Erskine Bowles, co chair with Alan Simpson of the president's fiscal commission, has announced with stupefying self-satisfaction that whatever the legislative outcome, "We've won big: The era of deficit denial in Washington is over." Enjoying the victory, Republican leaders Mitch McConnell and John Kyl have written to Majority Leader Harry Reid saying they will permit no business to proceed in the Senate unless the Bush tax breaks for the rich are extended.
Deficit denial may be over, but tax denial is reaching warp speed. Bowles and Simpson address the deficit first of all by proposing more tax cuts. America's deficit crisis has been presented as a puzzle that can be solved only through zero-sum spending cuts. Can't do a thing with revenues, that would require taxation. Yet, truth is, the deficit crisis and the Social Security crisis and the Medicare crisis and the jobs crisis and the stimulus crisis can all be solved without cutting a single dollar from the budget: Just (don't gag when you say it)... R... R... RAISE TAXES!
Yes, to be sure, first of all, on the wealthy. Letting tax rates for those making more than $250,000 a year return from 35 percent back to 39.5 percent is common sense in a country where 98 percent of the people make less (far less!) than that. But this is not just about "tax the rich." It is about "tax ourselves!" Tax carbon (fossil fuel), tax sin stuff like cigarettes and alcohol, tax inheritance -- if only on legacies a million bucks (that's another no-brainer) and tax financial transactions (one way to get Wall Street to pay a share). But here's the thing: Yes, tax the middle class too. You heard me. Tax us.
America's problem is not that it can't afford the defense and medical and educational and Social Security programs it needs, and even wants. America's problem is that IT DOESN'T WANT TO PAY FOR WHAT IT WANTS! We pay big bucks privately for the cars, gear, entertainment, gadgets, games and stuff that make us happy. We pay only pennies publicly for common goods, and then whine about how many pennies it's costing.
Why? Because three decades of neoliberal market ideology have persuaded Republicans and Democrats alike that government is our enemy and that the public purposes it pursues are illegitimate; and that, Q.E.D, collecting taxes to pay for such purposes is a form of theft. Americans don't just oppose high taxes (high taxes were when the rich paid 85 percent or more back in the Eisenhower era), they oppose taxation per se. In principle. Which principle? The principle that government is illegitimate, politicians are outlaws so taxes are (literally) highway robbery.
We thus frame the "hard choices" as choices between which expenditures to cut rather than between which taxes to raise. But the really hard choice is surely about whether or not we want to pay for the society we want to live in.
Telling America that the only way out of its deficit crisis is to reduce public services is like telling a family that the only way out of a family budget crisis is to forgo either breakfast, lunch or dinner -- because Dad prefers to spend his income on ballgames, and Mom likes to use her salary for novels and makeovers, and sis is spending her summer job salary on Taylor Swift tickets and iPod downloads. Obviously, if family members construe a family budget as a form of theft, that's not only the end of the family budget, it's the end of the family; and either breakfast, lunch or dinner (or maybe all three) will have to go. The real problem is family denial: a refusal to recognize the integrity of the family and its common needs.
Our budget problem today is America denial. The American national family isn't a family anymore -- perhaps because white people don't think people of color are real Americans (as the Birthers continue to say about the president); perhaps because working people don't think poor people try hard enough to get jobs; perhaps because everyone has bought into the privatizing ideology that proclaims "me first!" and the community last. Whichever way you read it, tax denial means Americans are abjuring the American community, the American commonwealth and the American res publica (things of the public) that actually constitutes the meaning of that precious term republic that the Republican Party carries in its name.
When the American community vanishes, American democracy vanishes with it. For in fighting for the democratic principle of no taxation without representation, the founders fought implicitly for the equally democratic principle of no representation without taxation. Membership in the commonwealth entails putting wealth at the disposal of the commons -- the precise aim of public revenue collocation through taxation.
I am not delusional: I know very well that Americans are going to continue to refuse to increase their taxes as a solution to our budget crisis. But that, my fellow Americans, is a form of denial even more pernicious than (pace Erskine Bowles) deficit denial.
