Attack of the ideologues

By Carter Bundy

Down the stretch they come, and the national GOP is running the same scare campaign they’ve run for the last few presidential cycles. There are two elements: First, the Democratic nominee is a terrorist who secretly hates America. That’s been covered as much as Tony Romo’s pinky, and it’s one of those things that you either fall for or you don’t.

The second element out of the Republican fear-mongering playbook is to paint the Dem as a socialist, or better yet, communist. It’s on right-wing radio, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal editorial page every day, and makes its way into McCain TV ads on a regular basis now.

The commie attacks are the ones that need to be addressed, because Democrats’ affinity for a fair-tax system and support for key government programs like education and public safety leave some under-informed voters thinking that there might be some truth to it.

Tax facts

The GOP loves to paint Dems as big taxers. Let’s look at the recent history of each party. Under Republican Dwight Eisenhower, the top marginal rate (the amount the very wealthiest few percent pay on their top dollars) was 90 percent. Wow, even a good-government advocate like myself thinks that’s way to high. So did JFK, a Democrat, so he lowered the top marginal rate to 70 percent.

Republicans Nixon and Ford kept it at 70 percent. Even Republican icon Ronald Reagan had it at 50 percent for most of his tenure, going to 28 percent at the end when he didn’t have to worry about the consequences. Of course, Ronnie also raised FICA, so he’s no saint on the issue, either. Reagan’s cuts for the uber-rich also directly caused the deficit to explode for the first time since World War II.

Republican George Herbert Walker Bush raised the top rate back to 31 percent, which still left America as a borrow-and-spend nation with massive debt and the specter of runaway inflation.

Bill Clinton, determined to restore fiscal responsibility, brought the top rate back to 39.6 percent. Of course, the same sort of fear-mongering about increased taxes on millionaires we see today was used by the GOP in 1993.

Guess whose predictions about the 1993 tax and budget bill (which became the default baseline even after the Gingrich revolution of 1994) were right?

If Obama moves the top rate back up to 36/39, he’s still well below four of the last six GOP presidents, and in company with another one Republican who raised the top rate as well.

Of the last six Republican administrations, only W can claim to be below Obama’s top rates and against raising taxes, but look where that got us.

Even with W, though, the top rate is 35 percent. So what we’re talking about is only a few percentage points. Throw in the Bush administration’s partial nationalization of our financial sector and the runaway growth of congressional spending (with McCain’s support) under W, and it’s pretty hard for any Republican to say that Obama is a commie without being outrageously hypocritical.

I would understand the commie/socialist rhetoric if Obama were talking about nationalizing health care or some other massive government takeover, but he’s not. Or if he were talking about bringing back 70 percent marginal rates, or even 50 percent, but he’s not.

Obama is proposing a return to the Clinton numbers for those making over $250,000 (the bulk of whom would naturally have well over a million dollars of equity, assets, investments, and cash after a few years at that level). For everyone else, taxes would be lower than under Clinton, and even lower than under W.

Taxation without responsibility

The flip side of the discussion, of course, is if Obama’s not radically re-making our tax code, why does he say we’re going in a new direction? Two major reasons:

• First, America’s wealth has become so obscenely top-heavy over the last three decades, and over the last eight years in particular, that suddenly a 4 percent change in the top rate actually generates real money to address the deficit and other revenue needs.

• Second, Obama is going to radically change our spending. For starters, he will save hundreds of billions of dollars just by changing the way Medicare D works.

You can deliver a bigger benefit to seniors, still let the pharmaceutical companies make a killing (which even as a labor guy I like because they need money for R&D to develop the next generation of life-saving drugs), and most of all, save the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars over the next 10 years.

Sound impossible? It’s commonsense math, and it’s the first, best thing Barack can do for our fiscal problems. I’ll give more detail on the math next week.

It’s also more likely that Obama will reduce our spending in Iraq (I doubt we’ll be entirely gone under either candidate). And it’s much more likely that we won’t start a massive war with Iran under Obama.

That’s real money. Further, it doesn’t help the economy for us to blow up a town halfway around the world. In fact, given our penchant for rebuilding that which we destroy, it leads to more expenditures that we’ll never see financial gains from.

It’s true Dems take tax dollars from across the board — individuals, corporations, user fees, etc., and then spend it on things like health care and education. The GOP, by contrast, proposes taxes at higher rates for non-millionaires, but cuts taxes on the uber-rich enough that they stick future generations with massive debt to China.

As bad, one of the effects of Republicans’ penchant to borrow heavily is to run up inflation. To quote Ron Paul, inflation is a hidden tax that hits lower and middle income people particularly hard, because they don’t have the same cushion to absorb the inflation tax. The Republican tax plan — borrow and spend — is just irresponsible and dangerous.

Quibble about what works, what doesn’t work, what’s the right level of revenue to balance the budget, and identify smart spending cuts. That’s fine. But calling Obama a commie? That’s just an ill-informed, hypocritical caricature.

This time, it seems Americans are done with irrational, poorly-thought out name-calling, and are looking for someone with a plan that works. If the GOP keeps up the caricatures, expect a big, blue wave come November.

Bundy is the political and legislative director for AFSCME in New Mexico. The opinions in his column are personal and do not necessarily reflect any official AFSCME position. You can learn more about him by clicking here. Contact him at carterbundy@yahoo.com.