JONATHAN CHAIT NOVEMBER 13, 2010
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Ross Douthat says that the reaction to the debt commission proposal has obviated my entire worldview:
One of Chait’s long-running themes is the idea that on size-of-government issues, conservatives are ideologues and liberals are pragmatists: That is, conservatives believe in smaller government as an end unto itself, whereas liberals only believe in bigger government when it’s accomplishing something meaningful for the common good. And one of his secondary themes is that the real “essence” of American conservatism isn’t deficit reduction, but rather “opposition to the downward redistribution of income” — whereas liberals, of course, see downward redistribution as precisely the kind of welfare-enhancing thing that government ought to do.
These are both disputable premises. But if we were to concede them, then it suddenly becomes much harder to justify Chait’s claim that the Bowles-Simpson plan is “tilted, overwhelmingly, toward Republican priorities.” Yes, it’s tilted toward spending cuts, and away from tax increases. But look at the way it cuts spending and raises taxes. It means-tests Social Security benefits for high earners and raises the cap on taxable income, while also adding a larger benefit for the poorest seniors. Its hypothetical discretionary spending reductions don’t come from anti-poverty programs, for the most part: They come from cutting the defense budget, cutting the federal workforce, cutting farm subsidies, etc. It raises tax revenue by reducing tax credits and deductions that almost all overwhelmingly benefit the affluent. (This would be especially true in the scenario I’d prefer, in which the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit stick around.) It would cap revenue at 21 percent of G.D.P., which would be higher than any point in recent American history, and well above the average for the last thirty years. And it does all of this, as Chait himself notes, while assuming that Obamacare — the capstone of the liberal welfare state — would remain essentially unchanged.
If you accept Chait’s vision of a close-minded, Ayn Randian right and a pragmatic, non-ideological left, you would expect conservatives to be furious over the means-testing and loophole-closing, and liberals to be delighted to have a more redistributionist welfare state. Yet conservative reaction has been muted and respectful (with a notable exception, admittedly) while liberals have been flatly dismissive. Which suggests that maybe, just maybe, American liberalism has more of an ideological commitment to ever-rising government spending than Chait wants to admit.
He is describing my beliefs pretty accurately, but he's not making a persuasive case that they've been undermined. Belief #1 is that the Republican Party is driven far more by opposition to redistribution than by opposition to government per se. That has been the thrust of Republican policy-making on and off since 1980, and unremittingly since 1990. To me, the response on the right vindicates that analysis. After all, the debt commission's report entails a massive rollback of government. It does have some revenue increases, but those are accompanied by enormous cuts in income and corporate tax rates, and it's not clear if the net effect of the changes is to increase or decrease the share of taxes paid by the rich.
If the Republican Party was generally motivated by opposition to government, they would be dancing in the aisles. After all, this is a plan to both slash the size of government by about as much as it's ever been slashed, and slash tax rates. And yet the right's reaction is fairly tepid. The Tea Party movement is opposed. Grover Norquist is on the warpath. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is highly skeptical. I've seen a mostly positive editorial from National Review, but as of Friday evening, the Weekly Standard has written nothing at all. I wrote that the plan is overwhelmingly titled toward Republican priorities, and by that I meant putative priorities. The mixed response to a plan that would represent massive progress toward limited government makes my case for me.
Now, what about the liberals? Here I don't understand Douthat's point at all. My argument is that liberals favor government instrumentally, while conservatives oppose government ideologically. That is to say, conservative ideology -- small-government ideology, not the actual voting behavior of the Republican party -- sees small government as an end in and of itself. If you have a plan to reduce domestic spending by a quarter, almost any conservative would call that a good thing per se. Liberals would not be in favor of any increase in spending per se. It would depend on that spending actually having some positive real-world effect.
Douthat sees liberal dismay at the commission as evidence that liberals harbor "an ideological commitment to ever-rising government" parallel to the conservative worldview. What? Why? Liberals are not opposed to slashing farm subsidies. They're opposed to raising the Social Security retirement age and charging admission at the National Zoo. I agree with them that government ought to let a waitress retire on a modest public pension at 65, and should be able to operate a free world-class zoo in its national capital. That's not the same thing as believing more government per se is good.
19 comments
The article distills well. I have always agreed with Chait's positions except the comment about the retiring waitress. Not that she should collect tips old and frail but an argument about promoting what is "nice" needs to be replaced with something like, for example, a systemic economic problem -- as in the capitalistic system is not meeting our needs when a woman works her entire life, lives modestly and retires in poverty. If anything diminishes Democratic arguments, it is the idea that the wealthy work hard to give their money to lazy people. That needs to be addressed. Otherwise, beef up the economy, make self sustaining jobs available, and keep transfers to lazy people to a minimum.
