August 14, 2012
In his NYT column this morning, Roger Cohen repeated a theme about the presidential race that the punditry is anxious to shove down the public’s throat:
“Saving Private Romney is going to involve an ideological battle — over the size of government, the extent of Americans’ obligations to one another, even the soul of the country — that is no less than the United States deserves.”
This is utter nonsense. In fact on the vast majority of issues affecting the well-being of typical Americans Governor Romney and President Obama agree. They both strongly support the policies that have shifted a vast amount of income and wealth from ordinary workers to the richest 1.0 percent over the last three decades. The difference is that President Obama has committed himself to policies where the arithmetic adds up; Governor Romney refuses to be bound in the same way.
The vast majority of the upward redistribution over the last three decades has been in before-tax income, not after-tax. This has come about through a coddled and bloated financial sector that relies on massive government subsidies in the form of “too-big-to-fail” insurance. It has been the result of a system of corporate governance in which directors get 6-figure payoffs to look the other way as the CEOs and other top management pilfer the company.
The upward redistribution was also the result of a trade policy that deliberately sought to put manufacturing workers in direct competition with low-paid workers in the developing world while largely protecting highly paid doctors and lawyers from similar competition. And it is the result of a Federal Reserve Board policy that deliberately throws millions of workers out of work to put downward pressure on their wages, thereby keeping inflation below its target rate.
These and other policies are the real story about “the extent of Americans’ obligations to one another, even the soul of the country.” Unfortunately, there is no real choice offered to the public in this area since the position of the candidates on these issues is largely indistinguishable.
There is a difference in that President Obama has laid out tax and budget plans that add up, whereas Governor Romney and Representative Ryan have refused to do so. Romney and Ryan have promised reductions in tax rates that will be offset by the elimination of loopholes, but have not identified any loopholes for elimination. Since they have taken the special treatment of capital gains and dividends off the table, it is not even possible to make up for the revenue they would lose their tax cuts as was recently shown by the Tax Policy Center’s analysis. (Cohen wrongly implies that Ryan’s plan might leave the wealthy paying higher taxes by eliminating loopholes. Actually, most would be paying close to zero tax since he proposes eliminating the tax on capital gains and dividends.)
The other place in which Romney-Ryan show their disdain for arithmetic is with their long-term budget plan. The Congressional Budget Office shows that the Ryan plan, which Romney has embraced, would zero out everything in the federal budget except Social Security, health care and defense after 2040. Presumably, Romney and Ryan don’t really intend to shut down the State Department, the border patrol, the federal court system and all the other areas that would get zero funding under their plan, but that is the implication of their budget.
In short, the real choice in this election is not about values, those are pretty much the same between the candidates. They both favor the rigging of the rules to the benefit of the wealthy. The difference is that President Obama is prepared to accept that laws of arithmetic are binding whereas Romney-Ryan refused to be similarly restricted in their policy proposals.
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