It's well worth taking a look at a column Sara Robinson did back in August riffing off Dave Johnson, because it was extremely prescient. This will be a short diary, because she (and Dave Johnson) did a damn good job of looking at the big picture.
Whether or not Obama's gamble works, he's effectively endorsed the Conservative idea that the only legitimate tax policy is to cut taxes. Period. Taxes are the price we pay for civilization, and Obama has jumped on the "everything must go" bandwagon in the hopes that... we'll make it to 2012 in good enough shape for him to get re-elected IF the economy picks up. But for the long run, how are we going to keep the country running? As Robinson observes:
It's this: Conservatives believe that only private individuals should hold wealth. They do not believe in commonly-held public wealth of any kind. And that's why they feel perfectly free to raid the vast legacy that our ancestors have accumulated and stewarded for us over the past 230 years.
The GOP strategy of using tax cuts as a means to the destruction of government - and that IS their goal - is cannibalizing America. The total failure of Democrats (and the President especially) to make the case that taxes are an investment IN America, an investment FOR the future of this country is unforgivable and potentially fatal. The positive side of taxation has completely disappeared from the public discourse. Taxes are how people invest in the common good for the benefit of all, how they obtain things the 'free' markets can't or won't provide - yet are needed by all (including those markets!)
"Tax & Spend" has been made into a deadly insult - but that's what governments have to do if they are to function. The framing of taxes by Conservatives as only destructive, their continued messaging that all government spending is a waste and it goes to the wrong people - that's what has wrecked our democracy and the pieces are being sold off for a pittance.
The biggest failure of the Democratic Party isn't just that they fail to argue against this view - too many have internalized it and even repeat it. The failure of Democrats to even attempt to defend government is dooming the party and the country. Obama has made a sucker bet. Even if he wins in the short term, conservatives win in the long term. Tax cuts are the crack cocaine of politics, as Matt Taibbi observes in Griftopia. Like drug dealers, politicians are giving us a quick buzz in exchange for what little of value we have left. Like an inner city neighborhood pawning everything to support a drug habit, like a rural community burning itself out as meth labs become the only viable business, tax cuts are slowly killing us as a country.
Here's the heart of Robinson's dissection of what's been done to us.
For the first 200 years of our existence, being born American was not unlike being born into the richest, most powerful family on the planet. By the middle of the 20th century, generations of sound investment and careful stewardship had built our collective trust fund to the point where we, too, began to believe that the shame would be on us if any member of our great household ever had to go without. If you needed decent housing or a monthly remittance to get by, we could cover that. If you needed doors opened for you in other countries, we had friends all over the world who were glad to deal with Americans. If you wanted a world-class education or the vacation of a lifetime, no problem: the family ran the best schools and universities in the world, and owned breathtaking national parks for your pleasure. If you needed to get around, we provided safe transportation networks. If you needed advice or help with a plan, there were trusted public servants on retainer. Our attitude toward the proper role of government was that, at our best, America was a big, powerful clan that had a moral duty (however imperfectly and selectively met in practice) to take care of its own, and maximize the opportunties availble to its members.
It's only when you think about our common wealth the way the world's richest families do -- as a bequest from a long line of distinguished ancestors, as a vast common resource base that provides us with extraordinary material comfort today, and as a sacred trust that we must manage and multiply on behalf of generations yet to come -- that you can really begin to understand the sheer magnitude of everything they took from us.
As long as the Democratic Party remains in thrall to a 'centrist' view that sees the accumulation of wealth at the expense of the public good as acceptable, as long as it refuses to fight for the idea of government and civilization, as long as it continues to legitimize the conservative policy of looting the investment of generations... America will continue to lose.
Want to know what the opposing view amounts to? Robinson has a revealing quote from Conservative icon Maggie Thatcher.
Maggie Thatcher told us outright: "There is no such thing as society. There are only individuals and families, and their interests." And if there's no such thing as society, then society has no right to accumulate wealth -- via taxes, investment, or any other means. Viewed this way, a conservative might even think it's a virtuous thing to defund and defraud the public out of any capital it does manage to acquire.
These are the people Obama has chosen to stand with. This is what he has agreed to. As Dave Johnson reminds us:
We must recognize and understand these tax cuts for what they are. They are a broken contract. These tax cuts for the wealthy are theft. And we must recognize the Reagan Revolution for what it has cost us. Our democracy has been corrupted and our political system has been captured. A wealthy few are taking all of the benefits of our efforts for themselves. The lack of investment in infrastructure, courts, schools and other public structures is making our country less competitive in the world. The Reagan Revolution is stealing our future.
This is the future we are headed for. This is the way the American Dream ends.
Go read Robinson's commentary- and remember this was written back in August. Read Johnson too - again written back in August.
UPDATE: Robert Reich over at Huffington Post picks up on how Obama is playing the Republican's game.
Americans want to know what happened to the economy and how to fix it. At least Republicans have a story -- the same one they've been flogging for thirty years. The bad economy is big government's fault and the solution is to shrink government.
Here's the real story. For three decades, an increasing share of the benefits of economic growth have gone to the top 1 percent. Thirty years ago, the top got 9 percent of total income. Now they take in almost a quarter. Meanwhile, the earnings of the typical worker have barely budged.
The vast middle class no longer has the purchasing power to keep the economy going. (The rich spend a much lower portion of their incomes.) The crisis was averted before now only because middle-class families found ways to keep spending more than they took in -- by women going into paid work, by working longer hours, and finally by using their homes as collateral to borrow. But when the housing bubble burst, the game was up.
So what has the President done?
Get it? By agreeing to another round of massive tax cuts for the wealthy, the president confirms the Republican story. Cutting taxes on the rich while freezing discretionary spending (which he's also agreed to do) affirms that the underlying problem is big government, and the solution is to shrink government and expect the extra wealth at the top to trickle down to everyone else.
Obama's new tax compromise is not only bad economics; it's also disastrous from the standpoint of educating the public about what has happened and what needs to happen in the future. It reinforces the Republican story and makes mincemeat out of the truthful one Democrats should be telling.
The stupid, it burns!