Features

It’s time to strike the term “fiscalresponsibility” from responsible political rhetoric. Few terms in publicdiscourse have moved as directly as this one has from imprecision tomeaninglessness without any intervening period of coherence. Democrats have been particularly loose-lipped about it lately. HouseMinority Leader Richard Gephardt, recently campaigning in Iowa for a fellowDemocrat, was quoted in The […]

Republicans claim it is unfair to impose a “death tax” on income already taxed during a person’s lifetime. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said that it is like “someone showing up at the funeral home and saying, ‘Hi, I’m from the government, and I’m taking half your money.’” In a Republican weekly radio […]

As air leaks out of the economic balloon, the number of Americans withouthealth insurance will rise. For two decades, the number–now more than 45million–has been steadily growing, as it has during all but the last of oureight years of unprecedented prosperity. There are only two large payers forhealth insurance: government and private employers. Both have […]

We are so used to a politics of blurred class interests in America that clarityis actually confusing. Throughout our history, the major parties have beeneconomically heterogeneous, and the basic tenets of the American creed havedenied any legitimacy to class as a basis of political action–except, that is,for measures in aid of the great, sprawling middle […]

So Alan Greenspan is a political animal. What–you were expecting a philosopher-king? A lot of people who should know better were taken by surprise when Fed Chairman Greenspan made George W. Bush’s inaugural week by embracing a big tax cut. But it’s not as if Greenspan got this far on, say, charm. As Bob Woodward’s […]

If you want to understand what corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C., are trying to foist on us with the pending “stimulus” bill, look back to the first half of the 1980s. In 1981, Ronald Reagan pushed a huge tax-cut bill through Congress. Forcorporations, it offered an array of new loopholes, centered on super-accelerated”depreciation” write-offs for […]

N othing so neatly differentiates the presidential candidates as their views on taxes. George W. Bush offers a rather extreme version of what passes for “conservative” fiscal policy these days. This philosophy doesn’t tout deficit spending per se, but holds that low taxes, particularly on the wealthy, are the Holy Grail. Many who support this […]

During the House debate in early March on the first round of the Bush tax cuts, Majority Whip Tom DeLay of Texas stood up on the House floor and tried to revise history. “Mr. Speaker,” said DeLay, “I have to say, that the Democrat leadership has no credibility when it comes to fiscal responsibility. They […]

When Abraham Lincoln faced the dissolution of the nation in the early 1860s, he imposed new taxes on the wealthy to help pay to save the Union. When Franklin D. Roosevelt took America to war against the Nazis, he sharply increased taxes on businesses and the rich to help fund that crusade. Now George W. […]