Rare is the occasion when the GOP admits to wrongs or about-faces on political philosophy. One must cherish those moments, for they are like the Catholic Church saying, “Oh yeah, we were kind of wrong about that thing [Nazis, the Inquisition, fill in the blank however you wish].” In these moments, delusional hubris meets reality head on. And so it is with certain GOP stalwarts’ recent admission that tax cuts alone with not shrink that Bush-created deficit and debt. The revolt (if one can call it that) grew out of a firm rebuke of Grover Norquist’s authoritarian Taxpayer Protection Pledge, signed in 1986.
Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia conservative, told Georgia TV station 13WMAZ, “I care more about my country than I do about a 20-year-old pledge… If we do it his way then we’ll continue in debt, and I just have a disagreement with him about that.” Well, what’s with the sudden change of heart, Mr. Chambliss? Why now? Is it to save face as we approach that fear-mongering “fiscal cliff” idea bandied about by legislators and certain members of the media?
South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, appearing on ABC’s This Week, said, “I think Grover is wrong when it comes to, ‘We can’t cap deductions and buy down debt,” adding, “I’m willing to generate revenue… When you’re $16 trillion in debt, the only pledge we should be making to each other is to avoid becoming Greece, and Republicans should put revenue on the table. We’re this far in debt. We don’t generate enough revenue.”
Say what? We don’t generate enough revenue? These GOP guys are funny. For four years their main objective was to make Obama, in Mitch McConnell’s words, a “one-term president,” and now they’re practically talking like European social democrats.
The interesting subtext here is that the GOP is finally admitting that, just as in the Clinton years (which brought a budget surplus), it is a combination of increased revenue and spending cuts that balance the budget. And again, like Clinton, they are very publicly entertaining the idea of a millionaire’s tax. Even The Weekly Standard neo-conservative mouthpiece Bill Kristol, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said, “You know what? It won’t kill the country if Republicans raise taxes a little bit on millionaires. It really won’t, I don’t think.”
Tax millionaires, Bill? Damnation.
November 26, 2012 at 9:24 pm, Jeremy Arthur Vandelay said:
Neither will raising taxes. This is a pointless conversation to have unless we agree to cut spend by a MINIMUM of $1 Trillion by next year. Otherwise you can raise taxes on every wealthy person to 90% and it guarantees a deficit to the tune of hundreds of billions. This also naively assumes siphoning all of that money from the private sector to cover those tax hikes will not have massive economic repercussions, which it undoubtedly will.
There is no upside to this terrible idea.
November 26, 2012 at 10:33 pm, D. J. Pangburn said:
I didn't state that I believe a millionaire tax would shrink the deficit—Bill Kristol and some other GOP members did. I was taking the piss out of them in my article.
That said, taxes on the highest earners, in concert with spending cuts, under Clinton DID shrink the deficit during his eight years. Now, granted, tax revenues were riding high from 1993 to just before 9-11-2001 because of two successive bubbles: Dot-Com and housing. But, the deficit did shrink during that time.
The larger point is that we tried the whole cut taxes/raise spending to unprecedented levels under Bush—a warped version of the "starve the beast" strategy (pioneered by Reagan)—and we saw the deficit and debt balloon. Yes, Obama has added to this since 2008; that cannot be denied.
But if cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthiest was supposed to shrink the deficit with new revenue (from capital investment), why the fuck didn't it work from 2002 up until the present, eh? I mean, if it's supposed to be this wondrous economic tonic, it should have worked over nearly a decade, right?
November 26, 2012 at 11:25 pm, Jeremy Arthur Vandelay said:
Wait wait. I think we have a total misunderstanding as to what starve the beast means.
Starve the beast does not mean cut taxes while increasing spending and just borrow / print the difference.
The reason the economy did not improve under Bush is precisely because of what we're talking about- government spending went up setting records every year, so you've answered your own question. Taxes need to be cut but common sense tells us spending needs to be cut in tandem, which did not happen.
Raising taxes to replace the printing / borrowing to fund this expensive goverment accomplishes nothing. You can dump all the water you want on a brick wall, but it's never going to yield food like a garden. The source and volume of the water are irrelevant.
November 27, 2012 at 1:12 am, D. J. Pangburn said:
I know exactly what the idea behind "starve the beast" is, buddy. Reagan attempted it in conjunction with spending cuts in his first term. Didn't work. Raised tax eight times in his second term and the economy improved but it still wasn't a muscular economy.
Yep, those cutting taxes and spending in tandem, it didn't work under Reagan. Again, he and his team tried to pull it off in his first term and it didn't work. On the contrary, it deepened the economic woes. There were NO massive increases in spending (other than defense spending) under Reagan as there were during W's years.
One might say the printing and borrowing of money really got out of control under W, who was creating a massive new bureaucracy and trying to finance two wars. They said for terrorism, I say for strategic leverage in the middle east for oil and to make plays against Russia and China, but that's neither here nor there.
It's no easy task suddenly starving his massive deficits and debts.
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