A VIEW FROM HERE
by deb weiss

Thinking Over This Tax Cut Thing
July 29, 1999


Karl Marx said that history always repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. Watching the current tax-cut debate, you're tempted to believe that at least he got the farce part right.

In the 1980s, critics accused Ronald Reagan of using tax cuts to beguile a gullible public. The president's real agenda, they hissed, was to halt the expansion of federal government initiated by FDR half-a-century earlier -- even to reverse it.

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They were right. Smaller, less intrusive government was precisely what President Reagan had in mind -- it's not as if he ever made any secret of it -- and tax-cuts were a dandy way to gain broad public support.

Despite high-decibel agitprop from the left (inevitably, they excoriated the tax-cutters as racist, greedy, and hard-hearted), Mr. Reagan prevailed. Tax rates were slashed and federal revenues soared. The wheezing, battered economy he'd inherited from Jimmy Carter -- crippled by high interest rates and the regulating frenzy of the 1970s -- began to show signs of life. After a few recessionary wobbles, the U.S. economy was soon on a sounder footing than it had been at any time since the early 1960s, before Vietnam and the Great Society came along to alter the equation.

Congressional Democrats frantically spent the new revenues, laboring to nourish the federal beast as the president labored to starve it. Enacting expansive new social programs, they triggered the deficits that would become, ironically, a propaganda coup for their side. For his part, Ronald Reagan compromised on domestic spending, signing costly new programs into law to ensure Congressional support for his national defense build-up.

His priorities, unlike theirs, were not misplaced. Under his leadership, the U.S. went on to win the Cold War. What's more, in the end even deficit spending couldn't erode the economic fundamentals of the Reagan recovery.

Flash forward to 1999, and the brouhaha over a GOP proposal to cut taxes by some $792 billion over ten years -- a modest portion of those huge (though, let's face it, probably fictitious) projected budget surpluses.

Mind you, public discourse has gone downhill since 1980, when, as my friend Betty recently observed, even "Time" and "Newsweek" still occasionally ran hard news stories. In our brave new political world, we leap past sober discussion into a brawl of symbolisms. Charts and props, Larry King, Jesse "The Bore" Ventura. Citizens unfurled in rows like animated backdrops, nodding and blinking as politicians spit out sound-bites.

However, beneath the new trappings, this is the same old struggle. The left is still hellbent on feeding the beast. The right still aims to starve it.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan recently warned Congress against the Clinton administration's new spending proposals. Emphasizing that his own strong bias is for debt reduction rather than tax-cutting, he nonetheless conceded that the GOP's cuts would do less lasting harm to the economy than Mr. Clinton's burgeoning entitlements.

Greenspan has it about right. This isn't an especially logical moment for tax cuts. It would probably make more sense to use whatever surpluses may actually exist, to draw down the debt. If we must choose, though, surely it's better to send that money home to the people who made it, for safekeeping, than to allow it to be swallowed up by Mr. Clinton's roughly $1 trillion in proposed new entitlements.

Conservatives are afraid: and not without reason. They may lose the fight this time around. Mr. Clinton's cynical initiatives (really just a high-stakes power-grab by the left) have been carefully polled and focus-grouped, and will play well in the coming campaign. If enacted, they'd sap the economy without easing human suffering, but never mind: they've received the imprimatur of those secular bishops, our network newsreaders. It's heresy to disagree.

Come to think of it, Marx is wrong again. Despite elements of farce, when all's said and done this particular recycling of history has the potential to be quite a tragedy.

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A VIEW FROM HERE archive

The John John Show -- July 26, 1999

America's One China, Two Alka Seltzer Policy -- July 22, 1999

The Politics of Speaking Ill of the Dead -- July 19, 1999

The Nasty Legacy -- July 15, 1999

All in a Slow News Week... -- July 12, 1999

Traps For The Young -- July 8, 1999

Remembering Michael Dukakis -- July 5, 1999

R.I.P., O.I.C. -- July 1, 1999

Mr. Clinton's Post-War Vengeance -- June 28, 1999

Guns, Cuisinarts and the Bill of Rights -- June 24, 1999

Attack of the Concerned Advocates -- June 21, 1999

FTC Nation -- June 17, 1999

The Very, Very Coincidental World of Bill and Hillary Clinton -- June 14, 1999

Water-boiling in Our Time -- June 10, 1999

Crisis and Peace -- June 7, 1999

Reinventing God -- June 3, 1999

On This Memorial Day -- May 31, 1999

The Un-McCarthy Era -- May 27, 1999

Unspeakable Spin -- May 25, 1999