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Middle Class Bill of Rights?

Submitted by Matt Moon on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 15:53
in

While I'm still skeptical of any large strategic effect the #dontGo movement had, the energy issue overall, as well as McCain's selection of Gov. Sarah Palin, has spurred new policy messages on a wide range of economic, middle class issues. Two days ago, Congressman Eric Cantor (R-VA 7th District) spoke to the Conservative Bloggers' Briefing at the Heritage Foundation, introducing a "Middle Class Bill of Rights." The components are:

  • Energy: As everybody knows by now, the rational approach is to have an "all of the above" strategy which includes production of non-renewable and renewable resources (including nuclear), as well as initiatives that increase conservation and efficiency. Cantor mentioned that the selection of Palin gives the GOP in the expertise edge of energy solutions.
  • Health Care: Cantor explained that individuals worry more today than a generation ago about losing their jobs because of the subsequent loss in health care coverage. Consumer-based health care programs and the expansion of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) are the way to proceed.
  • Making Paychecks Go Further: Another way of saying "tax cuts." But Cantor also mentioned that French President Nicolas Sarkozy is proposing making overtime wages tax-exempt to fuel more productivity at the micro-level.
  • Job Creation: Cantor correctly points out that the best stimulus for any economy is job creation. This means Congress has to start being concerned about competitiveness and corporate taxes. Back in January, Cantor introduced the "Middle Class Job Protection Act," which would, among other things, cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 25%. While it is speculative to link corporate taxes to job loss/creation, the ultimate burden of corporate taxes does fall on individuals through lower wages, higher costs at goods and services, etc. (The Tax Foundation has started a campaign called CompeteUSA, showing that corporate taxes in America are increasingly out-of-line with the rest of the world.)

While I like the combination of issues and the focus on the middle class, I'm not so sure I like the branding. Middle Class Bill of Rights? I've never been a fan of economic "rights." But maybe it is this type of messaging that the Right needs for this and future elections cycles in order to successfully court the middle class. And now that McCain and Republicans are making headway on economic and energy issues, as Sean points out, Cantor is definitely headed in the right direction.

Maybe it's because I'm still very much a policy wonk, as much as I'm a campaign junkie, that contributes to my dislike for messaging economic issues as "rights." I find brands like the "Contract with America" or "American Solutions" from Newt Gingrich much more appealing. Something that I very attracted to was Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI 1st District) and his Roadmap for America's Future that he introduced earlier this summer.

This deals more with comprehensive solutions to long term economic and entitlement program problems, but it's harder to brand and advocate on long term issues.

There are two things we should do in order to start permanently winning the economic issue. First, we have to start being honest about economic problems. Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute put it best yesterday when talking about poverty:

Declaring that it’s becoming “easier to fall into poverty” in America, Barack Obama has laid out an anti-poverty agenda that includes raising the minimum wage, increasing tax credits for low-income wage earners, and enacting legislation to make it easier for workers to start unions.

John McCain would attack poverty by cutting taxes to stimulate the economy and boost opportunity throughout the workforce.

Although their agendas are starkly different, both men make the same fundamental mistake. They declare that labor-force solutions, like higher wages or creating better jobs, will significantly reduce poverty America. But that won’t happen because the vast majority of the impoverished in America don’t work and wouldn’t even if we raised wages or created more jobs. They are in poverty because of social or physical problems or choices in life they’ve made which make it difficult or impossible for them to work. Some have simply chosen not to work. It’s not that our economy doesn’t work for most of the poor, but that most of the poor don’t work.

Most importantly, the McCain-Palin campaign and downticket Republican campaigns have to focus not only the means, ends, and stakeholders. We have to initiate a real debate on philosophical objectives. On tax policy, both McCain and Obama provide tax cuts and credits. But the difference is that Obama wants to use the tax code and the IRS as a mechanism of redistribution while McCain focuses on spurring economic growth. Put simply, Obama is concerned about winners vs. losers while McCain is concerned with how a reformed tax system can affect individual and business decision-making.

I think we can win the "objectives" debate. We can discuss details, messaging, branding, and implementation. But going back to the basics about what the proper role of government should be can provide for a healthy revitalization of the conservative movement. Now that we have the momentum, we can use it to create a new GOP: the "Grand Opportunity Party."

