“Republicans To Wealthy; We Just Can’t Quit You”: Giving Equal Benefits To Everyone Would Be Ridiculous
Any marginally aware citizen is familiar with what I like to call the Four Pillars of Conservatism: low taxes, small government, strong defense, and traditional values. The simplicity and clarity of these ideas allows any Republican anywhere to move into politics with a ready-made ideological program, and as long as they stay abstract, it’s reasonably popular. It’s only when you start to get into specifics that the agenda becomes problematic.
The trick is that if you’re proposing something unpopular, to speak about it in the most abstract terms possible. “Low taxes” sounds great, because who wouldn’t like to pay less in taxes? The trouble is that what Republicans actually want is to cut taxes for the wealthy. They’re perfectly happy to cut taxes for other people if the opportunity presents itself, but the value of tax cuts for the wealthy is an absolutely foundational belief.
They know, however, that most Americans don’t agree. So when they talk about taxes, they’re supposed to be circumspect and careful, answering questions about tax cuts for the wealthy by saying that tax cuts in general are good for everybody. Which is why it’s so surprising when one of them is candid, as House Ways and Means Committee chairman Kevin Brady was in an interview with John Harwood published today.
Brady, who is in charge of tax policy, just comes out and says that Republicans won’t accept any tax reform that doesn’t include reducing the top income tax rate. All that talk of making the tax code simpler is all well and good, but there’s one thing they will absolutely not compromise on, and that’s the top rate, which is currently paid by those making over $415,000 a year:
HARWOOD: Could you envision a tax reform that you could go along with that had many elements that you liked that did not decrease the top rate?
BRADY: That’d be difficult to accept, because I think that holds back investment, both by businesses, small businesses, and by families.
HARWOOD: Because there are some conservatives who are arguing that in the environment that we’re in now, that conservative tax reformers ought to focus on things other than the top rate.
BRADY: I’d have to disagree, and here’s why. Besides businesses investing, when individuals, after they make that dollar, they have three choices. They can spend it, they can save it, which is good as well, but they can reinvest it back in the economy. And earners, not just high earners, all along the scale do that. I want to encourage families and environments to do more of that. And so on that side of the ledger, let’s look at those pro-growth packages.
There’s a rationale here, which is that when you give rich people more money, they’re more likely to invest it, which helps grow the economy over the long run. But conservatives sell this idea not as a long-term way to sustain investment, but as a short-term strategy to bring prosperity to all. This year, every Republican running for president essentially pledged to bring back George W. Bush’s economic policies. There were differences in the details of their plans, but all of them centered on large tax cuts for the wealthy, and all promised that the effects would be spectacular.
But here on Planet Earth, there is zero real-world evidence that large tax cuts for the wealthy super-charge the economy. If it were true, then Bush would have been the most economically successful president in American history. But he was actually one of the worst, and when it comes to job creation, the last two presidents who raised taxes on the wealthy — Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — were among the best. The economy created 22 million jobs while Clinton was president, and Obama is on pace to see around 16 million new jobs created since the trough of the Great Recession in his first months in office (I discussed this at length here — with charts!).
Meanwhile, media coverage continues to suggest that Paul Ryan represents some kind of sober alternative to the presidential candidates. But he has long advocated slashing the top rate from its current 39.6 percent down to 25 percent, which would represent an enormous giveaway to the wealthy (he says it’ll be paid for by “cutting loopholes,” which are never specified). Just a month ago, Ryan was asked whether he might consider a plan that’s “distributionally neutral,” in other words, one that gives equal benefits to every income group. Here’s what Ryan said:
So I do not like the idea of buying into these distributional tables. What you’re talking about is what we call static distribution. It’s a ridiculous notion. What it presumes is life in the economy is some fixed pie, and it’s not going to change. And it’s really up to government to redistribute the slices more equitably. That is not how the world works. That’s not how life works. You can shrink or expand the economy, and what we want to maximize is economic growth and upward mobility so that everybody can get a bigger slice of the pie.
To translate: Giving equal benefits to everyone would be ridiculous. The only way to expand the economy for all is to shower benefits on the rich. But most people don’t quite understand what Ryan is talking about; all they hear is that he wants more pie for everybody. That’s how you’re supposed to talk about taxes.
And this is the key thing to understand: no matter which Republican ends up being the presidential nominee, cutting taxes for the wealthy will be at the absolute top of the agenda. Even Donald Trump, who has been happy to buck Republican orthodoxy on a variety of issues, issued a tax plan the greatest benefits of which went to the wealthy — just like every other candidate.
