114 THE WISDOM OF COLONEL SHERBURN!

MONDAY, APRIL 18, 2011

How big are Ryan’s tax cuts/We’ve seen this movie before:Incredibly, your DAILY HOWLER just keeps getting results!

It happened again in the Outlook section of Sunday’s Washington Post. Fortified by our earlier post (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 4/14/11), Walter Mondale swallowed a snootful and talked some serious smack:

MONDALE (4/17/11): Many have described my 1984 presidential campaign promise to raise taxes as exemplifying the folly of proposing tax hikes during an election. Although the rebounding economy and improving job picture that year probably had more to do with President Ronald Reagan’s reelection than my pledge did, there are certainly political lessons for anyone considering tax increases today. In particular, avoid generalities, and clearly link taxes to addressing concrete national needs.

[…]

I told the truth in 1984. “The American people will have to pay Mr. Reagan’s bills,” I said in my acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention in San Francisco. “The budget will be squeezed. Taxes will go up. . . . It must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”

I lost the election, but I won the debate. Reagan ended up increasing taxes in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 to mend the budget and tax systems.

On-line, the headline says this: “As in 1984, we need the courage to raise taxes.” Unfortunately, some of that ancient courage is lacking, proving again that the liberal world has lost the debate about taxes.

If you read Mondale’s entire piece, he discusses raising taxes on upper-end earners only. He doesn’t just “avoid generalities.” He avoids discussing middle-class tax increases, the kind of tax hikes a wave of liberal analysts, including Paul Krugman, have said will be required.

Did Mondale “lose the election, but win the debate?” We don’t mean to criticize Mondale, but we think that’s just wrong. In the days since Mondale told the truth, career liberals and Democrats have utterly failed to construct a vision which can compete with the “drown the government” vision driving the bulk of our public discussions.

Our career liberal leaders have utterly failed—but we rubes still cheer them on. After all, they’re part of our tribe—they’re on our side! Or so we persistently think.

Speaking of taxes, does anybody understand the size of Paul Ryan’s proposed tax cuts? We don’t understand, but we have an excuse:

We read the New York Times.

How big are Ryan’s tax cuts? An array of accounts has appeared in the Times since the Badger State boy with the bedroom eyes unveiled his budget proposal. For starters, here’s what Krugman wrote in last Friday’s column:

KRUGMAN (4/15/11): On Wednesday, as I said, the president called Mr. Ryan's bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, ''There's nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don't think there's anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don't have any clout on Capitol Hill.'' Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who's counting?

According to Krugman, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, presumably over ten years. But this may have surprised the average Times reader. On that very same day, in a front-page piece, reporter Landon Thomas wrote this:

THOMAS (4/15/11): Mr. Ryan, on the other hand, proposes to slash spending by $5.8 trillion but—in contrast to the British approach—would allow most of the spending reductions to be offset by $4.2 trillion in tax cuts, rather than applied to closing the deficit gap. In other words, while Mr. Ryan would lean heavily on spending cuts to close the deficit, he also hopes to spur the sort of supply-side economic growth most often discussed when Ronald Reagan was in the White House.

Thomas reported from London on the British economy, but his account seemed to be taken from other Times dispatches. Four days earlier, Jackie Calmes had offered this in a front-page news report:

CALMES (4/11/11): The Republican plan includes a shrinking of Medicare and Medicaid and trillions of dollars in tax cuts, while sparing defense spending.

[…]

Mr. Ryan said it would cut $6 trillion in the coming decade, though budget analysts questioned some of the claimed savings. The plan would turn Medicare into a voucher program for future generations and slash spending for the need-based Medicaid program and other domestic initiatives, while largely sparing the Pentagon and cutting $4 trillion more in corporate and high-income taxes.

More specifically, Thomas seemed to be using a figure which had appeared in a Times editorial. Unfortunately, the editorial board can’t seem to make up its mind about the size of those cuts. Consider these dueling banjos:

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/6/11): The plan…envisions lower taxes for the wealthy than even George W. Bush imagined: a permanent extension for his tax cuts, plus large permanent estate-tax cuts, a new business tax cut and a lower top income tax rate for the richest taxpayers.

Compared to current projections, spending on government programs would be cut by $4.3 trillion over 10 years, while tax revenues would go down by $4.2 trillion. So spending would be eviscerated, mainly to make room for continued tax cuts.

NEW YORK TIMES EDITORIAL (4/14/11): House Republicans and many of their party's presidential candidates are trying to terminate that promise, [Obama] said, leaving seniors on their own and abandoning 50 million uninsured Americans. They are saying no to rebuilding bridges, sending students to college, to investing in research while giving the rich $1 trillion in tax cuts.

How big are Ryan’s tax cuts? If you’ve been reading our greatest newspaper, you have a wide array of choices from which you can make your selection.

