In my May 4 posting, I argued that both liberals and conservatives typically offer incomplete pictures of their own tax policy agendas and that this makes it all too easy to caricature both sides of the American tax policy debate. Specifically, conservatives are almost always heard to argue for “lower taxes” but (almost?) never say when they would be satisfied, that is, how low is low enough. Liberals usually argue for “taxing the rich” or for “more progressivity” while rarely if ever stating how high they would raise taxes on the rich or how steeply progressive the tax system should be.
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The famous radical activist Mother Jones was supposedly once asked: “So what is it that you want?” Her reply: “More!” For the purposes of political action, such simplicity of message is arguably necessary. Each battle is important, and no matter which side you are on, you might reasonably care more about direction than final destination, even if you do have a notion of where you want to end up. In that regard, then, both liberals and conservatives might have good reasons for their omissions; but there is no denying that both sides are guilty of such omission.
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All well and good, until I realized that I was starting to sound like one of those above-the-fray faux centrists who act as though both left and right are equally at fault for the degradation of policy debates in this country. I don’t believe that, and I said so at the end of my May 4 posting--though I tried to leaven my assertion that the right is much more at fault than the left with a mild attempt at cuteness: “(Of course, I would say that, wouldn't I?).”
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Upon reflection, it seems worthwhile to try to be at least a bit clearer about all of this. I suggested that someone like me--someone who identifies himself as a liberal--would naturally believe that conservatives are more at fault. But this raises a direction-of-causality question that is present in every ideological debate: Do I believe that conservatives are more at fault because I’m a liberal, or am I liberal because I believe that conservatives are more at fault? Inasmuch as it is possible to be honest with oneself about these things, I am (and continue to be, even upon frequent reconsideration) a liberal because I conclude that the other side is generally wrong on the vast majority of important issues. What’s worse, for the purposes of my argument here, is that the other side is not just generally wrong but generally is more willing to distort the debate and to argue by repetition rather than by appealing to logic and evidence.
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Can I prove any of this? No and yes. No, I cannot prove it to the point where those on the other side will throw up their hands and surrender; nor have I conducted an empirical study that counts the number of times each side makes arguments that (by some imperfect criteria) are distortionary or non-responsive to critique. But yes, I will offer here by example and argument at least a start toward demonstrating why I think that conservatives are uniquely guilty of rhetorical dishonesty in tax policy debates.
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Probably the easiest way to think about this in current U.S. policy debates is to ask: Is there a liberal equivalent to the no-new-taxes pledge that many conservative activists require of their candidates? I cannot think of one. Similarly, is there anything that Democrats do that is arguably equivalent to the Republican tactic of counting votes for “higher taxes” and using those vote totals against Democratic officeholders--which is especially egregious given that those vote counts include both multiple votes against the same bill and votes simply not to lower taxes as opposed to votes to raise taxes? No. On taxes, conservatives have created a political atmosphere in which it is somehow acceptable to be simply “against taxes” and unacceptable to say anything else. This leaves any reasonable person (including, to his later chagrin, the first President Bush), who recognizes that he has no choice but to say, “In some circumstances, I would raise some taxes,” in political trouble.
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Another indicator of the imbalance in tax dishonesty (if not a conservative near monopoly on it) is the phenomenon that no bad conservative argument regarding taxes ever seems to go away. If a liberal were ever to say, “No tax hike has ever caused a person to lose his job or a business to declare bankruptcy,” I suspect that very few other liberals, if any, would defend that statement. And if evidence emerged that showed that such an assertion was simply wrong, every liberal I know would change their argument in response to the new evidence. That is not to say that they would abandon their fundamental principles on the basis of one piece of evidence, suddenly agreeing that taxes on business should never be imposed because such taxes might sometimes have unfortunate effects. I do assert, though, that almost all liberals would stop saying something that was demonstrably untrue.
