Went to see GC in Trenton on 4/4/08. His openi...

Seven Words

On this Fourth of July, on the two hun­dred thirty-​​sixth anniver­sary of the sign­ing of the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence (or the date on the doc­u­ment, any­way), let’s take a look at one of our most cher­ished free­doms, next to which nearly every­thing else pales in sig­nif­i­cance: the free­dom of speech. With­out this free­dom, it is impos­si­ble to have a national debate, impos­si­ble to have a dis­cus­sion of social issues, impos­si­ble to express dis­sent, or to advance a cause or to wor­ship as we choose. The right to assem­ble or to peti­tion the gov­ern­ment for a redress of griev­ances is mean­ing­less, if you can only say approved things. You can’t run for office against an incum­bent, or rely on the exis­tence of a free press. There is no other right so cen­tral to our democ­racy.

 

But there are lim­its, even on this most basic of free­doms. One is not enti­tled to yell “Fire!” in a crowded the­ater. It is ille­gal to threaten the Pres­i­dent. The Supreme Court, only three years ago, affirmed the right of cor­po­rate per­sons to out-​​shout every­one else.

But per­haps most impor­tantly, forty years ago, George Car­lin gave us the clas­sic descrip­tion of the seven words you can’t say on tele­vi­sion. This puts lim­its on every­day speech by every­day per­sons. Recently, it seems, there has been an addi­tion to the for­bid­den words. This addi­tion has had a chill­ing effect on our pol­i­tics, our pri­or­i­ties, and even our privileges.

I am talk­ing about the most obscene word in Amer­i­can cul­tural lan­guage today, the word that makes strong men faint and war heroes trem­ble, the sin­gle word that can destroy a polit­i­cal career or even cause a land­slide to back­fire, the Pol­icy That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I am talk­ing about the word (shield your eyes and whis­per it in secret): tax.

In 2009, Amer­ica was wit­ness to a back­lash against pol­icy sel­dom seen since the days of Viet­nam protests or civil rights demon­stra­tions. Patri­ots in tri-​​corn hats and tea bags told us, in no uncer­tain terms, that we needed to bal­ance the bud­get, refuse health care to Amer­i­cans, and, most impor­tantly, pre­vent the rise of taxes. The shout-​​out to 1776 rep­re­sented by the Revolutionary-​​era out­fits in con­junc­tion with anti-​​tax rhetoric was inspired, per­haps, by the famous cry of “No Tax­a­tion With­out Rep­re­sen­ta­tion!” Appar­ently, though, the mod­ern pro­tes­tors for­got that we do, in fact, have rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and we did even in the dark days of 2009.

The Revolutionary-​​era patri­ots were not protest­ing taxes. They were protest­ing the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion.

Taxes are how a gov­ern­ment pays its bills. The Tea Party protests com­bined an anti-​​government mes­sage with its desire to not raise the money gov­ern­ment needs. This mod­ern move­ment may have begun with Ronald Rea­gan, who preached both cut­ting taxes (while rais­ing taxes eleven times) and lim­ited gov­ern­ment (while pre­sid­ing over the largest expan­sion of gov­ern­ment in a gen­er­a­tion). He went Car­lin one bet­ter — two, actu­ally, inform­ing us of the “nine [not seven] most fright­en­ing words in the Eng­lish lan­guage” — “I’m from the gov­ern­ment, and I’m here to help.”

The Revolutionary-​​era patri­ots were not protest­ing gov­ern­ment. They were protest­ing the lack of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. If any­thing, they wanted an expan­sion of gov­ern­ment, albeit one they could control.

Yet, under Rea­gan, anti-​​tax became tied to anti-​​government. This move­ment peaked, per­haps, in the attempt to make the United States default on its debts in 2011, a spec­ta­cle that com­bined hatred of taxes with con­tempt for the goods and ser­vices those taxes pur­chase. This tac­tic also show­cased, how­ever, some­thing darker than the cheer­ful attempt to starve the gov­ern­ment — an uncon­cern with the dam­age such actions would do to the coun­try.

