Tax Cuts

Someone from the Democratic Party called me last night asking for money, and I said no.

That’s only partly because I’d been receiving a slew of “Blocked” calls on my cell phone over the last few weeks from someone who had refused to leave a message, and when I finally decided to answer one of those blocked calls last night, it turned out to be the Democratic Party asking for money to fund a recount of the U.S. House race on Long Island. The main reason I wasn’t giving the Democrats any money, I explained to the guy on the phone politely, was that they don’t deserve it. A party that keeps ceding the initiative to the opposition isn’t getting my cash.

Which brings me to this: I am so tired of the debate over what to do about the Bush tax cuts.

First of all, the reason the 2001 Bush tax cuts were supposed to expire after 10 years was to get around the Byrd Rule, which allows any senator to block a piece of legislation if it will significantly increase the deficit beyond 10 years. Cap the tax cuts at 10 years (and hey, we’ll revisit the issue in 10 years, *wink wink*) and apparently there would magically be no deficit problem.

And now look at how the goalposts have moved. During the 2008 campaign, Obama wasn’t talking about letting the Bush tax cuts expire. He and the Democrats were talking about ending them early! Extending any of the Bush tax cuts wasn’t even being discussed. Thank you, Overton window.

Now everyone is saying, oh no, we can’t return to the Clinton-era tax rates, not in the middle of a recession! That will hurt everyone!

I would like to think this isn’t true. First of all: unemployed people don’t pay income taxes, so expiration of the tax cuts will not affect them. Second of all, if you have a job, there is no reason to spend less in a recession than you would spend in a good economy; you still have a job. Why should the general economy affect how much you spend? I know things don’t work that way — people spend less because they are afraid they will lose their jobs. Economics are subject to human psychology as much as anything else.

I am mixed on whether to let the tax cuts expire on income below $250,000, to be honest. But more tax cuts for rich people? No way.

To argue as the Republicans would, let’s talk about personal responsibility. Americans always knew the Bush tax cuts would expire after 10 years. They should have been planning for it all along. Tax rates were always going to go back up in 2011. If this tax increase takes you by surprise, that’s your own damn fault.

Not that the Republicans are arguing this, of course. All they really care about are protecting rich people, because tax cuts are always good, because tax cuts are the new religion and you’re not supposed to think rationally about religion, you’re just supposed to have faith that’s it’s true, and if you believe in it hard enough then it is true, and anyway that’s what their team believes and they’re always a part of their team.

And I certainly don’t expect the Democrats to do what’s right and let the tax cuts expire, or to even form a coherent message, one that couldn’t be easier to understand: Republicans are holding middle-class tax cuts hostage to their rich friends. Coherency? Hell — the Bush tax cuts passed in a Democrat-controlled Senate in 2001, and twelve Democratic senators wound up voting for them.

Early this year I decided to become less emotionally invested in politics. The turning point was when it looked like Scott Brown was going to beat Martha Coakley and the poor Democrats responded by quaking in their boots, promising to cave in on health care reform, because, oh noes, we can’t do anything with only 59 seats.

Health care reform eventually passed, but I had already given up. It was their attitude that did it for me. Even Barney Frank had talked about giving in. At that point I decided it wasn’t worth personally investing myself in the Democratic Party, emotionally or otherwise. I stopped thinking of the Democrats as “my team.” I would keep rooting for them, but I wasn’t going to feel personally hurt or embarrassed if they lost. I washed my hands of them.

I’ve felt a lot better since then.

2 thoughts on “Tax Cuts

  1. I did the same thing in terms of emotionally divorcing the Democrats; it’s been coming over the past couple of years, but this year it came to a head for the reasons you described, and for their general right-ward shift, and for their making some of the worst abuses of the previous administration the new normal, the new center. I’ve sent every request for money back with a note about why I’m not giving except to individual progressive candidates and causes. I still technically am registered as a Democrat, but have been giving very serious consideration to un-registering.

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