- Nusholtz
November 13, 2010 at 10:58am
Mr. Chait, I agree with all but one of your points. We don't want a zoo, free or otherwise, in the capitol building in Washington. Or maybe it already is a zoo!
- rabinhist
November 13, 2010 at 11:33am
Since when is Obamacare the capstone of the liberal welfare state? That's a pretty risible claim by itself.
- Simon Greenwood
November 13, 2010 at 12:22pm
Jonathan "Buzzsaw" Chait slices through another starboard columnist at The New York Times. I thought the same thinking on reading this post through, Simon G.
- liberal reformer
November 13, 2010 at 12:46pm
Liberals are opposed because liberals know it's all a ruse to lower the top income tax rate; Norquist is opposed because he doesn't compromise on anything; the Tea Party movement, which is to say the Republican Party, is opposed because they haven't even taken office yet and want a chance to really shake things up; the WS needs time to figure out if the proposed cut in defense spending is serious or just noise to make the rest palatable; and, finally, Douthat is upset with Chait because Chait won't take the bait and support Douthat's idea of "a more redistributionist welfare state", which is one that excludes the middle class from participation, on which support is essential for survival of the welfare state that Douthat detests.
- rayward
November 13, 2010 at 2:24pm
Obama is the capstone of the liberal welfare state as president at the end of a decade when the government percentage of GDP (local, state, and federal) has grown from 33% to 44%. People are alarmed, with considerable justification. I think Douthat makes a solid point. Maybe not Chait (or maybe), but there are a lot of folks on the left of the Dems--some posting here-- who seem to believe that a dollar sent to Washington is automatically a dollar invested in the Public Good--especially other people's dollars. Most voters hold a different view. In any case I think Jon's done a great analysis on the value of Simpson/Bowles, and I know Douthat agrees.
- Robert Powell
November 13, 2010 at 2:25pm
But dude, reducing the top rate from 35 to 23! 23%!! I mean you could say it'll never happen (although we could easily get a President Palin in 2012 if the economy doesn't improve, with Republican control of both houses, and it does happen). And you can say you only endorse certain parts of the report. But to say anything that even sounds good overall about a plan that cuts taxes on the rich to 23% -- 23%!! -- I have to wonder if you were short of sleep and/or rushed that day.
- RHSerlin
November 13, 2010 at 3:22pm
I distinctly remember, when critics of Bush War II were pointing with alarm at the growing deficit, Cheney's response was "Deficits don't matter." Took my breath away.
- Tgossard
November 13, 2010 at 6:14pm
The funny thing is that the amount of revenue devoted from the change in taxes on the report around 80 billion that goes to deficit reduction instead of lowering rates almost exactly matches letting the cuts for the wealthy expire now. Problem solved!
- MikeB.
November 13, 2010 at 9:36pm
Actually, the responses so far are at least a partial refutation of Chait's thesis. If the left was primarily motivated by a progessive distribution of wealth, it would await a more detailed proposal that could be scored for progessivity. It would not react with immediate anger and dismay. The right's more measured response is indicative of the thirst for more data. There is no question that the right has been more empirical in this matter thus far.
- jkodak
November 14, 2010 at 9:07am
Why is Ross D. still talking about the Paul Ryan plan like it is a real plan? The grade inflation for the GOP is so ridiculous, even when shown with real numbers to be an absolute fraud, Paul Ryan is still put out as a serious wonk.
- MikeB.
November 14, 2010 at 9:20am
MikeB. The Paul Ryan plan preserves social security only for those 55 and older and replaces it with a one third of Social Security tax investment plan with a no-loss inflationary guarantee. It provides a family $5,700.00 heath care tax credit but does not have an insurance mandate. It repeals the estate tax and the Alternative Minimum Tax. The estate tax, which was a 45% tax on married couples with estates of $7 million after the second death, is a tax that hardly impacts the economy, unless couples are working to support their children after death. The AMT prevented the reduction in taxes from large deductions or large amounts of capital gain and dividends. The plan got CBO approval.