 

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as for job creation seems to me reforming our

Submitted by mnmod on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 19:31.

healthcare system will be more beneficial than anything else.  Take a moment to compare our system to that of several other countries and notice that all others listed offer universal coverage at about half the cost of USA.

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/healthcare/healthcare_profiles.html

As healtch care costs keep rising companies will keep expanding oversees and more people will join the ranks of uninsured and underinsured.  Healthcare costs are on track to wreck  great  havoc on the federal budget in the near term.  I whole heartedly support socialized medicine,  my parents have been quite satisfied with their medicare.

Socialized medicine??...

Submitted by Darvin Dowdy on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 21:48.

Corporate America wants socialized medicine, too. That's why Hillary got so many corporate donors.  Middle America wants no part of it because they're smart enough to know they'd lay there and die waiting for an appointment/opening for heart bypass surgery, etc.  As it stands now their Aetna or BCBS or other will have them on the operating table same day.  They'll be back playing golf in a month.  As Reagan says "no one can do as good as the private sector". 

What Cantor is trying to convey  to corporate America is simple.  Or this is what I envision he'd like to say if he could (actually what I'd like to say and am going to say):   "Don't try and factor out the Middle Class you dummy's!  Why?  Because they have millions and millions of votes!  And they do vote.   You absolute corporate moron!  Try to look at something other than your quarterly bonus' you over educated idiots.  When you slash jobs, when you send jobs overseas, when you slash benefits and wages so your quarterly bonus will be fat, what you've done is to turn voters against you.  You've opened the door for anti-corporate politicians to have a better chance of getting elected.  You corporate lame-brain, can't you see that Middle America has tried their hardest to meet you halfway by electing conservative, pro-business, pro-capitalist Republicans?  And you reward them with  pink slips?  

Many of you  have come to the conclusion, in your smoke filled back rooms over cognac and cigars, that America can no longer sustain a Middle Class.  You'd best pull your head out & come to the realization that if the Middle Class goes down, we all go down.  You Knuckleheads."

Or at least that's what I think Cantor is trying to say in a diplomatic, round-about way.  Ha! Darvin Dowdy 

yes corporate greed is a large part of the problem

Submitted by mnmod on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 23:01.

I just don't expect some great corporate awakening to save the middle class.  Or did you suggest some other solution that I overlooked. 

Also how well does that private sector health care work for the 47 million unisured. I guess few of them  have immediate access to needed care.  If you haven't noticed current health care system involves a great deal of rationing.   Have you no compassion for the working poor?

Who are these "47 million"?

Submitted by Darvin Dowdy on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 08:10.

As a young buck, I didn't buy health insurance until I was into my 30's.  I was irresponsible and healthy.  Millions of young folks opt out because that gives them extra $$ to party with.  Millions of self-employed Americans definitely want the government to step in and provide them health care because they, too, are being a bit irresponsible and don't want to buy it.  They made their decision to go out on their own and did not factor in the costs of health insurance.  Is that the governments fault?  Or the taxpayers?   And what about the poor? Those that will always be with us? They too know that all they need to do if they have an ingrown toe nail, is to walk into any hospital emergency room and that hospital can not refuse them treatment.  So you see MNMOD this issue of healthcare in the U.S. is really a non-issue.  Especially, as I pointed out, as long as corporate America continues to do their part in creating great middle class jobs with great benefit packages.  It they start to waiver on that responsibility, then we'll have some major problems, as I think Rep. Cantor is trying to point out.  DD

Eric Cantor

Submitted by Jim Dandy to th... on Thu, 09/11/2008 - 21:51.

Eric Cantor is no Newt Gingrich. 

This "Middle Class Bill of Rights" sounds a whole lot like more GOP-led big-government entitlement rather than the core Conservative "Contract With America" package that won the White House, the Congress, and the Supreme Court. for years.

But hey, Cantor is "The Future of the GOP", right?  Better get used to shameless pandering.

talk spending cuts before tax cuts

Submitted by superdestroyer on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 07:45.