We can, as we seem intent on doing, cut away not just fat, but muscle, sinews and bone from the American body politic on the way to cutting the debt. Or we can pool resources and tithe ourselves a little more, sharing the burdens equally in accord with our income, and thereby pay for a healthy society, safe from foreign enemies and secure at home in life, liberty and happiness for all.
For that we have to pony up, however. Make the rich pay their share for sure and save $700 billion right away. But then pay for the rest of what we need and want all by our middle class selves, if America is to be healthy and whole. Representation without taxation is little more than a formula for bankruptcy: bankruptcy of the nation's budget, but more dangerously, bankruptcy of our democracy.
My answer to the Tea Party is the Commonwealth Party, a party willing to pool its wealth by taxing itself enough to provide for the great American commonwealth. It may never garner more than one vote, but it is the only honest response to the endlessly ballyhooed deficit crisis.
Follow Benjamin R. Barber on Twitter: www.twitter.com/BenjaminRBarber
Amitai Etzioni: Looking for Revenue? Tax Booze
They say not to raise taxes on the rich during a time of uncertainty, but they want to raise Medicare costs per person to $7000 a year. They call it cost sharing. That probably doesn't include prescription drugs. They seem to think that will keep people from using it so much. They are probably right about that. They can't afford to use it.
Most elderly don't want to go to the doctor, it is a nuisance. Many have to get a taxi or have their adult children take them which means they miss work.
Mick Jagger and Nichole Kidman each probably pay more American taxes than 95% of Americans - how much representation to they get?
There is an old British saying: "Let's be brothers and share everything. Here's my Penny; now where's your Pound." As you might expect, this argument is generally more appealing to the person with the Penny, rather than the one the one Pound. America's problem is that a lot of people suspect that they are going to be the one with the Pound.
DON'T BET ON CHANGES THAT FAVOR THE AVERAGE PEON
The smartest President ever, the smartest man in the room has only one option. Take what he can get now.
Eventually the US will crumble in a manner similar to the Soviet Union. Exactly how that might happen here is unclear, since the hypocracy of the elite is not so well grasped here as it was at the end of the USSR, legalities and economics bind our regions tighter than did the old Soviet's. But there's no doubt that we've lost the will to form a national union.
Progressives need to talk around the mainstream media and address the interests of people where they live, and only after begin to pull those interests together first regionally then nationally.
Don't look to Washinton for any help, it's bought and paid for. Representative democracy is finished in this country.
I know a lot of people have been poisoned against welfare. My family has never used it, but there are a lot of people out there that are physically, emotionally, or intellectually unable to hold a job.
My problem is that my tax dollars rarely go to anything that helps me or my fellow citizens. My tax dollars support unnecessary wars, military 'contractors' who get paid billions for jobs they never complete, corporate welfare and foreign aid. Then when the deficit gets too large, the slimy corporate politicans in Washington tell us that we need to cut services and social safety nets.
In short, the taxes aren't the problem, it is the spending. Now why exactly would I support higher taxes for the middle class to see no return in services from the government for myself or fellow citizens?
Of course, this doesn't address the other side of the issue - I detest the GOP and their policies but the Dems won't fix any of it either. They are corporate stooges just like the other party.
The rallying cry in 1776 was not "No taxation!"
It was "No taxation without representation!"
Even the "Father of our country," George Washington, in suppressing the Whisky Rebellion, told the citizens to pay up because now it was THEIR country to be paid for and not the British Crown.
The liberal: I got mine; I'll help you get yours.
The moderate: I got mine; you're on your own.
The conservative; I got mine; and I want yours too.
There is, however, one group of citizens for whom the mighty spirit and principles of 1776 do not apply.
That would be the citizens of Washington DC, who pay federal income tax yet have no representative in Congress.
Where are the constitutional conservatives on that one?
The conservative: I got mine honestly through hard work, and I'll help you through private or religious charities if you can't get yours by yourself.
The liberal: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.
The moderate: I'm with you fellas.
Conservatives are rapidly becoming the new welfare recepients in this country always looking for someone else to pick up the tab for their excesses, whether it is on the battlefield, in the boardroom, or in their local communities.