If we have learned anything from the Obama administration it should be that, whatever plans one party comes up with, can be sabotaged by the other party.
The other thing is that all it takes for one party to be compromised is for a significant number of its members to submit to being held hostage by a group controlling access to campaign funding. This is what has happened as Republicans have been willing to sign Grover Norquist’s “No new taxes” pledge. In signing the pledge, the members of Congress open themselves to be cut off from sources of campaign funding…the same sources who underwrite Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) organization.
What these deep pockets all have in common is the desire to subvert the country’s ability to enable the government to service a growing and aging population (with all that means to demands on infrastructure and health costs), to keep pace with technological advances at every level of society and take care of our veterans at anything comparable to the level of their sacrifice for the country. Why? Because it might cost them more money! These millionaires and billionaires are terrified about running short of money and having to live like the rest of us! They just don’t know how they would adjust to it! Poor, scared babies!
While predating the rise of the Tea Party, Norquist’s pledge helps to strengthen the Tea Party’s grip on members of Congress. The pledge holds them hostage to Norquist. If the member of Congress does not sign it or votes the wrong way, Norquist finds a young and hungry challenger generously funded to run against him in the primary. The interests of the people do not enter into this equation. It is all about insuring that Congress does not raise the cost of living on anyone earning a seven-figure or more income in America.
As a consequence, the Republican Party has ceased to be composed of members free to make fiscal decisions based on current realities and find themselves held hostage to making all decision based on one condition: that taxes will not be raised…or at least on millionaires and billionaires. So, as the population continues to grow; the infrastructure nears the end of its useful life; and the vehicles (ships, tanks, planes) of our military become obsolete or technologically outdated, the only way the government can respond is by moving money away from other budgeted items.
Wonder why we are so slow to fill potholes, why bridges collapse, why veterans have to depend on charities for care, why so many schools are obsolete, why trains keep derailing and going around curves at 100+ mph, why truckers can drive 80 hours a week, why veteran commit suicide and deployed military families are on food stamps, why rivers get poisoned by contaminated mine water and raw sewerage goes into drinking water sources? It is because elections are not about the voters and matters of life and death to them; they are about keeping an incumbent in the job he has conveniently become accustomed to!
The pledge is the equivalent of a family deciding to not spend any more money on their living expenses than they were spending in 1985, when ATR was founded. Consequently, as more kids come along and parents and grandparents age, they have to wear hand-me-down clothes, not repair the car, eat less nourishing food and forego college… no more breast exam for Mom or insulin shots for Grandma. “No new taxes” is a formula for the gradual destruction of the middle class and further suffering for those already living in poverty! If lobbyists engage in legal bribery of Congressmen, Grover Norquist is engaging in legal hostage-taking!
What is strange is that the effective tax rate in 1985 was 49.49%, (now, it is in the 25% or less range for top earners) which meant that taxable incomes at the marginal level, were almost perfectly split between that shared with the rest of the citizens and what an earner kept for his family. That 50/50 split could be argued as a possible fair distribution of incomes for top-level earners. After all, the society in which someone works has a significant influence on earnings.
If you don’t believe that try opening a McDonalds or delivery service in Somalia or Yemen. Public safety, sound money, healthy educated workers, law and order and good roads and bridges cost money. Society pays for those things! They do not come free! They are not in every country! So, isn’t it fair for those who especially benefit from those things pay a little more of the cost? I think so….but not Norquist!
Norquist thinks that there are classes of people who should get to ride first class but not pay first class fares for their ticket.
His attitude goes back to feudal days when royalty did not pay taxes. But never fear… American has royalty: it is our ultra-rich! And, as though, to drive home the idea, Norquist is working to make sure that, if the ultra-rich have to pay a share of the cost of riding on Spaceship Earth, in the American compartment, the VIP class fare will be as close to zero as possible.