governs least governs best” but absolutely limiting the scope of government. When Paul Ryan became House Speaker it was a signal that minarchism had gained a toehold in the Republican Party at the national level. That itself is a paradox when you think about it. Very little of what the federal government does today is actually properly within its scope. The sole roles of a Congress actually committed to minarchism would be to block legislation from going forward and to try roll back existing legislation which pretty well describes Paul Ryan’s House.
Are Republicans actually abandoning that in favor of Trumpist populism? Or were they just pretending to embrace minarchism and have now revealed their true colors? Or are they just facing in whichever direction the political wind is blowing?
We won’t know until Republicans gain some measure of power. As always with opposition parties that have no actual powers and responsibilities, they don’t define themselves so much as to oppose the party in power.
One skeptical note…. proposing ideas are popular based on polls is trickier than it used to be. Pollsters haven’t really figured out why they have suffered declining accuracy when it matters; or how they have fixed it.
The Tax Policy Institute estimates that 44% of Americans pay no federal income tax. (They do pay FICA, sales, and excise taxes.) That estimate is down slightly from the 47% they estimated a few years ago. Many of those paying no income tax are likely to be on welfare or social security, so they are getting Nixon’s proposed negative income tax, which was never passed.
So, the tax base is rather constrained. And the large deficits we nowadays routinely run, amounting to $1 trillion per year, argue for substantial tax increases. There is persistent talk of a value-added tax, but that seems highly regressive to me. The 56% who do pay income tax are not likely to be in the 58% who support raising taxes. I would like to see a survey of actual taxpayers.
I tend to agree that the problem is spending (miniarch me). I would favor a large reduction in military spending, but that money is spread out over the population so much that I doubt a cut would pass Congress.
I don’t see any solution. When the financial class to deindustrialize our economy, they destroyed the tax base, and immiserated the working class. It only seems fair that they should pay for their crimes.
Looks to me, based upon past budgets when they were in charge, that the GOP has only talked about small government, they haven’t practiced it. They do cut taxes but that is not reducing government.
Steve