Republicans have both an arithmetic and a messaging problem as they try to enact Donald Trump’s second-term agenda via a giant budget-reconciliation bill. The former involves finding a way to pay for the $4 trillion-plus tax cuts Trump has demanded, along with a half-trillion or so in border security and defense spending increases. And the latter flows from the necessity of hammering popular federal programs (especially Medicaid) to avoid boosting budget deficits that are already out of control from the perspective of conservatives. This sets up Democrats nicely to deplore the whole mess as a matter of “cutting Medicaid to pay for tax cuts for Trump’s billionaire friends,” a very effective message that has vulnerable House Republicans worried.
To interrupt this line of attack while making the overall agenda slightly more affordable, anonymous White House sources lofted a trial balloon earlier this month via a Fox News report:
“White House aides are quietly floating a proposal within the House GOP that would raise the tax rate for people making more than $1 million to 40%, two sources familiar with discussions told Fox News Digital, to offset the cost of eliminating taxes on overtime pay, tipped wages, and retirees’ Social Security.
“The sources stressed the discussions were only preliminary, and the plan is one of many being talked about as congressional Republicans work on advancing President Donald Trump’s agenda via the budget reconciliation process.
“Trump and his White House have not yet taken a position on the matter, but the idea is being looked at by his aides and staff on Capitol Hill.”
The idea wasn’t as shocking as it might seem. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts reduced the top income-tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent, so just letting that provision expire would accomplish the near-40 percent rate without disturbing other goodies for rich people in the 2017 bill like corporate-tax cuts, estate-tax cuts, and a relaxed alternative minimum tax for both individuals and corporations. One House Republican, Pennsylvania’s Dan Meuser, suggested resetting the top individual tax rate at 38.6 percent, still a reduction from pre-2017 levels but a “tax increase on the rich” as compared to current policies.
Crafty as this approach might have been as a way of boosting claims that Trump had aligned the GOP with middle-class voters (the intended beneficiaries of his recent tax-cut proposals) rather than the very rich, the idea of backing any tax increase on the allegedly super-productive job creators at the top of the economic pyramid struck many Republicans as the worst imaginable heresy. You could plausibly argue that total opposition to higher taxes, or even to progressive taxes, was the holy grail for the party, more foundational than any other principle and one of the remaining links between pre-Trump and MAGA conservatism. At the very idea of fuzzing up the tax-cut gospel, old GOP warhorses like Newt Gingrich and Americans for Tax Reform’s Grover Norquist arose from their political rest homes to shout: unclean! Gingrich called it the worst potential betrayal of the Cause since George H.W. Bush cut a bipartisan deficit-reduction deal in 1990 that included a tax increase.
As it happens, it was all a mirage. In virtual unison, both Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson have said a high-end tax cut won’t happen this year, as Politico reports:
“President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday came out against a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans — likely putting the nail in the coffin of the idea.
“Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he thought the idea would be ‘very disruptive’ because it would prompt wealthy people to leave the country. …
“Johnson separately knocked the idea earlier in the day, saying that he is ‘not in favor of raising the tax rates because our party is the group that stands against that traditionally.’”
Trump’s real fear may be that wealthy people would leave the GOP rather than the country. Many are already upset about Trump’s 19th-century protectionist tariff agenda and its effects on the investor class. Subordinating the tax-cut gospel to other MAGA goals might push some of them over the edge. As for Johnson, the Speaker is having to cope with the eternal grumbling of the House Freedom Caucus, where domestic budget cuts are considered a delightful thing in itself and the idea of boosting anyone’s taxes to succor the parasites receiving Medicaid benefits is horrifying.
If Trump’s “big, beautiful” reconciliation bill runs into trouble or if Democrats set the table for a big midterm comeback wielding the “cutting Medicaid to give billionaires a tax break” message, squashing the symbolic gesture of a small boost in federal income-tax rates for the wealthy may be viewed in retrospect as a lost opportunity for the GOP. For the time being, that party’s bond with America’s oligarchs and their would-be imitators stands intact.
I think your critique is only a partial picture of the Netroots. I am both a member of the Netroots and a member of the Democratic establishment (working on campaigns since 1996). It is not that the Netroots expects ideological purity, but it does expect Democrats to stand up on important issues. For instance, I think few people believe that the Democrats who voted for the Iraq resolution were fooled by bad intelligence or thought that Iraq was really a major threat. The problem for me is not fighting a war, but not taking a principled stand on an issue of the greatest importance for our country.
I consider myself a hawk and in the lead up to the war I could think of many greater threats than pre-2003 Iraq. I thought (and still do) that North Korea, Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Al-Qaeda were all much greater threats. Unfortunately time has shown that invading Iraq was not in our interest. I just wanted a Democrat to stop cowering and say just that: Invading Iraq is not in our interest or let’s get Bin Laden.
