Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, is the ring-leader of the “starve the beast” faction of the right that is twisted so tight the wingnut has fallen off the bolt. Norquist is infamous for the definitive “starve the beast” peg during a 25 May 2001 “Morning Edition” interview on National Public Radio:
“I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
The basic strategy of the “starve the beast” faction is to lower the taxes of the super-rich while simultaneously raising the taxes on the middle-income earners. This, so the strategy goes, makes the middle class susceptibly receptive to not-so-subtle cues that their tax bills are too high and calls to shrink government—and it’s attendant public services—to a size that is appropriately drownable. And all indications are that this sick strategy is working.
Paul Krugman, in “The Tax-Cut Con,” published in today’s New York Times Magazine, does a fascinating job of credibly outlining the “starve the beast” strategy in simple, easy-to-follow terms.
President Bush’s rationale for tax cuts, as Krugman points out, has shifted each of the past three years of his term. During his 2000 campaign and 2001, his first year in office, Shrub insisted that the federal budget surplus was excessive and should be returned to the taxpayers (with the bulk of the tax cuts going to the super-rich, wouldn’t you know). By late 2001 and all of 2002, when it became obvious that the bulb was burned out on the projected surplus, Bush insisted that tax cuts (again mostly for the super-rich, of course) were necessary to stimulate consumer spending and pull the economy out of recession. This year finds Bush insisting just as vehemently that dividend taxes must be reduced in order to stimulate long-term growth. The only problem is that none of these three rationales—not one of them—have been credible, and Bush has relied on accounting tricks and fancy marketing footwork to jam them through.
While carrying water for the “starve the beast” contingent, Bush slipped through massive tax cuts for his super-rich cronies. Krugman cites the Tax Policy Center‘s figures: “The 2001 tax cut, once fully phased in, will deliver 42 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of the income distribution.” The 2003 tax cut delivers 29.1 percent of its benefits to the same top 1 percent. Meanwhile, closely held corporations are enjoying being taxed at a rate of only 15 percent, regardless of income, and the economy has lost 2.7 million jobs since Shrub took office.
The result, according to Krugman, is a planned fiscal disaster. “If Grover Norquist is right—and he has been right about a lot—the coming crisis will allow conservatives to move the nation a long way back toward the kind of limited government we had before Franklin Roosevelt, writes Krugman. “Lack of revenue, he [Norquist] says, will make it possible for conservative politicians—in the name of fiscal necessity—to dismantle immensely popular government programs that would otherwise have been untouchable.”
What’s it going to be, folks? It’s time to decide what kind of a country we want. And it’s on our heads.
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