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