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The same cannot be said regarding conservatives and taxes. Take the estate tax (about which I’ll have more to say in a future posting). One of the favorite arguments of the anti-estate tax folks is that the estate tax breaks up family businesses and farms. That is an assertion of fact that is at least plausibly open to objective proof or disproof (though it is of course important to worry about proximate versus ultimate causes). David Cay Johnston, in his brilliant 2003 book Perfectly Legal: The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody Else (which I reviewed here), investigated that assertion and found that it was simply false. Despite years of trying, no one had been able to find a family farm or business that had been broken up because of the estate tax. In fact, some conservatives are apparently hoping to find an estate tax angle on Hurricane Katrina-related distress to allow them finally to identify a victim of the estate tax. This is necessary because no such victim can currently be paraded in front of the cameras.
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Johnston’s finding should have put an end to that assertion. (Again, I do not expect people to be persuaded on the bigger issue of the estate tax solely by the nonexistence of this one bit of evidence, but one might reasonably expect that completely discredited claims like this one would disappear.) Instead, these specious claims about the estate tax continue to be propagated, not just by unaccountable think tanks and political operatives but by Republicans in Congress acting under authority of law and not in their political roles. For example, the Joint Economic Committee recently released a report under the name of its Republican Chair that asserts, among other rather amazing things: “The estate tax hinders entry into self-employment and breaks up family-run businesses.” (I will dissect that study in my upcoming posting on the estate tax; but suffice it to say that the text of the study does not back up this bullet point assertion from the Executive Summary of the committee’s report.)
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Beyond the estate tax, consider the marketing of a current bestselling book that advocates a national sales tax: The Fair Tax Book: Saying Goodbye to the Income Tax and the IRS. The cover of the book has a circle-and-slash symbol through the letters I-R-S, supporting the assertion in the subtitle of the book that it is possible to eliminate the IRS. On a literal level, of course, it is possible to do so. Changing the name of the IRS (to, say, the Lowest-Possible-Tax Collection Agency) would do the trick. More radically, we could devolve all responsibility for enforcing the tax laws onto the states, or even privatize tax collections, which would mean that there is no more IRS. It is clearly dishonest, though, to say that we can “say goodbye to the IRS” when we will simply be creating new organizations (or expanding the power of existing organizations) to do what the IRS does. Again, maybe I am being too generous to the home team, but I cannot imagine a liberal saying anything so patently dishonest without being shouted down by fellow liberals and soon having at least to be more nuanced in his rhetoric.
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Finally, consider the substance of the “fair tax” itself. As proposed in Congress, the tax advocated by the sponsors of that plan would turn a $100 purchase before taxes into a $130 purchase after taxes. (Note: I am using the rate proposed in H.R. 25, which is analyzed in John Buckley and Diane Lim Rogers, "Is a National Retail Sales Tax in Our Future?" Tax Notes, Sept. 13, 2004.) Almost anyone would say that that is a 30% tax rate. But a “tax-inclusive” method of calculation makes it a 23% rate: $30 out of a total after-tax price of $130. The dishonesty is not in the calculation but in the choice of presentation, knowing that almost everyone will think that a 23% tax rate would add $23 to a $100 purchase, not $30. Yet, even after this has been pointed out over and over again by opponents, the advocates of a national sales tax make no concession to reality, continuing to call it a 23% sales tax rate.
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Because I’ve gone on far too long here, I will not get into the distortions and dishonesty surrounding the “flat tax.” And let’s not even get started on “class warfare.” The point, though, is that it is very difficult for me to imagine liberals even attempting to distort tax discussions in the way that conservatives do--and I find it nearly impossible to imagine liberals (especially liberals holding public office) simply ignoring contrary facts. The rules of argumentation in tax debates for liberals (both self-imposed and otherwise) seem to be different than for conservatives.
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I believe in being fair, but that does not mean that we are required to see balance where imbalance exists. While both conservatives and liberals are guilty of using short-hand to describe their basic goals, it appears to me that conservatives are uniquely guilty of using distorting and dishonest rhetoric in tax debates and of sticking to that rhetoric even in the face of contradictory evidence.
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Again, I might be simply blind to my own sins and those of my compatriots. I cannot see what I cannot see. But if I am right, then we should recognize that the deplorable state of the tax policy debate in this country is not a bipartisan creation. And pointing out the partisan difference is not itself partisan. In any event, the current lack of engagement on real issues makes progress toward a more sensible tax system more difficult than ever.
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Neil H. Buchanan, guest blogger
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