After eight years of Republican incompetence, you would think that they would learn to talk about spending cuts as much as tax cuts.  Proposing a tax cut withouth an accompanying spending cut has added five trillion dollars to the national debt. 

Until Republicans learn that spending cuts are really more important than tax cuts, they will continue to lose what little power they have.  Anyone who believes is being a fiscal conservative should discount anyone who proposes tax cuts without spending cuts.

Spending cuts are indeed important but you are missing the point

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 09:22.

... for  you see tax cuts do not, as the economic illiterates on the left claim, cause deficits.  They are caused by overspending but also as was proof in the 60s, the 80s and in this decade they will also shrink from economic growth.  When you give a real across the board tax cut (not middle class "targeted" tax cuts that pro-class warfare Democrats sometimes support) eventually tax revenue increases from new job creation, people moving into a better paying position, and the fact that the wealthy will find it cheaper to pay their taxes then to hide their money in their safe, move it overseas in some dummy shell corporation in the Grand Caymans or some place like that, or find some legal tax shelter in the revenue code to exploit which they could do with their highly skilled tax attorneys and accountants that they can afford to hire etc.

Believe me, like you I would like to see the government spend less of our money.  I don't mean reductions in the rate of growth as was projected by the CBO in their baseline budgeting scam, but actually spending less money than the previous fiscal year.  However if such a budget were even succesfully proposed, than the poverty pimps, the race hustlers, the Greedy Old Geezers Coalition (aka the AARP), and the government employee unions would with the help from their liberal media propogandist allies would scream at the top of their lungs about how this would mean the apocalypse.  For a good example, look at the last government shutdown in December 1995.

The alternative to spending cuts is bigger deficits.

Submitted by superdestroyer on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 14:55.

No matter how much how cut taxes, the economic growth never matches the growing spending.  Controlling spending is much more important than spending cuts.  Deficit spending encourages more government since it lets people get in on the cheap and passes the costs on as interest.  The federal government would have almost no deficit if it was not paying interest.  In the long run, you cannot grow your way out of deficit spending but you can cut you way out of it.

I agree, but like I pretty much said in my initial post...

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 18:18.

good luck with that.  Because what needs to be cut is entitlement spending.  I mean yeah, we can always fight pork barrel spending when its something so ridiculous like the "bridge to nowhere" but that kind of expenditure is a drop in the bucket compared to Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid, food stamps, TANF, secion 8 housing, WIC, SSI, SCHIP and veterans benefits. 

Moreover all of those programs have powerful vested interests not counting the government workers whoose livelihood is dependent on the existense of these programs.  And those who want nothing but continued growth in these programs have a powerful ally in the media (even as it continues to sh** and piss on its on credibility with its obviously baised reporting).  No politician wants to stand up to these vested interests and most would be more than happy to appease them in order to maintain their political career.

Right now all we can really hope for is to "reform" these programs by reducing growth and trying to promote free-market alternatives.  And to hopefully to starve them into submission by denying them as much revenue as possible.

Oh, no way, dude

Submitted by davidfarrar on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 18:39.

We can all fight for the adoption of the "Fair Tax" proposal.

ex animo

davidfarrar

I like the the idea of a purely consumption based tax...

Submitted by Big Ben 4 liberty on Fri, 09/12/2008 - 19:03.

and the Fair Tax does sound plausible even if I cringe when any politician uses the words "fair" and "tax" in the same sentence.  But again all that does is possibly reduce the amount of money politicans cans use to "buy" votes from people through new or expanded entitlement programs.  Which is one reason why it probably would never pass, the other reason being just how many people in the private sector make their living of the current tax system.

P.S. what the f*** is up with these annoying animated gifs you put in your posts.  Have the time I don't get them and find them more a meaningless distraction than anything else.

Taxpayers would then demand lower taxes

Submitted by davidfarrar on Sat, 09/13/2008 - 06:41.

Once people are required to pay federal taxes every time they walk into a corner drug store to purchase a candy bar and Coke, they would soon riot in the streets to lower their taxes. Taxes would be lowered, government efficiencies would go up -- which is the real reason a "Fair" tax proposal will never be adopted in this country.

Distractions? What distractions?

ex animo

davidfarrar