Clinton makes tax-cut fumble

No one was surprised when Clinton vetoed the repeal of the marriage
tax penalty as passed by the Congress. He promised to, from the outset.
Still, from the point of view of the Republican Party, and George W. in
particular, the timing of his veto couldn't have been better. With the
veto he is saying that Washington should never, under any circumstances,
and no matter how high forecasted surpluses grow, loosen its grip on the
finances of American families.

The Republican bill has obvious economic and social merit. On the
economic side, Americans are wildly overtaxed. Any bill that would
privatize some of the loot currently confiscated by Washington deserves
support, on grounds that private wealth is productive while government
taxation makes society less prosperous than it otherwise would be. On
the social side, it is immoral for government to penalize people for
choosing to form families, which are the very foundation of a stable and
civilized society.

Why did he veto it? First he used the usual rhetorical tricks. He
claimed that a tax cut is a "giveaway," when actually it's a "give
back," and that cutting taxes is "fiscally reckless," as versus his
constant drumbeat for huge new government programs. He said he favors a
marriage tax cut (oh sure!), just not this particular bill. The White
House also reminded reporters that Clinton agreed only to sign the bill
if it came with a new drug-welfare program.

Al Gore immediately weighed in to back Clinton's action. "I do
support the veto," he said. Like Clinton, Gore added that he supports
"the right kind of repeal of the marriage tax," but he opposes (see if
you can follow this) "going beyond working families and not giving tax
relief to people who are in the upper brackets and people who are not
even married who are benefited by the version that was passed." After
eight years of this nonsense, we know what he means. The "right kind" of
tax relief is no tax relief.

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It's bracing to realize that for all of Clinton's supposed political
savvy, he would suddenly permit himself and his party to be on display
as the big taxers they are -- at a time when upwards of 70 percent of
people say they would prefer tax cuts to more government spending, while
another 20 percent probably lied to the pollster. At the same time, he
allows the Republicans to appear as the tax cutters they are not. Some
press reports say the White House and Congress will come to a
compromise. I say, no chance: the GOP will ride this through November.

Think back to 1992 when Clinton put on his New Democrat mask.
Middle-class tax relief was the plank in his platform that underscored
his claim not to be a big-government left-liberal. In advertising and
debates, he did his best to exploit widespread public anger at President
Bush for betraying his iron-clad promise not to raise taxes. Tax policy
was the underlying theme of that year's election, and, on the margin,
Democrats actually appeared to be more trustworthy.

Instead of cutting taxes in his first term, of course, he raised
them, in addition to pushing a vast number of statist programs. The
Republicans hounded him on the issue in 1994, and generally ran a
hard-core, anti-government campaign. The subtext of the Contract for
America was that Clinton couldn't be trusted to keep his
contracts. But at the grass-roots level, the rhetoric was even better:
the average Republican candidate for the House that year sounded
libertarian themes across the board, demanding an end to Clinton's
taxes, gun controls, social welfarism, and silly overseas adventures.
Let it not be forgotten that it was these themes that put a Republican
majority in the House!

However, in 1996, the Republicans missed the main chance to
capitalize on Clinton's string of betrayals. They nominated Sen. Bob
Dole, long known in Republican circles as never having met a tax
increase he couldn't warm up to. Dole limply and preposterously tried to
campaign for tax relief, but surveys showed that voters saw him as
merely duplicitous on the issue. Again, the Democratic ticket campaigned
to the right and hammered Dole for his high-tax voting record. Again,
the Democrats swept to victory, partially with the public expectation
that they would provide middle-class tax relief.

Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, the Democrats haven't held the
White House because big-government ideological and multicultural leftism
became fashionable in the 1990s. They held the White House by force of
Clinton's personality combined with an ongoing subterfuge that he led a
party of New Democrats that favored, among many good ideas, lower taxes.

One problem, of course, is that Clinton always changes the rationale
at the last minute. He likes to justify his vetoing of good bills by
saying that it should have been linked to the passage of a bad program.

But a more fundamental problem is Republican cowardice. The GOP could
have highlighted the difference between Clinton rhetoric and his
practice much earlier by sending him a long series of tax-cut bills.
Instead, Republicans developed this very strange idea that they should
only bother passing bills that Clinton wouldn't veto or which had enough
support to override the veto.

This is absurd. The truly heroic Congress would lay out a principled
vision of government through its legislative agenda, whether or not the
president approves. So far as I know, Ron Paul of Texas is the only
member of Congress who doesn't play vote-trading games. Instead, he
votes strictly according to constitutional principle -- and somehow
keeps winning elections.

Thus, even more surprising than Clinton's veto is that Republicans
finally got around to doing what they had promised to do six years ago.
We are not used to the Republican Congress following through with some
slight reprieve in the grip the tax state has over Americans.

Alas, Clinton prevented it from coming to fruition, and the
Republicans may be secretly pleased because it gives them the chance to
stage another performance of their anti-tax act. And once again,
overtaxed Americans will continue to be held hostage in a crass game of
political symbolism.