In this election, just like in every other election, Democrats will charge that Republicans only want to help the rich. It’s an effective attack, mostly because it’s true. Or to be more generous, Republicans want to help everyone, it’s just that they really want to help the rich, and they see helping the rich as the best way to help everyone else. But it’s possible that the Democratic attack could be particularly potent this year in winning over independents and even a few Republicans. The Republican Party has spent the last year in a brutal argument about their own perfidious elites, who supposedly look with scorn on the masses in their party. And after all that, the centerpiece of their economic plans for the future is still cutting taxes at the top.
When a party advocates something that politically dangerous, it isn’t because they’re stupid. It’s because they believe in it, down the marrow of their bones.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Plum Line Blog, The Washington Post, April 12, 2016
“The Elephant In The Room”: Southern States Do Not Distort The Primary
At the end of last night’s Democratic debate, Dana Bash asked Sanders whether he will take the contest to the convention in Philadelphia if neither candidate clinches the nomination via pledged delegates. Sanders responded by saying that he plans to win the nomination outright. But then he injected something that both he and his campaign staff have said frequently.
Look, let me acknowledge what is absolutely true. Secretary Clinton cleaned our clock in the Deep South. No question about it. We got murdered there. That is the most conservative part of this great country. That’s the fact.
For the last several weeks, this is a contention the Sanders campaign has made in various forms. Most recently, the candidate told Larry Wilmore that having the Southern states vote early in the primary “distorts reality.” If we combine that statement with what he said last night, the argument becomes: having Southern states vote early in the primary distorts reality because it is the most conservative part of the country. Of course, if that were true, it would hurt Sanders as the candidate who consistently lays claim to being the more progressive of the two.
I would propose that the Mountain West (where Sanders has notched up big wins lately) could challenge the claim that the Deep South is the most conservative part of the country. An analysis by The Hill on the five most conservative states turns up a mix of these two regions, giving us: Alabama, Alaska, Idaho, Kansas and Mississippi. Were the primaries in Alaska, and Idaho distorted by their conservatism? The other question this assertion raises is: do more conservative Republicans in a state mean that Democratic primaries there are “distorted?”
Ultimately, the elephant in the room about this claim is that the difference between conservative Mountain and Southern states is that the Democratic electorate in the latter is made up largely of people of color – with whom Sanders performs poorly. Do people of color distort reality because they are more conservative?
It is very possible that the answer to that question is “yes.” The truth is…we don’t have a lot of data on that. But I would suggest that anyone who asserts that argument is assuming that a political continuum from conservative to liberal is, by default, based on how white people would construct it. For example, I would imagine that liberals in the Mountain West states would prioritize things like repealing Citizens United and challenging Wall Street, whereas African Americans in the South would prioritize voting rights, ending systemic racism and programs to lift people out of poverty. How progressive one is would be measured by their record and platform on those issues.
The whole dismissal of the South by some Democrats is also very short-sighted. Not only are Hispanics becoming a key voting bloc in many of those states, it ignores the fact that the great migration of African Americans out of that area during the Jim Crow days is now being reversed.
The quiet return of African-American retirees and young professionals has the potential to reshape the South again over the next few decades, much as the exodus to northern cities reshaped it in the 20th century.
Years ago I was taught a lesson in the different ways that white and black liberals view the South. After having been raised primarily in Texas, I decided to settle in Minnesota. That decision was influenced by a desire to escape the racism that was so blatant in the South. I was shocked and confused when my African American friends up here talked about longing to return to the South. They patiently explained two things to me. First of all, the South is “home.” It’s where their people are. And they long to return to that sense of community. Secondly, many of them actually prefer to deal with the outright racism of the South rather than the subtle form they experience from so-called friends and allies in the North.
The fact that Bernie Sanders insinuates that Democratic voters in the South are more conservative and distort the primary process indicates that he hasn’t spent much time hearing from or thinking about the perspective of African Americans in that part of the country. That is probably true for a lot of Northern liberals. But if he’s looking for an answer to the question about why he is not winning their support, this is part of the reason.
By: Nancy LeTourneau, Political Animal Blog, The Washington Monthly, April 15, 2016
“The Real Welfare Cheats”: The Big Problem Of Welfare Dependency In America Now Involves Entitled Corporations
We often hear how damaging welfare dependency is, stifling initiative and corroding the human soul. So I worry about the way we coddle executives in their suites.
