Plucking the “Lucky Duckies”

posted at 9:45 am on December 28, 2010 by Jazz Shaw
[ Congress ]   

When Democrats find themselves on the ropes – electorally speaking – one of the tried and true methods used to gin up some fresh support has traditionally been to invoke the age old cries of class warfare. You know the drill: the government is inherently racist or they want all women to stay out of the boardroom and go back to being barefoot and pregnant in the bedroom. But when you’ve got an African-American in the White House and fresh new female faces marching off to serve in Congress, what’s a class warrior to do?

We find a blast-from-the-past answer today as we once again visit the hallowed pages of the Washington Monthly where Steve Benen seeks to breath fresh life into an old chestnut: we’ll get everyone mad at those smarmy rich bastards.

IF ONLY THOSE ‘LUCKY DUCKIES’ HAD SOME ‘SKIN IN THE GAME’

It’s been about eight years since the far-right Wall Street Journal editorial page came up with the notion of “lucky duckies.” The label was used to describe the millions of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes because they don’t earn enough money.

Conservatives, it seems, still aren’t quite comfortable with these folks’ “luck.”

The particular bee under Steve’s bonnet this week comes in the form of some comments made by incoming House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-Mich.) It seems that Congressman Camp plans to “deliberately make things harder” on all of those sweaty, obnoxious poor people cluttering up the work houses.

“I believe,” Camp says, “you’ve got to have some responsibility for the government you have.” People have co-payments under Medicare, and everyone should similarly have some “skin in the game” under the income tax system.

To the barricades, citizens! The Evil Republicans are once again coming to tax the poor out of existence! Let’s see how Mr. Benen rationalizes this approach.

Let’s set the record straight here. When conservatives talk about nearly 47% of the country paying no income taxes, the argument tends to overlook relevant details — such as the fact that these same middle- and lower-class families still pay sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and in many instances, property taxes.

In other words, they already have some “skin in the game.” …

But even if we put all of this aside, let’s appreciate the underlying point of the conservatives’ concern — for all the talk on the right about cutting taxes at every available opportunity, there’s also a drive to raise taxes on those who can least afford it. The GOP has a natural revulsion to any tax system, but there’s an eerie comfort with a regressive agenda that showers additional wealth on the rich while asking for more from lower-income workers.

Perhaps we can take a moment and figure out precisely where Steve went off the beam here. There are two main thrusts to this argument, each one fantastic in nature, but they should be tackled in order.

First, in an era where voters just finished signaling quite clearly on November 2nd that they were growing increasingly – and justifiably – concerned with our out of control deficits, massive spending and rising national debt, Steve lists a number of items which “the poor” are already paying. These include sales taxes, state taxes, local taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare/Medicaid taxes, and property taxes.

Advance Placement Students may note that nearly all of these items have one thing in common. They don’t go into the federal government’s general pool of revenue. Most of them, by definition, remain in coffers at the state and local level. Others go into very specific pockets of revenue which can not be employed to address the deficit. In fact, with the limited exception of certain types of sales taxes, none of them apply to the problem which Mr. Camp seeks to address.

NOTE: It is worth pointing out in the interest of accuracy that a portion of the Social Security withholdings collected each year actually do wind up in the general pool by virtue of the surplus being raided by Congress. But it is replaced in the “trust fund” by Special Issue Treasury Bills which require the repayment of a minuscule amount of interest, so it could fairly be said that these payments not only can’t be used to address the deficit, but in fact add to it.

Second is the transparently lame argument that if you don’t jack up the taxes on “the rich” to Clinton era levels or beyond, then you are somehow seeking to” not tax the rich” while working on fleecing the working man. The truth, of course, is that if you leave the levels where they are now – or even decrease them slightly – the wealthiest earners will still pay a vastly greater amount, both in percentage and raw totals, than the average middle class or below worker.

But would such a plan actually produce a significant amount of revenue that could make a difference or get voters more engaged in the process? Let’s face it… the current tax system is horribly broken, but until a clear path emerges for a complete overhaul of how we handle revenue collection we’re stuck working with what we have.

So, if roughly 50 million workers wound up contributing, on average, two dollars per work day – about what you would save if you brewed a pot of coffee in the morning rather than stopping at Duncan Donuts – you would produce approximately $20 billion per year.

Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But perhaps that’s part of the overall problem. If the recent report of the deficit commission taught us anything it’s that there is no silver bullet waiting to be fired. We are not going to magically find one huge pocket to pick and generate the revenue we need. Nor are we going to suddenly eliminate one giant area of spending – such as wiping out the entire military – to reduce costs. We’re going to need a blanket approach of raising more money across the board and making cuts to spending in every quarter. $20 billion is still a lot of real money, and it’s a start.

Plus, an increasing number of conservatives are showing signs of being willing to even have the wealthy pay a bit more in taxes if – and only if – Washington can demonstrate the discipline to seriously reduce spending and cut into the debt so they will at least know their contribution will be going to a worthy cause.

And for the more modest income worker, might that two dollars per day coming out of their pocket get their attention and make them more engaged in the process, demanding that our elected representatives spend that money wisely and start tackling the greatest challenge facing our generation and those to come? One can only hope. If nothing else, it certainly seems worthy of an open, honest discussion in the public forum and not just another round of empty class-warfare rhetoric.

Now you can yell at Jazz for being a stupid, wrong-headed RINO even faster than by just leaving a comment. Follow him on Twitter! @JazzShaw

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