How does a candidate go about getting nearly a majority of the votes while advocating a tax program that will overwhelmingly benefit a tiny, super-wealthy elite? As the invaluable All The President's Spin, a new book from the editors of Spinsanity.org, ably documents, you mislead people. You say your plan will benefit all taxpayers when, in fact, the millions of workers who pay no federal income tax but do pay payroll tax get nothing at all. You say that under your plan "a single waitress supporting two children on an income of $22,000 ... will pay no income tax at all," when such a person already pays no income tax. You say your plan will dedicate 25 percent of the surplus to tax cuts when the real figure is 35 percent. Last, but by no means least, you say, "the highest-percentage tax cuts go to the lowest-income Americans." As the book explains, "By this logic, a low-income person whose income tax liability was reduced from $100 to $50 (a 50 percent cut) would have benefited more from the tax cut than someone whose income taxes fall from $100,000 to $75,000 (a 25 percent cut)."
With the media unwilling -- or unable -- to explain the reality behind such presidential deceit, George W. Bush won the 2000 election and succeeded in ramming his plan through Congress. Heading into the 2004 election, John Kerry's advisers believed they'd devised a method to avoid Al Gore's fate: don't oppose the Bush tax cuts because they overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy; merely oppose those portions of the cuts that exclusively benefit people who make over $200,000 per year. With the debate so configured, no smokescreen could cover up the tradeoff between enhanced healthcare spending and a tax cut for the wealthy. Now not most, but all, the benefits of opposing Kerry's proposalBush's proposal will go to the rich. What's a president to do?
Easy: make stuff up.
The campaign's new stump line on the subject, debuting at a Canton, Ohio, rally, is such a thicket of untruths one hardly knows where to begin. According to the president, Kerry "said he's only going to raise the tax on the so-called rich. But you know how the rich is: They've got accountants. That means you pay. That means your small business pays. It means the farmers and ranchers pay."
This is a lie wrapped in a distortion inside a fraud. Grant Bush his premise that the rich will evade Kerry's tax hike through clever accounting tricks (a process in which they'll surely be aided by Republican de-funding of the IRS tax enforcement apparatus and congressional pressure to direct what scrutiny remains at low-income filers) – even then, how does this mean "you pay?" It doesn't. I make less than $200,000 per year, so if the only change to the tax code is a raise for folks who do, then I don't pay. Whether or not those people evade their obligations has nothing to do with my tax bill.
Or grant Bush his premise that what Kerry really wants to do is raise taxes on small business and "the farmers and ranchers." Does that mean you pay? Well, if you own a small business, a farm, or a ranch I suppose it does. But do you? Most people don't. Most work for the people who own small businesses, or for the people who own large ones, or for the government. They won't pay, and unless there was something very odd about the audience for Bush's speech, neither will the people he was talking to.
But does Kerry want to raise taxes on small businesses? As the president explained back when he was selling the cuts the first time around, "many small businesses are unincorporated, many are what they call Subchapter S," and those businesses pay personal income tax. This, at least, is true. I myself am one of the approximately 5 percent of Americans who has a Subchapter S small business. So will I pay? No. My business, sadly, generates less than $200,000 per year in income. Just like lots of other people's small businesses. Just like, in fact, about 98 percent of all Subchapter S small businesses. So I won't pay, and unless you're part of the 0.1 percent or so of the public running an unincorporated business and making more than $200,000 per year while doing it, neither will you.
Except that you might. Bush's small business rhetoric is so silly that when you pierce behind it he's making his plan look worse than it is. If Bush would just tell the truth about what he's doing -- preserving tax cuts for the top 2 percent or so of earners -- he wouldn't be forced into the absurd situation of defending the prerogatives of an arbitrary 0.1 percent slice of the public. And what difference does it make whether or not you own a small business, anyway? A guy making $500,000 a year at a law firm is rich; a guy making $500,000 a year from his small business -- also rich. Say you earn $500,000 on your ranch. Well, you're rich. Farm? Also rich. And if you're a rich person -- whether you got rich from your ranch, your farm, your small business, your law firm, your medical practice, or your company's compensation committee -- you'll do pretty well under George W. Bush. Unless, that is, you mind getting lied to a lot, the country going bankrupt, and watching America's national security posture collapse.
As for the rest of us, well, we're not going to pay under Kerry's plan, no matter how much sand the president tries to throw in our eyes.
Matthew Yglesias is a Prospect staff writer.
