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David Sirota: The Case for Choosing Life
Judging by Tim Tebow’s much-hyped Super Bowl ad, “choose life” remains conservatives’ favorite abortion shibboleth. But really, the phrase better captures the stakes in the Great Budget Wars of 2010.
Plagued by deficits, communities everywhere must now decide between tax reform and public spending cuts — between economic life and death. And thanks to two Western bellwether states, we know what each choice means.
Choosing death means mimicking Colorado Springs — a Republican red tattoo on Colorado’s purple heart.
As a venue for political experiments, the sprawly GOP enclave is as pristine a conservative laboratory as you’ll find in America. If the city has garnered contemporary notoriety at all, it has achieved infamy for domiciling right-wing groups such as Focus on the Family and infecting the world with viruses such as Douglas Bruce — the father of draconian initiatives that seek to prohibit governments from raising levies.
When the Tea Party movement’s anti-tax activists refer to the abstract concept of conservative purity, we can turn to a microcosm like The Springs (as we Coloradoans call it) for a good example of what such purity looks like in practice — and the view isn’t pretty.
Thanks to the city’s rejection of tax increases — and, thus, depleted municipal revenues — The Denver Post reports that “more than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark; the city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops; water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead ... recreation centers, indoor and outdoor pools (and) museums will close for good; buses no longer run on evenings and weekends; (and) the city won’t pay for any street paving.”
Meanwhile, even with the Colorado Springs Gazette uncovering tent ghettos of newly homeless residents, the city’s social services are being reduced — all as fat cats aim to punish what remains of a middle class. As just one example, rather than initiating a tax discussion, the CEO of The Springs’ most lavish luxury hotel is pushing city leaders to cut public employee salaries to the $24,000-a-year level he pays his own work force — a level approaching Colorado’s official poverty line for a family of four.
This is what Reaganites have always meant when they’ve talked of a “shining city on a hill.” They envision a dystopia whose anti-tax fires incinerate social fabric faster than James Dobson can say “family values” — a place like Colorado Springs that is starting to reek of economic death.
Choosing life, by contrast, means doing what Colorado’s governor and state legislature are doing by temporarily suspending corporate tax exemptions and raising revenue for job-sustaining schools and infrastructure. Even more dramatically, it means doing what voters in Oregon did a couple of weeks ago.
As deficits threatened their education and public health systems, Oregonians confronted two ballot initiatives — one modestly raising taxes on annual income above $250,000, another hiking the state’s $10 minimum corporate income tax.
Despite these measures exempting 97 percent of taxpayers, conservatives waged a vicious opposition campaign, trotting out billionaire Nike CEO Phil Knight as their celebrity spokesman. But this time, the right’s greed-is-good mantra failed. In a swing state that had killed every similar initiative since the 1930s, voters backed the tax increases — and chose economic life.
No matter where we live, this same choice will soon face us all in some form. It is a choice embodied in President Barack Obama’s pragmatic initiative to end his predecessor’s high-income tax breaks, a choice for which future local and federal elections will serve as proxies.
Inevitably, anti-tax zealots will attempt to obscure what this choice is about — but the choice is now crystal clear.
Tax reform or draconian cuts, life or death — the decision is ours.
— David Sirota is the author of the best-selling books Hostile Takeover and The Uprising. He hosts the morning show on AM 760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. Click here for more information. He can be contacted at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 02.09.10 @ 01:59 PM
When is this guy and his cohorts realize that tax cuts bring in more revenue. It happens every time! More money in the private sector brings more jobs and more wealth, thus more tax revenue because you have more employed. It is so simple and basic. Privatize public union positions and let them create their own 401K plans. You will never be able to tax enough to pay for all the benefits.
» on 02.09.10 @ 03:12 PM
Another way of looking at Sirota’s discussion of recession-driven life in Colorado
Springs is to view it as a microcosm of national life if a Palin-McConnel ticket ever
made it to Washington.
If “more revenue” were correct, why is it that real income and job creation collapsed
during the 25 years from the Reagan tax cuts, then the Bush tax cuts?
If all this trickle-down stuff is true, why has the middle class been decimated by all
these tax cuts? Where’s the love? not to mention the jobs and the bucks?
Interesting that Reagan’s budget chief, David Stockman, has come out publicly
in support of re-regulating Wall Street and big bank combines, while paring down
existing entitlements “slowly, over time.”
As for Colorado Springs’ conservative government, if they want to live like they were
in Texas, or Lompoc, more power to them.