A study to be released Thursday says that for each dollar America’s 50 biggest companies paid in federal taxes between 2008 and 2014, they received $27 back in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.
Goodness! What will that do to their character? Won’t that sap their initiative?
The study was compiled by Oxfam and it comes on top of a mountain of evidence from international agencies and economic journals underscoring the degree to which major companies have rigged the tax code.
O.K., O.K., I know you see the words “tax code” and your eyes desperately scan for something else to read! Anything about a sex scandal?
But hold on: The tax system is rigged against us precisely because taxation is the Least Sexy Topic on Earth. So we doze, and our pockets get picked.
John Oliver has a point when he says, “If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.” The beneficiaries of tax distortions are counting on you to fall asleep, but this is a topic as important as it is dry.
It’s because the issues seem arcane that corporate lobbyists get away with murder. The Oxfam report says that each $1 the biggest companies spent on lobbying was associated with $130 in tax breaks and more than $4,000 in federal loans, loan guarantees and bailouts.
And why would a humanitarian nonprofit like Oxfam spend its time poring over offshore accounts and tax dodges? “The global economic system is becoming increasingly rigged” in ways that exacerbate inequality, laments Ray Offenheiser, president of Oxfam America.
One academic study found that tax dodging by major corporations costs the U.S. Treasury up to $111 billion a year. By my math, less than one-fifth of that annually would be more than enough to pay the additional costs of full-day prekindergarten for all 4-year-olds in America ($15 billion), prevent lead poisoning in tens of thousands of children ($2 billion), provide books and parent coaching for at-risk kids across the country ($1 billion) and end family homelessness ($2 billion).
The Panama Papers should be a wake-up call, shining a light on dysfunctional tax codes around the world — but much of the problem has been staring us in the face. Among the 500 corporations in the S.&P. 500-stock index, 27 were both profitable in 2015 and paid no net income tax globally, according to an analysis by USA Today.
Those poor companies! Think how the character of those C.E.O.s must be corroding! And imagine the plunging morale as board members realize that they are “takers” not “makers.”
American companies game the system in many ways, including shifting profits to overseas tax havens. In 2012, American companies reported more profit in low-tax Bermuda than in Japan, China, Germany and France combined, even though their employees in Bermuda account for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of their worldwide totals.
Over all, the share of corporate taxation in federal revenue has declined since 1952 from 32 percent to 11 percent. In that same period, the portion coming from payroll taxes, which hit the working poor, has climbed.
Look, the period of the Oxfam study included the auto and banking bailouts, which were good for America (and the loans were repaid); it’s also true that the official 35 percent corporate tax rate in the U.S. is too high, encouraging dodging strategies. But we have created perverse incentives: C.E.O.s have a responsibility to shareholders to make money, and tax dodging accomplishes that. This isn’t individual crookedness but an entire political/economic system that induces companies to rip off fellow citizens quite legally.
It’s now widely recognized that corporations have manipulated the tax code. The U.S. Treasury, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and professional economic journals are all trying to respond to issues of tax evasion.
Bravo to the Obama administration for cracking down on corporations that try to move abroad to get out of taxes. Congress should now pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, and it should stop slashing the I.R.S. budget (by 17 percent in real terms over the last six years).
When congressional Republicans like Ted Cruz denounce the I.R.S., they empower corporate tax cheats. Because of I.R.S. cuts, the amount of time revenue agents spend auditing large companies has fallen by 34 percent since 2010. A Syracuse University analysis finds that the lost revenue from the decline in corporate audits may be as much as $15 billion a year — enough to make full-day pre-K universal.
Meanwhile, no need to fret so much about welfare abuse in the inner city. The big problem of welfare dependency in America now involves entitled corporations. So let’s help those moochers in business suits pick themselves up and stop sponging off the government.
By: Nicholas Kristof, Op-Columnist, The New York Times, April 14, 2016
“He Needs To Walk His Talk”: Tax Transparency; Jane Sanders Claims Returns Released In ‘Every Election’
A basic rule of politics is that when you have a problem, get it all out and put it behind you. The worst response is to dither and then shoot yourself in the foot.
With the Bernie Sanders campaign, we are seeing the candidate repeatedly shoot himself in the foot over what would be a non-issue, if only he had forthrightly answered a question that has dogged him since last summer.
Where are your tax returns?
