TIMOTHY NOAH APRIL 25, 2012
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Prominent Republican officeholders are getting bolder about saying they want to raise taxes on poor people. I have written before about the bizarre conservative meme that we need to "broaden the tax base" by raising taxes on low-income people whom the Wall Street Journal editorial page has labelled, grotesquely, "lucky duckies." This is a complete reversal from the previous conservative position that the working poor, far from paying federal income tax, should receive government payments through the Earned Income Tax Credit. It's in large part thanks to the EITC that the income tax is more progressive today than it was in 1979, even though the top marginal tax rate came crashing down from 70 percent to 35 percent. (The poor continue to pay--don't you fret!--obscenely regressive payroll taxes, federal excise taxes, and state and local taxes.) Among those responsible for extending the EITC was President Ronald Reagan. Now we must condemn the Gipper for feeding the duckies.
As is often the case, Republican leaders in the public eye have been slow to state the new conservative doctrine too forthrightly. Now, it seems, they're starting to loosen up. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor last week became, I think, the highest-ranking Republican poobah to say, pretty much outright, that we need to soak the poor. More remarkable still, he said we need to do it in order to avoid raising taxes on the rich!
Cantor: We also know that over 45 percent of the people in this country don’t pay income taxes at all, and we have to question whether that’s fair. And should we broaden the base in a way that we can lower rates for everybody that pays taxes.
[...]
Q.: Just wondering, what do you do about that? Are you saying we need to have a tax increase on the 45 percent that right now pay no federal income tax?
Cantor: I’m saying that, just in a macro way of looking at it, you’ve got to discuss that issue. What is going to fund the necessary operations of the federal government. How do we allow for that to take place in a way that we can see a growing economy. Because whatever scenario you may choose to embrace about cutting the spending or reforming the entitlement programs, the necessary piece is a growing economy or you're never going to manage down and back to balance in the budget. So that's gotta be the goal. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with a shrinking pie and number of people and entities that support the operations of government, and how do you go about continuing to milk them more, if that’s what some want to do, but preserve their ability to provide the growth engine? And that leads me back to saying those at the bottom end of the income scale want nothing more than to increase their income, to get up that ladder of success. So the goal should be, how do you do that? I’ve never believed that you go and raise taxes on those who have been successful that are paying in, taking from them, so that you just hand out and give to someone else. Those someone else[s] want hand-ups. They want the ability to get up the ladder.
And ... the way you coax those at the bottom up the ladder is by taxing them? Even on its own insane terms Cantor's argument doesn't make sense. But he probably doesn't care, because he isn't interested in helping poor people or even wasting much time imagining what their lives must be like. Let's face it, poor people don't vote for guys like Cantor. Cantor's only interest is in protecting rich people from paying their fair share in taxes. If that can be achieved while appealing to tea partiers' contempt for the undeserving poor (a group that now includes the once-virtuous working poor), so much the better. Cantor knows enough not to put such contemptible remarks up on his Web site, but they were caught by Think Progress and Citizens For Tax Justice and ended up on YouTube.
20 comments
Let's just tax the poor at a *higher* rate than the rich to add incentive to be successful. I'm sure that there's a think tank out there that will pay for detailed analysis ...
- tadks
April 25, 2012 at 4:55pm
I had to read your citation several times because I wasn't sure Cantor was using Enlish. I love the way he talks around the issue of raising taxes on poor people by talking about how he doesn't believe in raising taxes on rich people. And he seems to be claiming that raising taxes on poor people will give them more ability to climb up the ladder of economic success and increase the overall size of the American economic pie.
Then there's this doozy: "Because whatever scenario you may choose to embrace about cutting the spending or reforming the entitlement programs...", as if those two things were distinct in some meaningful way. The new House budget makes perfectly clear that reforming entitlement programs is all about cutting spending for Republicans.
Although, he needs to be careful because he dropped a couple of facts in there, like the key is growing the economy, and the "hand-ups" stuff which sounds remarkably like a euphemism for creating jobs, which would be critical to growing the economy in a meaningful way (as opposed to just having rich people get richer).
- GSpinks
April 25, 2012 at 5:03pm
On analysts and talking heads ... change "technology" to "policy" in this from a recent GrokLaw posting:
- tadks
April 25, 2012 at 5:04pm
I think tadks is on to something; sort of like having a fire at the bottom of the ladder. You have a confiscatory bottom rate, like 100% on $15,000.00; and if you want to keep any of it, you have to earn more, say 15% less confiscation on every additional $15,000.00 you earn. When you get to $90,000.00 you reach the status of "job creator" and you pay no tax at all. Why, this will solve poverty better than kids being afternoon janitors! Now, where can we get some jobs to implement this plan?
- Nusholtz
April 25, 2012 at 5:09pm
"Let's face it, poor people don't vote for guys like Cantor. " You have that right. Imagine two distinct groups of individuals paying no federal taxes, (three if you consider children, four if you consider folks confined to prisons). The poor, by definition, lack both sufficient income and deductions. Then there are those who are living comfortably. They are older, have no dependents and have accumulated savings over the years. Every year, no federal taxes are required on their incomes due to their lawful deductions.
