Anyone who follows politics in this country knows what the word “reform” has come to mean. These days it means a deal in which the poor and the working middle class get stiffed on their benefits and pensions, while the rich either get additional compensation or are simply excluded from making their own sacrifices.
That’s the basis of the reform of the tax code being pushed by Republicans. The reform embedded in recommendations by President Obama’s panel that was supposed to come up with ideas to reduce the national debt. The reform embraced by the president himself a few months back.
In general, here’s what all these so-called “reforms” are all about. Benefits for the suffering poor and middle class are trimmed big time in one way or another. Some tax breaks enjoyed by the rich are also done away with. And to compensate the rich for these loses, their marginal tax rates are reduced.
You see, in the current world of reform in which our politics operate, the already badly squeezed and hard-pressed need not be recompensed. But if the precious rich take a hit, they must somehow be made whole. Oh, and by the by, even the tax breaks taken away from them up front would almost certainly be sneaked back into the tax code over time while their lower marginal rates would be fixed in stone.
It has taken a long time, but the American electorate has finally begun to recognize that Republicans’ nattering about taxing the rich as class warfare, and million-a-year earners as small businesspeople, is nonsense. The public now wants, and is beginning to demand, higher taxes on the very rich. They favor a 5 percent surtax on million-or-more-a-year earners. A growing number are even beginning to understand the logic of pricking the Wall Street bubble with a transaction tax, and dong away with the carried interest tax scam of hedge fund managers.
Democrats have issues here that could keep them in the White House and maybe, just maybe, even win them back congress. Or they could go with some variant of a grand bargain “reform” of the tax code and blow it yet again.
Awhile back I would have given 5-to-1 odds that they would buy into this sham “reform.” Things have changed a lot lately, however. Now I make it even money.
Who knows. Democrats might be able to free themselves from their Wall Street-trained advisers who say this kind of reform is economically prudent, and from their political advisers who tell them that sucking up to big money is the only way to win elections.
Democrats might actually be able to do that. Might even do what they promise if they get elected or reelected. And deserve to hold public office in consequence.
We can at least hope.
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