Illinois’s Tim Johnson (Rep.) Squirms under Norquist No-Tax-Increase Pledge
by Linda Beale
Illinois’s Tim Johnson (Rep.) Squirms under Norquist No-Tax-Increase Pledge
Back in 2002, Tim Johnson represented a safely red district in Illinois and the radical right was pressing on his back with its reaganomics-inspired program to cut-taxes-to-shrink-(nonmilitary)-government-and-eliminate-public-infrastructure-and-social-justice-programs; de-regulate-to-free-up-big-business; privatize-wherever-you-can-especially-schools-bridges-and-other-essential-services. Not to be outdone, Tim Johnson signed the no-tax-increase pledge on the dotted line, with his right-hand aide as witness.
In spite of the decades of extraordinarily well-funded anti-tax/anti-government propaganda spewed by purported think tanks like the “Americans for Prosperity” arm of the Koch Bros, the anti-estate tax “American Family” coalition arm of the Walton heirs, the Big-Business oriented Chamber of Commerce and Club for Growth and similar groups, the American public seems to be finally beginning to learn to read between the lines and recognize self-serving propaganda for what it is. Even with all the money being spent to misrepresent and distort the truth about taxes, it is worth noting that Rasmussen polls (run by a leaning-right head) are finding Americans more willing to support tax increases than they were a few years ago. For example, back in December 2011, despite the anti-tax nonsense of the Tea Party and other radical right-wing groups, only 52% thought tax cuts would help the economy–in the low end of the 51% to 63% range answering that question affirmatively since July 2008. Similarly, a recent poll showed that 47% favor a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the rich over a candidate who wants no tax increases. Back in September 50% of Americans favored a mix of spending cuts and tax increases (but 64% weren’t willing themselves to pay higher taxes, a product of the NIMBY syndrome). And a March poll found a significant decrease in Americans responding who thought that America is an “over-taxed” nation.
[N]ew Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 56% of Likely U.S. Voters believe America is overtaxed. But that’s down from 66% two years ago and 64% last year. One-out-of-three (33%) now believe the country is not overtaxed, while another 12% are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
[ASIDE: The problem with the question about whether Americans are overtaxed–especially in this age of 527 groups spending buckets of money to convince them that they are–is that it depends on who you are asking and what facts they actually know about taxes, the economy, and what the difference is between effective tax rates and statutory rates. Everybody hears the radical right prattle on about how high our (statutory) tax rates are. Very few hear much about effective tax rates and fewer still understand the difference. The wealthy are not over-taxed, though they have spent a good bit of their money to convince typical Americans that they are. Those who escape federal income taxation because they earn amounts covered by the standard deduction and personal exemptions and earned income tax credits–amounts intended to keep lower income taxpayers from having to pay income tax–nonetheless have to pay signficant state and local property and sales (and often also income) taxes and have to pay significant federal payroll taxes. Not surprisingly, they may well feel overtaxed when their wages are going down and their tax burden is staying the same and they hear the think tank spew of anti-tax stuff on the airwaves day and night.]
And now Tim Johnson’s district has changed. He represents a more Democratic electorate, that is less likely to swallow the Tea Party tax aversion hook, line and sinker. So he is backtracking. Which is good. It’s a shame he backtracked bit by bit, at first claiming he’d never signed and then suggesting his aide signed for him before he finally admitted he had signed the pledge but just didn’t consider it cast in granite. See Are you Now and Have You Always Been?, New York Times editorial (March 11, 2012).
But to give him credit, he finally did take a stand against the idiocy of the tax pledge. See Pat Garofalo, GOP Rep. Blasts Norquist’s Anti-Tax Pledge as “Disingenuous and Irresponsible”, Think Progress.org (Mar. 8, 2012). He ought to do it more straightfowardly–by admitting that it is a mistake to assume that tax cuts are always good or that tax increases are always bad and by acknowledging that there is plenty of room to tax the rich more without harming anybody’s economic recovery. His statement (quoted on ThinkProgress) weasles by making clear that he is leery of tax increases other than fixing tax loopholes or raising the Social Security tax…..