- Doug12
April 25, 2012 at 5:15pm
Denis Moore Denis Moore Riding through the glen Denis Moore Denis Moore With his band of men Steals from the poor And gives to the rich . . .
- ironyroad
April 25, 2012 at 6:03pm
so if taxing the poor incentivizes them to be rich, why doesn't taxing the rich incenitivize them to be even more rich? This is not the poor Cantor is talking about going after, unless he considers 45% of Americans as being poor, many of these people are solidly middle class. If Republicans take away the EITC then the US will go into demographic decline as few young people will be able to afford children, ergo Cantor hates the United States and wants us to fall prey to invasion. How can someone so effing stupid get into a leadership position in Congress? Republicans are talking about basically financially raping the hell out of my family; no more interest rate deduction for my mortgage, no more EITC (I have 3 sons), no more college loans. They really are banana Republicans.
- blackton
April 25, 2012 at 7:21pm
so if taxing the poor incentivizes them to be rich, why doesn't taxing the rich incenitivize them to be even more rich? Applause. To make the argument even stronger, the backward bending supply curve suggests the opposite (i.e. you pay people more, they work more, until you pay them so much and they prefer to go on vacation -- for the poor to have their salary cut is a disincentive to work, but for the rich to have their income cut is an incentive to work more.)
- Nusholtz
April 25, 2012 at 7:31pm
This post caused me to coin a slogan that Eric Cantor may use fee of charge if he so wishes: Tax poor people out of their poverty.
- liberalref
April 25, 2012 at 7:31pm
Or, we could just whip the duckies, like the scene in Ben-Hur where he is on the galley. That might be more efficient, it would create direct savings for The Job Creators; since they wouldn't have to pay anybody! Wonder why nobody has thought of this brilliant idea.
- Sophia
April 25, 2012 at 8:20pm
Sophia, your idea was tried a few years ago. I heard there was some kind of war over it or something and the Sacred Scrolls (aka U.S. Constitution) were horribly disfigured as a result.
- tmmats
April 25, 2012 at 10:04pm
Wow. You can practically see him pull on his handlebar mustache and cackle over the widow's rent.....
- Wonderland
April 26, 2012 at 8:12am
Nice that the Bank of America logo is right next to his head as he proposes taxing the poor.
- dubyadoubte
April 26, 2012 at 9:21am
"so if taxing the poor incentivizes them to be rich, why doesn't taxing the rich incenitivize them to be even more rich?" Actually, in the case of capital, it probably does. But, more to the point, if the poor can afford to pay more taxes, how come the rich cannot afford to pay a lot more in taxes? This is a case of pure propaganda technique -- making claims that are outrageous with a straight face, not because they will be accepted but so that the terrain of the dispute can be shifted away from "raise taxes on the rich" to someplace else.
- roidubouloi
April 26, 2012 at 9:49am
If I remember my history books, there was a country which kept taxes low (or non-existent) on the rich and kept raising them on the poor and middle class in order to pay its burgeoning expenses. That country was France in the 18th century. Things didn't work out so well for France's rich in the end.
- wildboy
April 26, 2012 at 9:57am
The GOP are really just a bunch of socialists who spread vile, class-warfare talk when they speak of raising peoples taxes. Why, if tax rates are a direct burden on job-creating then obviously the poor have jobs in spades because they pay zilch, nada, zip! Why isn't Grover (the muppet) Norquist out there slapping Cantor's wrist with a wet noodle on this? Cantor "I was against raising taxes before I was for raising taxes. But only on those blood-sucking, job-killing poor people."
- singlspeed
April 26, 2012 at 12:44pm
I really hate this guy. Is he for real? Maybe he is a satire? A comedian of great subtlety?
- Sophia
April 26, 2012 at 1:07pm
I'm totally in favor of more taxes on the poor. After all, since we are going to have poverty in this country anyway, we might as well really go for it and have the kind where kids with distended bellies are playing alongside ditches filled with human waste.
- Fishpeddler
April 26, 2012 at 4:55pm
Republicans don't care if their assertions and arguments make sense or whether they are sane, true or provable. They don't believe they have to be. For them, politics has become a form of performance art featuring set pieces that gain their validity from repetition and entertainment value, rather than proof, logic or even basic common sense. Fake birth certificates, lucky duckies, 90 congressional communists, death panels, imminent gun confiscation, etc. -- these aren't political arguments, they are Paul Bunyon tall tales featuring AK47s instead of an axe. The Dems, with their quaint belief that political lies should have plausibility, are looking impossibly behind the time.
- esmense
April 26, 2012 at 6:38pm
The real question is why do so many of the poor actually vote for the people who propose this stuff. Remember John McCain got about half the vote of the poorest white voters and well over half the vote of the bottom 50%. Why are Democrats so unable to convince even poor whites that their policies are superior to the Repubs?
- krvogel49
April 27, 2012 at 11:01am