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Go Home John Boehner's Tax Gibberish

JONATHAN CHAIT MAY 10, 2011

John Boehner's Tax Gibberish

BY JONATHAN CHAIT

John Boehner appeared on the Today Show this morning, and his explanation of why he won't agree to any revenue increase is a perfect encapsulation of the vacuity ofconservative movement thought on this subject.

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Here's the best part of the exchange:

LAUER: Why not use an increase in revenues? Tax hikes to help with that debt problem? What is the evidence that you can present that the tax cuts of the Bush era have actually accomplished their goals?

BOEHNER: Well, what you're – what some are suggesting is that we take this money from people who would invest in our economy and create jobs and we give it to the government. The fact is you can't tax the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and create jobs. Washington doesn't have a revenue problem. Washington has a spending problem.

LAUER: But when you look at – you talk about creating jobs, when the Bush era tax cuts were passed in 2001, unemployment in this country was 4.5%. Today it's at 9%, just down from 10%. So why are the Bush-era tax cuts creating jobs?

BOEHNER: They created about 8 million jobs over the first ten years that they were in existence. We've lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession. But you can't raise taxes. We can take all of the money from the wealthy and guess what? We'd hardly make a dent in the annual deficit and do nothing about the $14.3 trillion worth of debt.

Lauer begins with a good question. What is the evidence that the Bush tax cut accomplished its goal? Boehner refuses to present any. Indeed, answering this question would lead him into an inescapable minefield. The Bush tax cuts are currently in effect, so any benefits of continuing them must have been felt from 2001 until the present date. That would imply those effects are less than impressive. So instead, Boehner simply restates his position. We can't take money away from job creators. Why not? You just can't. "The fact is," he continues, mistaking opinion for fact, "you can't tax the very people that we expect to invest in our economy and create jobs." You can't tax them at all? Obviously we have to tax them some, right? So then the question is what is the optimal level. I believe recent history suggests that Clinton-era tax levels create no significant harmful incentive effect. Boehner can't even come near this question, because he simply insists that tax the rich is wrong is an absolute sense.

Boehner proceeds from there to trot out the familiar "Washington doesn't have a revenue problem. Washington has a spending problem." line. Here's the reality:

Obviously revenue declined following the Bush tax cuts and stayed well below the Clinton-era trend, even aside from cyclical factors. It's worth noting here that both parties may emphasize the factors in the rise of the debt that favor solutions most amenable to their policy preferences. The difference is that you don't see Democrats categorically deny that spending levels bear any relate to deficits, whereas the opposite belief is an article of faith among Republicans.

Lauer, to his credit, tries again, asking for any evidence the Bush tax cuts created jobs. Boehner replies, "They created about 8 million jobs over the first ten years that they were in existence. We've lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession." Right. That's a net of 3 million jobs over eight years. That's horrible! 3 million new jobs is, as the Wall Street Journal news staff put it, "the worst track record for job creation since the government began keeping records." Now, Boehner wants to keep track of new jobs under Bush at their highest level. If you want to assign Bush zero responsibility for the economic crisis and measure it from trough to peak, Boehner gets a total of 8 million new jobs. But during the Clinton administration we saw the creation of 23 million new jobs. Doesn't that again suggest that Clinton-era tax rates on the rich might not cripple job creation? Boehner, of course does not say.

For his final talking point, Boehner claims that even if we took all the money the rich had, it wouldn't make a dent in the deficit. Here he's recycling a point made originally by Paul Ryan and then, in much stronger, by the Wall Street Journal's comically inept editorial page. The Journal's claim has been widely cited since, including by GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell. It is utterly false, and seems to be based on a simple inability to correctly perform basic arithmetic.

And there we have the conservative movement's explanation of its position on taxes, which also happens to be its central policy goal.

I should note here that I don't have any reason to believe that any of this reflects Boehner's personal dishonesty. The problem is that the conservative movement holds as its highest principle the belief that it's unfair to charge higher tax rates to the rich. But since that principle is highly unpopular, they need to devise other rationales to sell this policy -- rationales that bear no relationship to their actual reasons, and which are usually nonsensical or simply false. Dishonesty of some form or another is common in politics, but Republican economic policymaking is characterized by massive, systematic dishonesty or rank ignorance that permeates every element of the process, from intellectual entrepreneurs to elected officials. The good news is that it keeps me in business.

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20 comments

Maybe this is why Palin was so important -- her rambling gibberish covered over the less crazy rambling gibberish of others. Boehner's gibberish is STILL gibberish, but now he no longer has Palin's stuff to make his look good.

- AllanL5

May 10, 2011 at 3:05pm

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I heard this nonsense when I awoke today, and I'm glad you're ripping it apart.