» on 02.09.10 @ 03:15 PM
This guy still believes in Santa Clause and the tooth fairy. “Yes, tax the rich” the progressives scream. Only the rich don’t pay taxes. Nor do big corporations. Those who work for them, buy from them or supply them pay their taxes. But the clueless idiots on the left still think of taxing as either a source of free money or retribution. Every time these nimrods raise taxes more wealth creating work leaves our state. IDIOTS! I get real sick of government telling me all the services they provide are vital and necessary even though culturally we survived quite fine without MOST of them. Roads, schools, security and safety, that’s IT! Period! The rest goes away. We don’t need government we need them to get out of our pockets. When and if we ever decide to be a producer economy again, then we can talk about whether we can afford the crap liberals want to saddle us with.
» on 02.09.10 @ 04:04 PM
More revenue and AN50, trickle down economics has never worked in the entire history of America. AN50, I challenge you to only use the government services you describe and nothing more. Just goggle a day in the life of Joe Republican and you will then fully appreciate how many government services you utilize on a daily basis.
We need investment in America in order to get back to a healthy economy in which as you put it we make stuff. There we are in agreement. Where we depart is how to get there. I believe the best avenue for success is to create an environment where the middle class can thrive, higher education is affordable and a health incident does not lead to bankruptcy. Sorry but under Eisenhower, Reagon and Bush Sr. we had much higher taxes on the upper wage earners and the economy did just fine. Right now our tax rate is at 25% of GDP which is at historical lows. The middle class in this country is disappearing and the spread between the halves and the have nots is widening. You get what you pay for, period. This teaparty garbage about being taxed to death is a bunch of bs and you know it. Most people have seen their taxes lowered in the past year. I agree there needs to be significant spending cuts and the first place to start is our massive defense budget, including all of its waste. We could also across the board make massive administrative cuts but lets not mess up in the classroom education any further. It is our future.
» on 02.09.10 @ 05:44 PM
Why does everyone give credit to Reagan and Bush? Tax cuts to increase revenue were MY idea! At the time, it was just good common sense, until these populist socialists took over my Democrat party. The reason they won’t do it is because they won’t be able to take credit, since the revenue gains won’t occur until the next term. It’s all about politics, it isn’t about the good of the country anymore.
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=39517
“Lower rates of taxation will stimulate economic activity and so raise the levels of personal and corporate income as to yield within a few years an increased – not a reduced – flow of revenues to the federal government.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 17, 1963, annual budget message to the Congress, fiscal year 1964
“In today’s economy, fiscal prudence and responsibility call for tax reduction even if it temporarily enlarges the federal deficit – why reducing taxes is the best way open to us to increase revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“It is no contradiction – the most important single thing we can do to stimulate investment in today’s economy is to raise consumption by major reduction of individual income tax rates.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 21, 1963, annual message to the Congress: “The Economic Report Of The President”
“Our tax system still siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power and reduces the incentive for risk, investment and effort – thereby aborting our recoveries and stifling our national growth rate.”
– John F. Kennedy, Jan. 24, 1963, message to Congress on tax reduction and reform, House Doc. 43, 88th Congress, 1st Session.
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
“A tax cut means higher family income and higher business profits and a balanced federal budget. Every taxpayer and his family will have more money left over after taxes for a new car, a new home, new conveniences, education and investment. Every businessman can keep a higher percentage of his profits in his cash register or put it to work expanding or improving his business, and as the national income grows, the federal government will ultimately end up with more revenues.”
– John F. Kennedy, Sept. 18, 1963, radio and television address to the nation on tax-reduction bill
» on 02.10.10 @ 09:40 AM
Local, you don’t have a clue. Your ideology demands that those that do provide for those that don’t. That is the biggest incentive-for-progress killer ever invented by humanity.
To invest in America you want to extract from the doers, driving them out. Meanwhile you give generously to the don’ts, making them more useless and dependant. Tell me how that logic works buddy? How does that make us better? What freaking good does an education do you here if the jobs are in China? Why build a super highway if no one has a job requiring its use? What is the point of all your damned feel good crap if you have to beg your masters in China to pay for it? It sickens me that you have absolutely no comprehension of any of this. You have boasted of your education and yet in the very basics of economics you are ignorant. Your ideological friends can do their very best to obfuscate finances all they want, but the bottom line is still the bottom line, you have to pay for what you want and right now you pay nothing and borrow everything. Good luck with that. I know how to live off the land and defend myself against enemies; I’ll survive, will you?
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