The Power to "Tax"

The Power to “Tax”

I was originally going to title this post “doubling down,” but this blog, which was started to talk about my new-found hobby and commitment to the world to raise and release more butterflies, has become a bit more political, so “tax” seemed more evocative and equally to the point. 

My pervasive theme is the Democratic Party’s concern and the lack of willingness to fight (on Republican terms) for what it believes. The Republicans, while their primaries have been largely proportioned, understand that this is a winner-take-all game.  Their alliances are simple and we hope ineffective.  But they hold together easily, to wit:

Coalitions of fiscal conservatives for less government—translation: lower taxes
Deficit reduction—translation: don’t mortgage the future for mine
Defense spending—translation: inspire a world with my World View, and those motivated to these callings by God.    

The Democratic Party by contrast is a large multitude of not-so-coalesced voices that are not necessarily against all the Republican values but are not necessarily for them either.  Democrats, I believe have the moral high ground because they equally and importantly coalesce around social issues. In addition Democrats are committed not only to making all of their coalesced minions happy, no easy task, but, and this is where we often part company, seem to think at the same time they can and need make the Republicans happy too. 

How is that possible?

Paul Ryan, the Republican House Budget Committee Chair, released a budget this week that passed the House and rocked to rave review by his constituents and to outcries by Democrats.  The budget was rightly denounced by President Obama today, as a ‘doubling down’ on the backs of the poor.  The president said that “instead of moderating their views even slightly, the Republicans running Congress have ‘doubled down’ and proposed a budget so far to the right it makes the Contract with America look like the New Deal.”  Ezra Klein said on his blog today—consistent with President Obama’s charge—“Ryan betrays his own views on income inequality,” and had pointed to the contradiction between Ryan’s budget and his words for a more-inclusive America in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in October.  Paul Krugman yesterday called Ryan’s budget “pink slime economics.”  Pink slime has been in the news of late; Stephen Colbert quipped that liberals expect “beef with beef” and that some beef-state governors are defending adding pink slime to ground beef. 

We need to be very critical of the nonsense that the Right often puts out, but being critical by itself is, in itself, pointless.  Their World View is, of course, motivated by the belief that all of the world’s ills will be cured if the political state is left to function as economically free as possible and they will and are willing to double down on that commitment.

Freedom is a value we all hold in the highest esteem but let me suggest that while I do not wish to get into an intractable philosophical debate over the equally important and conflicting values that we hold that must be juxtaposed with such a vision, doubling down is not a practice without merit.  Democrats had the opportunity to pass their budget; instead we passed on it.  We had the opportunity to implement our contract with America, we passed on it.  The President’s Legislative showpiece is now in jeopardy and his recent comment is sadly sounding like a warning to a deliberating Supreme Court and almost concessionary:

I think the American people understand, and I think the justices should understand, that in the absence of an individual mandate, you cannot have a mechanism to ensure that people with preexisting conditions can actually get health care. So there’s not only a economic element to this, and a legal element to this, but there’s a human element to this. And I hope that’s not forgotten in this political debate.

Ultimately, I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress. And I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint — that an unelected group of people would somehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law. Well, this is a good example. And I’m pretty confident that this Court will recognize that and not take that step.  From Ezra Klein’s Washington Post/Wonkblog April 2, 2012

The overriding issue being discussed by legal pundits is a question about whether the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) will leave intact the Healthcare Law and just strike down the ‘individual mandate’ provision or the entire law.  I guess we will know in June, but Congressional Democrats had the opportunity to prevent this issue from arising.  They chose not to risk the backlash from the Right so implemented the mandate as part of the Commerce Clause.  But more importantly as I read it (the many posts) there would have been no realistic challenge to bring to SCOTUS had they implemented the mandate as a tax.  Succinctly put on Klein’s blog yesterday by Quite Alarmed: “There's little dispute that Congress could have constitutionally implemented the individual mandate, in functionally the exact same form, through an exercise of its Taxing Power. All Congress had to do was put in the word ‘tax’. Democratic lawmakers, however, refused to do that because they were afraid that calling the mandate a tax would spark a conservative backlash.”

One last point: all the Democrats had to do was look at the discourse and rhetoric coming into the vote from comments like the legislation "is an assault on my freedom" to "it's oppressive legislation"; they knew the vote would be almost entirely party line.  They scrambled to make this a bipartisan piece of legislation, when they had the political capital to use.  Fear of using a word may cost us one of the most important and transformative pieces of legislation in our lifetimes.  Does anyone believe there would have been hesitation to double down by the Right if this legislation had been from the Right?

Comments are appreciated.
sfb