NPR had a generally informative segment on the tax proposals of Senators McCain and Obama this morning. However, after telling listeners who wins and who loses under each set of proposals, they felt the need to conclude by telling us what the "big ideas" are behind each candidate's proposal. We were told that the big idea behind the McCain proposal was "growth." By contrast, the big idea behind the Obama proposal was "fairness," which could also be described as "redistribution." Now, this is where a good news story became a fairy tale. NPR's correspondents do not know what the "big idea" is behind a candidate's proposal, both because they are not mind readers and because there may not be a "big idea." Let's say this 30 million times until we get it right. The people running for political office are politicians, they are not political philosophers. They put out proposals that they think will get them elected. That is how politics works. So, it would be nice if reporters could refrain from telling us what they cannot possibly know -- they do not know what ideas, if any, stand behind proposals. On the other hand, they could usefully inform their audience about the track record on the various proposals. In this respect, under President Clinton, when tax rates comparable to those proposed by Senator Obama were in place, the private sector added 2.6 million jobs a year. By contrast, under President Bush, when tax rates comparable to those supported by Senator McCain were in place, the private sector added 400,000 jobs a year. While there were certainly many factors other than tax policy that caused the economy to grow rapidly under Clinton and slowly under Bush, it requires some serious torturing of the data to describe the Bush-McCain agenda as being about growth in a way that the Clinton-Obama agenda is not.
--Dean Baker