One hopes that these few quasi- brave Republicans who are beginning to speak out against the idiocy of a “pledge” to cut off a key tax policy tool of democratic institutions for supporting public infrastructure and public needs will cause Norquist’s pledge to go to the same ignominious fate that awaited Joe McCarthy’s anti-liberal binge (under the name of anti-communism) when a lone lawyer questioned his decency. As a constitutent told GOP representative Rick Berg in a North Dakota town hall meeting (quoted on Think Progress), these guys are supposed to work for their constituents, not for Norquist.
crossposted with ataxingmatter
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with apologies to those who may be tired of hearing it… nevertheless people need to understand that
the payroll tax is not a tax. it is the only way ordinary workers have of saving their own money for their own retirement, protected from inflation and market losses.
once you start calling Social Security a “tax” you have accepted the assumptions of the bad guys that Social Security is money you pay TO the government, and that people who get Social Security checks are getting money FROM the government.
This wrong, the only role of the government is to manage the program so that pay as you go funding can provide not only the safety workers needed, but also an effective interest that comes from the natural growth of wages and is always enough to at least cover inflation as well as provide a modest real interest that no private investment plan can guarantee. NONE of the money in Social Security comes from the government.
If you want to take issue with the “forty percent who pay no federal taxes…” it might be simpler to say that forty percent of the people don’t make enough money to pay taxes and still have enough to eat. don’t try to lump the “poor” in with the “poor rich” who are so oppressed by taxes they need another tax cut.
I don’t know what Tim Johnson said about raising Social Security taxes, but if ending the payroll tax “holiday” is raising the tax, yes, that must certainly be done.
And if it is necessary to raise the payroll tax another tenth of a percent per year in order to pay for the fact that the next generation… the people paying the tax… are going to live longer and need more money in their retirement, that should be done also.
But if we have reached a point where we are so stupid we can’t pay for our own retirement, because the government has provided a way for us to do it without fear of loss, then we are going to pay for it in the form of harsh poverty when we are too old to do anything about it.
Try to find a way to talk about taxes without falling into the Peterson trap of talking about Social Security as if it was a “tax burden.” It’s not.
It may help those out there whose ability to think analytically is some what limited to consider that FICA contributions taken from every worker’s paycheck are the only monies taken that are by requirement of legislation the only monies that are paid back directly to each contributor. Better yet, in addition to a return of those deducted portions of every worker’s pay, said payments also allow those workers to participate in an insurance plan that guarantees some financial relief to the minor children and spouse of said worker in the event of that worker’s death.
Got that, a full return of the monies paid into the system directly to every beneficiary’s bank account. You worked, FICA contributions (the so called payroll taxes) were deducted and accounted for, and you received back a benefit amount based upon the actual dollar amount of those work life long contributions.
It’s not any more compolicated than that. You paid in and you receive a benefit when its needed later in your life. And now that corporate America no longer wants to put money aside for its workers, and the security of funds invested with the securities industry of America is not all that secure those benefits, that you paid for in advance of your older age, are far more important than when the system was first instituted.
All else is bull shit in regards to Social Security. It’s been working for eighty years. It’s more important today than ever before.
thanks jack.
even i, though, try not to insult my readers before giving them a chance. analytical thinking requires that people know the relevant facts. not easy in the case of SS after 30, or 70, years of having been lied to.
the facts are easy enough to come by… The Trustees Report (NOT the “summary”!)… pretty much contains all you need. but you have to read it very carefully… the words are sometimes intended to deceive without actually lying, and the numbers are “true,” but it takes a little arithmetic to find out what they really mean.
But in general, yes, everything you hear about SS in the media, from the “non partisan experts” is designed to fool you.
But then, so were your history and economics courses in college.
and I’d recommend Nancy Altman’s book “The Battle to Save Social Security,” except that she spoils it in the end by recommending fixing SS by taxing estates. SS doesn’t need to be fixed, and FDR was very careful to keep it “worker paid”, not “tax the rich”, “so no damn politician can take it away from them.
The damn politicians are still trying, and they are very close to succeeding, but it took them 70 years of lying to the people, and a Democratic president to create a “payroll tax holiday” as the way to do it.
if you want to tax estates… and i do… use the money to pay for real welfare. don’t turn SS into welfare. SS is better if it pays for itself.
Linda:
That the elected representatives can forsake the people who elected them in favor of one person Grover Norquist on some quest to achieve “his” personal beleiefs is confounding to myself. They are charged to represent all of the people in their districts and states and not some simple minded view point of one person and ideology. A pox on them and Norquist.