- zardoz67

May 10, 2011 at 3:15pm

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This stuff grinds me. I heard on Diane Rhem today the argument that if you raise taxes on the rich, they will figure out ways not to pay it -- move their money off shore, increase their deductions, blah blah blah. We once had a 91% rate in this country. Prior to 1981, we had a 70% rate on unearned incomea and a 50% rate on earned income. When you let people pay tax at 15% on their unearned income from stocks, as opposed to a top 35% rate on earned income, its no wonder there are no jobs and the wealthy are richer than ever. Besides, the truely wealthy work less the more they make. Taxing them makes them work more and employ more people.

- Nusholtz

May 10, 2011 at 3:45pm

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The Democrats really need to find a way to hammer the GOP for its stances. The public is not with the GOP, so it's the Dem's task to make sure that the public realizes this about itself. I'm not holding my breath.

- Jonas

May 10, 2011 at 3:54pm

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But it's actually worse, because the propensity to spout jibberish as fact has taken hold throughout the land. David Brooks, in his column today, claims that the current high level of unemployment is structural, not cyclical, when every conceivable measure showss that it is cyclical (i.e., inadequate demand). Yet that is the premise for the remainder of his column. It's like saying we don't need street lights at night because the sun will be shining.

- rayward

May 10, 2011 at 4:08pm

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Ray, I saw that Brooks column and nearly chucked my coffee mug across the room. I'm glad I didn't watch the Today show, or that mug wouldn't have survived the morning.

- Fishpeddler

May 10, 2011 at 4:36pm

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"Boehner replies, "They created about 8 million jobs over the first ten years that they were in existence. We've lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession." This is what chaps my ass with the quality of today's political journalism. A freshman-level response to this would have been: "Mr Speaker, even if you completely discount the 5 million lost jobs, even if you give Bush and his tax cuts 100% of the credit for jobs gained and none of the blame for jobs lost, that's 8 million new jobs over 8 years. That averages a bit over 83,000 jobs per month. Isn't that a bit pathetic? Are you saying the great victory of the Bush tax cuts was that they resulted in a job growth that, from my quick math, barely kept pace with population growth? And again, that removes from the equation the job hemorrhage when the Bush economy crashed. So what exactly did tax cuts accomplish, Mr Speaker?"

- Tristan

May 10, 2011 at 4:49pm

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Congrats. America, you elected this country club golf pimp/corporate robot as your Speaker of the House of Reps. I mean this guy is either just plain stupid or is convinced (I go with this one) that if he keeps repeating the earth is flat rather than round he will muddy the waters enough.

- MikeB.

May 10, 2011 at 4:59pm

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I don't think they care. They don't care whether they are telling the truth and they don't care if the people swallow their agenda or not. These are not democrats nor are they republicans (small r's and d's deliberate, pace Mr. Brooks who doesn't think the people are smart enough to make decisions in the first place). I feel we are under assault by a group of people with an agenda and they have become uncoupled from what the people want, from traditional party politics even; and also from factual reality, period. They will ram through their ideology willy-nilly; so - we'd better wake up.

- Sophia

May 10, 2011 at 6:07pm

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Sophia, the Republicans certainly DO care if people swallow their agenda. That's why they lie about it constantly. They have to keep the dupes in Middle America convinced, against all evidence, that the GOP has their best interests at heart and is their bulwark against socialist tyranny. Abraham Lincoln said you can't fool all of the people all of the time. The Republican position is that with constantly repeated lies and and an ignoramus public, you can fool MOST of the people all of the time, and that's enough to get elected.

- DAVIDDREIER@EARTHLINK.NET-old

May 10, 2011 at 7:27pm

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I have to second MikeB and Sophia. Boehner is case in point why you can never just vote for the other guy because you're not happy with the incumbent. The situation has devolved into a ruthless, naked power grab on the right; they want every form of power they can get, and they'll stop at very little to obtain it, and leading the way are people like the Koch Bros and Murdoch.

- GSpinks

May 10, 2011 at 8:50pm

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Boner is immersed in an epistemically-closed fish tank. So it is no wonder that he spouts the same nonsense that so many of his colleagues also spout.

- liberalref

May 10, 2011 at 9:21pm

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One wonders why conservatives are trying to roll things back to before Teddy Roosevelt (a reforming Republican) was president. Was the 20th century that hard on them?

- ironyroad

May 10, 2011 at 9:29pm

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Jon, you're nit-picking again. Sure, Boehner is a bit of a blowhard, Preview Comment | The New Republic


05/10/2011 - 11:23pm EDT | ds111

Jon, you're nit-picking again. Sure, Boehner is a bit of a blowhard, but it is nevertheless obvious that there is no way to square projected spending under Obama with taxing "the rich" alone. It will be taxes across the board or bust. What is striking about the chat is that spending under Clinton, with a Republican congress, dropped to 18% GDP, the lowest since 1970, and yet the economy thrived. One could also point out out that the only reason for the 20% peak in revenues was the gusher of capital gains taxes as a result of the dot-co boom, concurrent with a materially lower capital gains tax rate, as federal income tax receipts grew from 8% to 10% GDP. It might lead one to the conclus ... view full comment

ds111