It’s a question that goes not just to Sanders but also to all the other politicians who want us to trust them in the most powerful office in the world but want to hide their finances and tax strategies. That includes Donald Trump, whose tax returns I will be shocked if we ever see; and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich, who like Sanders have only released the summary form 1040 and not their complete returns, as I recently noted here.
Last summer, NPR and the Washington Post asked Sanders for his tax returns, a question the senator had to know would be raised because releasing them has been standard practice for presidential aspirants since Watergate, when America had an unindicted tax criminal in the Oval Office and a confessed tax felon a heartbeat from the presidency.
Sanders had made available only his and wife Jane’s 2014 Form 1040, a summary lacking crucial details about their sources of income, deductions, and tax strategy.
In late March I asked for Sanders’ complete tax returns back to 2007, when he became senator. What I got back was a dissembling statement from his campaign spokesman, followed by silence when I sent follow-up questions via email.
Now this story has taken a very troubling turn, one that raises serious questions about the Senator’s judgment and his wife’s veracity.
On Bloomberg TV’s With All Due Respect last Monday, host Mark Halperin asked Jane Sanders when she would disclose the couple’s tax returns. In her reply, she claimed “every election we released them.”
My diligent reporting has failed to turn up any indication that her statement is true.
I made extensive telephone calls, interviewed a former Sanders election opponent, thoroughly searched Google, the Internet archive known as the “Wayback Machine,” the Nexis database, Newspapers.com, and files of Vermont’s largest newspaper, the Burlington Free Press. I called veteran Vermont political reporters and operatives.
Except for one reporter who said he had a vague recollection that perhaps, some years ago, he may have seen a partial Sanders tax return, nothing I learned lends any credence to what Jane Sanders claimed.
Halperin asked a series of questions trying to pin down Ms. Sanders, who said she prepares the couple’s tax returns using the TurboTax computer program. She indicated a vague awareness that their taxes had been sought during the prior two weeks by, she suggested, the Hillary Clinton campaign.
But I was the one doing the requesting. I clearly identified myself as a journalist. I have no connection to the Clinton campaign and, for the record, am registered to vote in Republican primaries. (I have also written favorably about Sanders’ economic proposals and appeared as a guest on his radio show.)
While Halperin pressed Ms. Sanders repeatedly, she pleaded for time to find and release their pre-2014 tax returns. She promised without reservation that the returns would be released, adding, “Well, sure, I will have to go back and find them — we haven’t been home for a month.”
Halperin asked if she would release full returns, not just Form 1040.
“Sure, no problem,” she replied.
When?
“I would say well, when they are due I would expect them to come out,” she said.
Halperin asked how many years of returns would be released, noting Hillary Clinton has released eight years. (Actually all of the returns filed by her and her husband dating back to 1992 are available at taxhistory.org).
That was when Jane Sanders said: “Every election we have released them…we did when he ran for election, yeah. I’ll release this year’s as soon as they’re due… and can I have time to go home to retrieve the older ones?
Just how Mrs. Sanders would prepare the 2015 tax return by the April 18 deadline, but not have access to a prior year return, is an interesting question that Halperin did not ask.
Had those returns been released in 2012, 2006, and in Sanders’ earlier races, it would be reasonable to expect that there would be at least passing mention of them in Vermont news reports.
Furthermore, the candidate would be able to point me or anyone else inquiring to a staffer, a political operative, a friend, or someone who had kept a copy of his returns or even just remembers seeing a copy.
Richard Tarrant, a successful medical software entrepreneur who ran against Sanders in 2006, told me that had he ever seen either the form 1040 or the complete tax return of Bernie and Jane Sanders, he would have reviewed the document carefully to learn all he could about their finances — and whether the tax return showed any political vulnerabilities in that race. Tarrant, who had a big interest in seeking the Sanders’ returns, said he never saw one.
Michael Briggs, chief press spokesperson for the Sanders campaign, did not respond to questions I submitted in writing.
The silence from Briggs is itself troubling, since his employer is campaigning as Mr. Transparency.
Now there may well be nothing of consequence in the Sanders tax returns. But that is not the issue. Sanders is giving aid to those politicians who want to end the practice of disclosing tax returns, while marketing himself as a politician untainted by big donations and lobbyists.
He needs to walk his talk.
And meanwhile if anyone out there has an old Sanders tax return, please send it to me: [email protected]
By: David Cay Johnston, The National Memo, April 13, 2016
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