This fear of tax­a­tion among seg­ments of our pop­u­lace appears to know no bounds. The Supreme Court decided last week that the Afford­able Care Act’s penalty asso­ci­ated with the “indi­vid­ual man­date” is con­sti­tu­tional under the power of Con­gress to tax. This, all by itself, fur­nishes a new rea­son for Repub­li­cans to deny health care to mil­lions of Amer­i­cans in their drive to express their patri­o­tism. Since last Thurs­day, we’ve heard a drum­beat of anger from Repub­li­cans claim­ing that the man­date penalty rep­re­sents the “largest tax increase in Amer­i­can his­tory”, and we there­fore must repeal Oba­macare. Pete Hoek­stra, a res­i­dent of Hol­land, Michi­gan, and can­di­date for a United States Sen­ate seat, in attack­ing his polit­i­cal oppo­nent, said it best:

[Incum­bent Sen­a­tor] Deb­bie Stabenow voted specif­i­cally to keep the indi­vid­ual man­date in the health care bill, which is now the largest tax increase on Amer­i­can fam­i­lies in history.

Appar­ently, this ter­ror of the word tax has so unnerved Repub­li­cans it has made them unable to per­form math. In point of fact, the man­date penalty will raise per­haps two bil­lion dol­lars annu­ally, or about 0.014 per­cent of GDP. Just one of Reagan’s eleven tax increases (TEFRA, the Tax Equity and Fis­cal Respon­si­bil­ity Act of 1982) amounted to 1.1 per­cent of GDP… seventy-​​nine times as big as the indi­vid­ual man­date penalty.

But let’s be fair, and con­sider the entire costs of the Afford­able Care Act to be “a tax”. Is that the  gigan­ticest tax increase ever? Not even close. Look at the above chart (which came from here). It turns out the total cost of Oba­macare is roughly com­pa­ra­ble to (actu­ally a bit smaller than) Pres­i­dent George H. W. Bush’s tax increase of 1990, or Pres­i­dent Bill Clinton’s tax increase of 1993, or Pres­i­dent Jimmy Carter’s Oil Wind­fall Tax of 1980. It is sig­nif­i­cantly smaller than Pres­i­dent Lyn­don Johnson’s tax increase of 1966, and 40 per­cent less than Reagan’s tax increase of 1982. It is dwarfed by tax increases that hap­pened in 1950, 1968, and the giants of them all, the Rev­enue Acts of 1950 and 1951, the lat­ter of which was more than three times big­ger than the entire cost of the Afford­able Care Act.

So much for it being the biggest tax increase ever. Not even close. But such fear does merely speak­ing the word tax strike in the hearts of Repub­li­cans, they are pow­er­less before the force of it, and forced to reach for these superlatives.

And thus, the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can nom­i­nee for Pres­i­dent is put into a ter­ri­ble bind, since the health care law he cham­pi­oned while gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts included this dreaded tax-​​disguised-​​as-​​a-​​mandate. He even insisted any national health care plan should include an indi­vid­ual man­date. Rom­ney not only raised (I dare say it!) taxes in Mass­a­chu­setts, but also urged that taxes for all Amer­i­cans should be raised.

Should Repub­li­cans con­tinue insist­ing the Afford­able Care Act needs to be repealed because it is a tax, they must also insist Mitt Rom­ney is unfit to be Pres­i­dent because he, too, has a his­tory of rais­ing and sup­port­ing taxes.

Of course, Rom­ney is refus­ing to adMitt that the man­date penalty is a tax, putting the pre­sump­tive Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee at odds with the Repub­li­can Party on what is the defin­ing issue of mod­ern Repub­li­can­ism. Whether the Repub­li­can Party will allow such heresy from its nom­i­nee remains to be seen.

Any nation needs taxes. No nation can func­tion with­out them. With an annual deficit of over a tril­lion dol­lars, it is sim­ply not sane to imag­ine we don’t have to raise taxes, let alone the absolute mad­ness of sug­gest­ing we cut taxes fur­ther, par­tic­u­larly as tax rates are already at his­toric lows.

Maybe this dichotomy will cause a cathar­tic cri­sis, and help Repub­li­cans get over their unnat­ural fear of the word tax. The first step in get­ting bet­ter is admit­ting there is a problem.

On this July 4, we can per­haps hope the Repub­li­can Party can over­come its psy­chosis over this word, before their fear does fur­ther dam­age to our nation.

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