The Politics of Taxes

Logic says that lower taxes are good politics and perhaps that is true most of the time.  I once had a college professor tell me that he voted with his pocketbook, a statement I found to be a sad indication of the state of American education, but nonetheless, it makes sense, we would all rather have more dollar dollar bills.

However popular low taxes might be, it is probably a safe bet that blackmail is equally unpopular, and it is with this in mind that I write today's post.

You see, the Congressional deficit hawks, the true idealistic fools in the Tea Party and their puppets, the Republican leadership have done a remarkable job of making a secondary issue - the deficit - into the only issue.  Forget fixing the economy, forget putting people back to work, if only we can derail our economy further by slashing spending and defaulting on our debts, we might just ruin the credibility of the United States forever, not to mention conjuring the second coming of the Great Depression.

With this mindset, Republicans have taken the fight to the historically timid political party known as the Democrats.  Like they have been wont to do in the last decade, Democrats, when under fire, have abandoned all their good ideas and let Republicans take control of the debate.  This capitulation has resulted so far in "negotiations" in which the sides have "compromised" on trillions of dollars in spending cuts.  Yet when Democrats propose even feeble tax increases Republicans storm away from the negotiating table in a hissy fit.

Given how much Republicans have extracted from Democrats - far too much in all likelihood - a normal person would probably expect that they would be willing to give up at least a meager amount in return.  In fact, a normal person would probably expect that they would even give up a modest amount.  But no, the word taxes scares Republicans the same way that insects scare four year olds.  And so when taxes come up in the discussions, Republicans heed the command of their Tea Party overlords and run far, far away.

And so Americans, when they visit the polls next year will know with 158937984% certainty that no current Republican would ever consider raising taxes.  But as appetizing as that sounds, they will also know that - for the time being - all Republicans are willing to resort to blackmail.  They are willing to hold the nation's economy captive; they are willing to get and get and get and not give anything in return.  They are the party of purity, but their unfortunate brand of purity is toxic to our country's health.

Perhaps voters will be lured by low taxes and vote with their pocketbooks.  But more likely, people will realize that Republican strategy risks destroying our nation's economy and they will realize how corrupt it is to place the well-being of the party over the well-being of the United States.  Of course, if Republicans get their way, we won't have to wait until next year's elections to know all this; it will become obvious next month when Republicans, having extracted trillions of dollars in concessions still led the country into default by refusing to compromise.  And then America will get to choose between the party who was willing to bend too far to save the nation and the party who wasn't willing to bend at all.  One party may look weak, but the other will be exposed as the corrupt and intellectually bankrupt group of people they are, a group whose stubborn purity led America to disaster.