- Nusholtz
November 14, 2010 at 9:41am
Actually no. The CBO did not look at the tax side of the equation. They simply assumed his revenues would measure as a percent of GDP. Here is Paul Ryan himself on this problem trying to weasel out of it: "The assertion by Krugman and others that the revenue assumptions in the "Roadmap" are overly optimistic and that my staff directed the Congressional Budget Office not to analyze the tax elements of the "Roadmap" is a deliberate attempt to misinform and mislead. I asked the CBO to analyze the long-term revenue impact of the "Roadmap," but officials declined to do so because revenue estimates are the jurisdiction of the Joint Tax Committee. The Joint Tax Committee does not produce revenue estimates beyond the 10-year window, and so I worked with Treasury Department tax officials in setting the tax reform rates to keep revenues consistent with their historical average." The fact that he traveled the country and got kudos for being serious and his tax numbers didn't add up to me is a great example of grade inflation. I could go around and come up with a budget that would balance in 2080 and say well I can make adjustments when it was shown my numbers didn't add up. There is a nice graph here on III. that shows how his "plan" explodes Federal debt: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3114&emailView=1 Ryan like so many other GOP members of Congress are rhetorically committed to ending Federal debt, yet their number one priority is always tax cuts for the rich.
- MikeB.
November 14, 2010 at 10:12am
Here is a quot that sums it up: “Word is getting around that CBO has blessed a major budget reform plan proposed by Representative Paul Ryan (R-WI) as, in the words of National Review Online, ‘a roadmap to solvency.’ It isn’t true. “…. All this confusion is due to a letter written on Jan. 27 from CBO director Doug Elmendorf to Ryan. In that 50-page document, CBO suggests the plan could eliminate the deficit in 50 years and, even more impressively, eliminate the debt by 2080. “But, and this caveat is a whopper, CBO assumed this wonderful outcome would occur only if the revenue portion of Ryan’s plan generated 19 percent of GDP in taxes. And there is not the slightest evidence that would happen. …. Rather than estimate the true revenue effects of the Ryan plan, CBO simply assumed, as the lawmaker requested, that it would generate revenues of 19 percent of GDP (emphasis added).” — Howard Gleckman, “Assume a Can Opener,” TaxVox, the Tax Policy Center Blog, February 4, 2010 .
- MikeB.
November 14, 2010 at 10:15am
MikeB. I had assumed you were unfamiliar with the plan. I'm not a fan of the plan. On Ryan's website there is a link to a CBO letter that seems to approve the plan and which, I guess, you either feel is an approval with conditions or not an approval at all. http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/UploadedFiles/CBO01-27-Ryan-Roadmap-Letter.pdf
- Nusholtz
November 14, 2010 at 10:40am
- The right needs to cite President Obama and his defenders as the primary reason for a debt, deficit and spending that is ruinous. But mostly, they don't like him. Mention '01 - '08 or the impact of the financial meltdown and they scream, "Don't litigate the past.". The broken system can thus be fixed by undoing his efforts, stopping him from proceeding and returning to a vague version of Pre-2008 tax and spend policies with different revenue streams and a shift of federal spending to points unknown (states willing). Is that purely partisan or personal? Well, not really. People who believe that 50 states with their own approach to governing is best and weeding out the less able imagine a policy that no commission can propose. The don't accept The Constitution as we've known it since Lincoln. They really want a constitution as it was in the 19th Century and their solutions are to be found prior to 2000 or even 1980, by at least one hundred years. The smaller government they long for evolved for reasons they don't understand or won't accept so they can hardly claim to be ideologues. Some are nostalgic and others just plain mean or selfish, so calling me a pragmatist is a compliment I'll accept. Most disturbing should be any idea of way forward that begins as an antebellum blueprint.
- michaelg
November 14, 2010 at 11:00am
Nusholtz, What Ryan did was beyond dishonest. He told the CBO to simply score his spending part of the budget. What he did was tell them the tax revenue would stay at a certain level. With the enormous tax cuts to the rich in his plan, when the tax side was finally looked at it was shown to be a fraud. In the meantime Ryan went around the country getting credit for being a deep thinker and bold thinker for his "roadmap" and waved around the CBO letter to show as proof. I have never seen more whining when Paul Ryan was called on his fraud. "The mean liberals are picking on me..." So Ryan's strategy now is to simply wave around the CBO letter and hope nobody calls him on it. For the most part it is working. GOP people point to him like Ross D. did to show "serious Republican plans" on the budget when his plan is anything but.
- MikeB.
November 14, 2010 at 11:47am
MikeB, Interesting.
- Nusholtz
November 14, 2010 at 7:57pm
" Belief #1 is that the Republican Party is driven far more by opposition to redistribution than by opposition to government per se." This is key to understanding Conservative temper tantrums.
- jdyer
November 15, 2010 at 12:16am