Recently, we’ve seen more and more former Republicans showing consternation about the mental health of the GOP. Even some who still would still like to consider themselves Republicans are simply unable to stomach the duplicity and magical thinking of the current incarnation of their party. There are any number of problems. The politicization of foreign policy is a major one. But the problem that is currently causing the most damage is tax policy. The Republican Party sees every possible economic condition as an excuse to reduce taxes on the wealthy. When we were running surpluses during the 2000 campaign, George W. Bush argued that the fact that the government was taking in so much money was proof that we were being taxed too much. After all, if we’re raising more money than we’re spending, we must be taxing more than we need, right?
Yet, when the government is running huge deficits, as it did throughout Bush’s entire two terms in office, we need lower taxes to create more economic growth. And when we’re running deficits because the economy is in recession or because we have prolonged high-unemployment, we need to cut taxes on the “job creators.” Within the worldview of the current Republican Party there are no conditions under which it is appropriate to raise taxes. Any fair-minded person has to know that there is something wrong with that kind of thinking.
We’re all familiar with Grover Norquist’s statement about the ultimate goal of the conservative movement.
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Or, more specifically:
“Cutting the government in half in one generation is both an ambitious and reasonable goal,” Norquist stated in May 2000. “If we work hard we will accomplish this and more by 2025. Then the conservative movement can set a new goal. I have a recommendation: To cut government in half again by 2050.”
The problem is that the vast majority of the people in this country don’t want to see this kind of change in how our government functions. In the abstract, it might sound appealing to reduce the size of government, but in practice people reject the kinds of massive cuts to the social safety net that such a change implies. They don’t support massive cuts to education or transportation spending, or even to research and development. And cuts to the Pentagon? Nothing is easier to demagogue. The people also hate deficit spending. Yet, because the right-wing tolerates it when there is a Republican in the Oval Office, deficits always balloon under Republican administrations. They run the government much the same way that Democrats do, they just don’t make any effort to pay for it. They prefer to actually make an effort to shrink the government when Democrats are in charge.
This is why in 2009, a year when taxes reached their lowest level since 1950, we saw the emergence of a Taxed Enough Already movement. It’s also why in 2011, we’re seeing the Occupy Wall Street movement. It’s a reaction to a reaction. But it’s also a reaction to an income disparity that has reached levels not seen since the days preceding the Great Depression.
The Republicans have created this income disparity by creating a relentless downward pressure on tax rates for the past thirty years. Taxes occasionally go down, but they almost never go up. Yet, if anything, the government has more responsibilities than it had thirty years ago. Whether you call it incorrigible stupidity or something else, this “no new taxes” ideology is breaking our country and making it ungovernable.
Don’t get me wrong. Infinite cynicism and rigid ideology is killing us in more fields than just tax policy. Take Gitmo, for example. We have the same paralysis there, despite the fact that everyone knows that we’d be safer if we closed the prison than we are by denying those folks a fair trial.
And I don’t care who is president. Until the GOP reforms itself or is replaced by a decent party with a sane ideology, this country is on a rapid downward trajectory.