More remarkably, if you read the Washington Post’s news reports and editorials, you may not think that Ryan has proposed tax cuts at all. Consider:

On the Post’s op-ed page, a string of columnists have battered Ryan, sometimes describing the size of his alleged tax cuts. (Dana Milbank, April 6: “The GOP plan reduces the government's revenues by $4 trillion over 10 years because of tax cuts.” E. J. Dionne, April 7: “Note that this $4.3 trillion [in spending cuts] almost exactly matches the $4.2 trillion he proposes in tax cuts.”) But in the Post’s reporting, in its editorials, the notion that Ryan has offered tax cuts has tended to appear in brilliant disguise when it has appeared at all. On April 6, the editors were willing to say only this: “Mr. Ryan proposes a long-overdue overhaul of the tax code. But he balks at the notion…that additional revenue is needed to underwrite the needs of an aging society.” That pretty much makes it sound like Ryan’s plan is revenue-neutral. In that same day’s front-page news report, Lori Montgomery took a similar tack. She did note that Ryan’s plan would “offer sharply lower tax rates to corporations and the wealthy.” But she explained the whole shebang like this:

MONTGOMERY (4/6/11): Ryan also proposes to overhaul the tax code, lowering the top rate for individuals and corporations from 35 percent to 25 percent, while eliminating an array of loopholes and deductions that his budget does not identify. GOP aides said they would leave the details to the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, which is crafting a tax reform plan. But that effort is not intended to help reduce the deficit.

“Not intended to help reduce the deficit?” Again, this makes it sound like the tax “overhaul” might just be revenue neutral.

In the Post’s reporting and editorials, we can find few statements that Ryan has proposed “tax cuts” at all—and no attempts to quantify the size of any such cuts. On Saturday, Paul Kane did report that the House GOP plan would “lower taxes on individuals and corporations” (click here). He later referred to the plan’s “tax cuts for corporations and other tax reforms”—but he made no attempt to account for the size of such cuts. Post reporting and editorials have tended to trumpet the size of the Ryan spending cuts while downplaying talk of tax cuts.

How big are Ryan’s tax cuts? If you read the Times, you’ve been offered a wide array of accounts. If you read the Post, you may not be sure that the sleepy-eyed solon has proposed any tax cuts at all.

We’ve seen this horrible movie before: Truly gruesome things can occur when the harlequins known as America’s “press corps” spill from their tiny VW bug, attempting to discuss the size of Republican tax cut proposals. Consider what happened in August 2000 when the gang tried to discuss Candidate Bush’s proposed tax cuts.

Bush’s plan had been released in December 1999. (Cokie Roberts bungled it instantly, with George Stephanopoulos covering for her.) By the spring of 2000, the plan had been thoroughly “scored;” the Bush and Gore campaigns agreed on the numbers, though they tended to present the numbers in different ways. (The Bush campaign was trying to downplay the size of the cuts.) But after the Democratic convention, Candidate Gore began attacking the cuts, and reporters began attempting to describe their size. At the Washington Post alone, an array of contradictory accounts appeared. Ceci Connolly changed her account about as often as normal folk change their socks:

CONNOLLY (8/22/00): $1.6 trillion over nine years

CONNOLLY (8/23/00): $1.3 trillion (presumably, over ten years)

CONNOLLY (8/24): $1.3 trillion over nine years

Contradictory accounts appeared at the New York Times, sometimes on the very same page of the very same paper. And the AP filed an array of accounts, including this claim by reporter Sandra Sobieraj: “Bush wants to reduce income tax rates to a tune of $1 trillion over 10 years.” At the time, we thought that account was just flat wrong (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 9/8/00). Today, we can see that it was technically accurate but grossly misleading. For whatever reason, Sobieraj’s account advanced the Bush’s campaign’s attempt to downplay the size of the cuts.

Bush would cut taxes by $1 trillion over ten years—no, by $1.6 trillion over nine! If you weren’t confused by Labor Day, you simply weren’t paying attention.

On October 3, Bush and Gore staged their first debate; the evening would change world history. A great deal of the argument turned on the wisdom of those proposed tax cuts. Indignantly, Bush accused Gore of using “fuzzy math” in his description of various budget proposals by Bush. “Look, this is a man who's got great numbers,” Bush indignantly said at one point. “He talks about numbers. I'm beginning to think not only did he invent the Internet but he invented the calculator. (Audience laughter) It's fuzzy math! It's scaring—trying to scare people in the voting booth.” Bush’s claims were false, sometimes blatantly so; Gore’s numbers were perfectly accurate. But with very few exceptions, the press corps refused to say such things; they stuck to their pre-approved standard novel in which Gore was the world’s biggest liar.

The corps’ biggest stars rolled over and died. One night after this crucial debate, Ted Koppel spilled from a Volkswagen limousine to say this, on Larry King Live. King had just played the tape of the same Bush statement we’ve quoted:

KING (10/4/00): OK. Were you impressed with this “fuzzy math, top 1 percent, 1.3 trillion, 1.9 trillion” bit?

KOPPEL: You know, honestly, it turns my brains to mush. I can't pretend for a minute that I'm really able to follow the argument of the debates. Parts of it, yes. Parts of it, I haven't a clue what they're talking about.

It had been five months since the plan has been thoroughly “scored.” Koppel still had no idea.

In the Times, Bob Herbert trashed Gore for sighing at the debate, claiming Bush had done his best in discussing his budget proposals. On Sunday, November 5, Maureen Dowd wrote her final column of the campaign. She pictured Gore before a mirror, singing “I Feel Pretty.”

Two days later, Americans voted. In March 2003, the U.S. entered Iraq.

We’ve seen this horrible movie before. By the way: Why is Koppel still allowed out in public? To make Dowd seem less inane?

One final piece of this noxious history: Five days after that great debate, Margaret Carlson told Don Imus why the press corps was clowning so. It was “fun” trashing Gore, Margaret said. It was “greatly entertaining.”

How did George Bush reach the White House? To listen in as Margaret explains, see THE DAILY HOWLER, 1/3/03.