It's not as if we needed one more example to prove that the mainstream media have developed a reflex of accepting the premises of the right in order to make liberals look discredited. But try this one on for size.
This past Sunday, Howard Dean was a guest on Meet the Press. Host Tim Russert wanted to engage the former Vermont governor on whether repealing the Bush administration's tax cuts, a position Dean supports, would amount to a tax increase.
Russert confronted Dean with the "fact" that a repeal of both major Bush tax cuts would lead to a $1,933 tax increase for a couple earning $40,000.
Usually, these kinds of figures come from an independent source of some kind -- the Congressional Budget Office or not-for-profit tax study groups, which generally tilt in one direction or the other but at least are not an official arm of the government.
But in this case, Russert went to the Treasury Department for his figures. He said as much on the air, so at least he didn't try to hide it. But it's still an extraordinary thing: These were not numbers the Treasury Department had sitting around, ready to shoot off in an email to MTP when a researcher called looking for some "oppo" (that is, opposition research), as is normally the case. Here, an independent news organization went to a sitting administration, asked it to work up numbers for its benefit, and then used those numbers to launch what amounted to a rhetorical sting operation on a candidate of the other party.
Do you suppose MTP ever asked the Clinton administration to produce research proving that the Harry and Louise ad campaign against the Clinton health plan was full of lies? Or asked the Gore campaign to offer up a study debunking Bush's explanation of how he'd cut billions in taxes and keep the surplus going?
And it goes without saying -- except it matters, so I'll say it -- that the research was selective. The analysis excluded single people and low-income couples -- the two groups that benefit least from the tax cuts.
Oh, well, this is how things go these days. But the more important question raised by Allen's piece has to do with Bush's line of attack in the coming presidential election, and how Democrats should respond to it.
Bush will use the campaign to hammer home two economic points: first, that the tax cuts, now scheduled to sunset after seven years (he had to agree to this position to ensure their passage) must be made permanent. And second, that attempts by Democrats to repeal the cuts, or even Democratic opposition to making them permanent, will lead to a massive tax increase on working Americans.
That won't be easy to argue against. The Brookings Institution, in critiquing the cuts, argues that 81 percent of American families will receive $1,000 or less, while the rich will get untold thousands. That's fine, but looked at another way, to many people, $1,000 is a lot of money. To most families on tight budgets, $1,000, or even a few hundred, amounts to a pretty clear upside.
But what's the downside? Democrats' historical tendency is to express it in terms of equity and fairness. It's not fair, they say, that a working person gets a $400 rebate while a multi-millionaire gets $17,000 or more. And so many Democratic candidates -- Dean, Dick Gephardt and John Kerry, notably -- have advanced their own tax alternatives that preserve the bulk of Bush's cuts for the working and middle classes but eliminate the cuts for the very wealthy.
I'm all for that, but it's not enough of an argument for three reasons. First, two decades of greed-is-good rhetoric has convinced most working- and middle-class people that $400 is about all they deserve, while the super-rich, who are morally superior to the rest of us, deserve their $17,000.
The second reason it's not enough of an argument is that it does come across on some level as uninspiring and Bush-lite: We like tax cuts, too, we just don't want to go crazy with them.
But the third reason it's not a very persuasive argument is the most important. It is, if you will, philosophical: It demands that people see only the big, common interest and put aside their self-interest. This is a huge problem for post-1960s liberalism, which has decided that self-interest is bad. It's not. Self-interest is just fine. Selfishness is bad. There's a big difference between the two. It's the difference between the basically decent instincts of most Americans and the atrociously indecent agenda of the radical right.
So the question comes down to this: Is there a point at which tax cuts work against regular Americans' self-interest? I think there is, and it can be articulated in two ways.
The first has to do with the hideous situation in the states. Virtually every state in the union is raising income or property taxes, cutting services to middle-income people, charging fees for things that were once free, and raising fees on things that were once cheap. They're doing this for the obvious reason that they're getting no help from the feds; and they're getting no help from the feds because the feds don't have any money because the feds keep passing tax cuts. In Connecticut, for example, conservative Gov. John Rowland (R) has been pushing $250 million in spending cuts -- and has just agreed to $250 million in tax increases (actually, a rollback of a local property-tax credit).
That's on top of the $650 million in tax increases agreed to in a February deficit-reduction plan. And even after all that, the state is left with a $300 million gap.
Connecticut is closer to the rule than the exception. An argument that the federal tax cuts are just forcing tax hikes on the other end is one that will make intuitive sense to people. It can put the White House on the defensive. And it appeals to Americans' self-interest: It explains to them that in exchange for their $400, they're getting hosed in other ways that probably add up to the same thing.
The second line of attack on the tax cuts will take more courage and imagination. It has to do with Democrats having the gumption to defend government.
Again, 20 years of right-wing rhetoric has persuaded many people that "government spending" is evil -- it's welfare, food stamps, aid to foreigners, grants for degenerate art. The tax-cut argument will always win as long as people hold government spending in such low regard.
In fact, the vast majority of government spending goes toward things that bring direct or eventual benefits to the lives of middle Americans, and that most Americans say they support: defense, homeland security, Social Security, investment in the country's infrastructure, school lunches, clean air and water, scientific and medical research, highways, local law enforcement, and so on. Of the vast majority of these initiatives, three things can be said: The states can't fund them because they don't have the money; the private sector won't do them because they're not the private sector's responsibility; and individual people cannot take their $400 rebate checks, band together, and decide to go clean up the local lake or hire more airport screeners or fund Alzheimer's research. Like it or not, only the federal government can do, and does, these things.
Most Americans do have an actual and specific interest (that word again!) in federal spending and investment. Granted, it would take a little courage for a Democrat to talk this way, and undoubtedly many Americans would still -- like Tom in It's A Wonderful Life who demanded every penny of his $242 -- choose their tax cut. So there's certainly a risk. An argument like this one might lose. But that makes it an improvement over the arguments Democrats have been making for the last two years, which are sure to lose.
Michael Tomasky's column appears every Wednesday at TAP Online.
