The Tax History Conservatives Want Us to Forget

David Sirota — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 10:53:19 -0800

Grover Norquist is regularly billed as one of the leading intellectual lights of the conservative movement - and I think you will agree that the arguments he made in a debate with me over taxes this morning on CNBC highlight not merely the shocking intellectual bankruptcy of the movement he leads, but just how out of touch Republicans in Washington really are.

The debate revolved around President-elect Obama's potential plans to put off raising taxes on the very wealthy. Norquist begins the debate with the claim - I kid you not - that "the economy is in the present state because when the Democrats took the House and Senate in 2006 you knew those tax increases were going to come in 2010." He insisted that, "The stock market began to collapse as soon as you recognize that those old tax rates were coming back." Yes, because under "those old tax rates" - ie. Clinton-era tax rates - the economy was so much worse than it is today.

As you'll see, the CNBC reporters start laughing at Norquist, having trouble taking him seriously. And I must say, I really wasn't sure he was being serious - but, of course, he was. I went on to make the point that I've often made in the past - the point that conservatives simply want everyone to forget: Namely, that President Clinton faced down a recession in 1993 by raising taxes on the wealthy in order to finance an economic stimulus package, and the economy subsequently boomed.

That simple, undeniable bit of history undermines the entire structure of conservatives claim that raising taxes on the super-rich will hurt the economy. And as you'll see from Norquist's response, they simply cannot deal with that truth. Indeed, Norquist actually goes all the way back to the 1920s as his example that raising taxes on the wealthy impedes economic growth - somehow ignoring the history from 15 years ago. He then goes on to claim with a straight face that Franklin Roosevelt created the Great Depression (this, along with the "center-right nation" propaganda, seems to be the right's new talking point).

The question now is whether the Obama administration buys into Norquist's fact-free nonsense, or whether it musters the same courage President Clinton mustered in prudently raising taxes on the super-rich to responsibly finance an economic stimulus package. Sure, temporary deficits are acceptable right now - there's no arguing that. But doing what's necessary to minimize those deficits is also important.

In terms of policy, if, as Congressional Quarterly reports, Obama wants to enforce budget discipline on a necessarily large economic stimulus package, it will require generating additional revenue from the wealthy. In terms of raw politics, if Clinton's 43 percent of the vote gave him enough political capital to come into office during an economic downturn and do that, I'd say Obama and his 53 percent gives him enough political capital to do the same today. And I would argue that if Obama backs off his promise to raise taxes on the wealthy, he will effectively validate the false conservative frame that claims tax increases on the wealthy endangers an economy.

While I certainly agree with the CNBC reporter that the 2008 is different than the 1990s, it isn't different when it comes to taxes - we have very recent history that proves raising taxes on the wealthy in order to raise revenues for economic stimulus, if done prudently, helps an economy recover. That is the argument that nobody during this debate was able to undermine - and it is the argument conservatives fear most, because they know it is accurate.

Debating Grover Norquist, America's Leading Fake Populist

David Sirota — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 07:25:15 -0700

SEATTLE - This week on my national book tour, I had the opportunity to debate conservative leader Grover Norquist on KUOW - Seattle's NPR affiliate. The topic of the debate was my new book, THE UPRISING, and specifically the rise of populism in American politics. You can listen to the debate here - it begins about half way into the interview.

Norquist, one of the architects of the original conservative uprising of the 1980s and 1990s, is a good indicator of where the conservative movement is today. As you can hear, the Right is angry with the Bush administration for not being more conservative on a whole host of issues - and you can sense from Norquist how ideologically bankrupt conservatives really are today.

For a generation or so, the Right has dynamically adapted its reactionary ideas to sound like a populist, anti-Establishment, for-the-little-guy agenda. But thanks to all the crises we now face from those ideas - an energy crisis, stagnant wages, national security catastrophes, a global warming emergency - it has become much easier for progressives to unmask the Right as what I called Norquist: Fake populists.

The concept of fake populism is an important one as we move into the superheated general election campaign.

Just as Norquist tries in the debate to package environmental degradation, oil industry handouts and tax cuts for billionaires as policies designed to help us regular folks, so will John McCain try to present more NAFTA-style trade deals and more war in Iraq as populism. And the more we label it for what it is - fake populism - the more we will show the country the difference between a true majority agenda and the Beltway elitism of the Right.

What struck me most about the debate with Norquist is how truly out of touch with ordinary people he really is.

This is a person who in the face of $4.50 gasoline and $40 billion in ExxonMobil profits tells us that we should give away more policy goodies to the oil companies. This is a person who in the face of polls showing the public thinks the tax system is fundamentally unfair in the wake of the Bush tax cuts, says we should nonetheless push forward with even more regressive tax cuts. This is a person who in the face of massive budget deficits and social service cuts, says we should slash corporate tax rates, even though our effective corporate tax rate is among the lowest in the industrialized world. This is, in short, a person who is so insulated inside the Beltway and so coddled by the Big Money interests that have financed his career that he quite literally has no idea that there's an uprising going on throughout the country - and no official photos of him with statues of Ronald Reagan can hide that reality. He seems genuinely unaware of the trends on both the Right and Left that I report on in my book.

Of course, I praise Norquist at the beginning of the debate for his tactical brilliance in building a movement (and he is featured in my book because of this). The pressure he has put on Republicans from the Right has been remarkably effective - and progressives could learn a thing or two about the value of a more confrontational attitude towards Democrats on our own issues for our own uprising. That said, I think this debate shows that the conservative movement is indeed buckling under the bankruptcy of its ideas. And as we continue building our uprising and exposing their fake populism, we are getting closer to the truly exponential change that has marked other uprising moments in American history.

Listen to the full debate here, and then go pick up THE UPRISING at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore. Also, make sure to check the book tour schedule at www.davidsirota.com/uprising - I hope to see you on the trail!

This is an ongoing series from the national tour for THE UPRISING. You can order The Uprising at Amazon.com or through your local independent bookstore.