What is the point of having representatives if they will not risk their office and power when issues of highest national importance are being debated? What is the point of power if you do not use it to protect your country in its time of greatest need?
The Netroots just wants politicians to fight for what is right, to be a little better. Many members of the netroots maybe Liberal, but so what, being Liberal is not a bad thing. Both parties live and die by their ideological bases. The Netroots supports conservative Democrats when that is the only viable option. That is what got Lieberman in trouble. If he were from Montana, most of us would accept the political reality and support him, but he is from Connecticut. Democrats do not have to hold their noses in Connecticut…
There seems to be a flawed conflation of data that is being used by many to discount the significance of this particular argument. Time and again I see the citation that contends that because a majority of Americans favor a withdrawal from Iraq (the latest data shows that a majority of Americans favor a withdrawal within a year), the netroots is therefore ideologically aligned with mainstream Americans. That conclusion ignores data on the left / right make-up of the voting public.
The problem is that the sentiment on the war cannot be extrapolated to conclude that a majority of Americans are aligned with the netroots…it is merely a measure of disfavor with the war…but cannot be concluded to be a fundamental leftward voter shift. It may happen in the future but the current data doesn’t support that reality.
The “Hillary Meter”, an ongoing Rasmussen survey that gauges her proximity to the center point of voter left / right sentiment demonstrates that she remains notably left of center. At the same time Clinton is seen to be a DLC centrist and that puts her too far right for the netroots. Therefore, one cannot reasonably conclude that the majority sentiment on Iraq…despite the fact that it coincides with netroot sentiment…will translate into a netroots defined Democratic voter majority.
read more observations here:
http://www.thoughttheater.com
I think the netroots comparability with the larger population of the Democratic party will become apparent during the primaries.
I predict Feingold won’t be much of a player as a candidate, contradicting his very high support in the netroots. And the eventual winner, whomever that is, will at best be a 2nd or more likely 3rd favorite of the netroots.
This will answer a lot of questions and focus many minds.
Hello Scott,
I read you piece in the American prospect. You are correct in your findings that netroots readers are overwellmingly liberal.
Where I disagree with you is that this will force that Democratic Party to chose an overwhelmingly liberal Presidential candidate.
You overestimate the ideological rigidity and underplay the pragmatic flexibility of the liberal activist. Netroots people are fully aware that the most liberal guy will not always make the cut or win out and we are willing to work with that. What we also know is that America can not get back to the center unless there are liberal positions and truly liberal candidates to compromise off of. You see, in the far right environment we are in now, you can’t get to to center by just picking the center, you need to push to the left as much as possible and then tack back to the center as little as possible just to end up a little bit less to the right then we are now.
It’s about making the political environment safe again for liberals so that we can have sensible politics again, and we really wish centrist strategists would begin to understand this. When you shoot at the left you blow up the center.
I think that you want to have it both ways. You admit that the “idealogy” of the netroots has only two real components: opposition to the Iraq war and anti-corporatist populism. Everything else is optional, depending on the situation (even reproductive freedom; see Casey in PA). While you criticize “liberalism” as being unpopular, you don’t really address whether the populist anti-war position also unpopular.
If polls give any hint, I think you are wrong, and the netroots idealogy is broadly popular. People don’t like the war and they don’t like legislation that amounts to corporate-friendly give-aways. Tell me, why isn’t that a winning position?
Aren’t you ignoring, in your piece, that the race in question occurs in CT?
Beyond the fact that there is no sillier model than the median voter one… shouldn’t liberals have different standards re ideology on the basis of the state in question?
Lieberman is to the right of his Republican predecessor; that’s… odd, esp. in a state that has become more Dem in Presidential elections since 1988, not less.
Additionally — where was the analogue GOP anguish re PA 2004?
Scott –
From reading your article, I think it would be useful to distinguish between two groups: (1) the political junkies that read and comment at liberal weblogs; and (2) those widely read hosts of liberal weblogs that are also active in Democratic political circles.
As to the former, they are what they are, and the rise of the net has probably only broadened the awareness of, and ability to communicate with, each other. You need to mobilize them to vote for you in elections but, as a candidate, you may not want to emphasize every one of their preferences (hence, no Democratic running on a pro-conscientous objector platform). Nothing new there.
Given their wonkishness, you correctly assess that they would much rather engage in a debate over the merits of a particular issue (e.g. universal health care) and formulate a strategy to successfully advance that issue. Conversely, they tend to be critical of unprincipled pandering (see H. Clinton – flagburning).
Their loyalty to the Democratic Party relies on the Party being able to advance these interests. When Party leaders are seen as compromising liberal interests, disappointment and criticism will ensue. In this regard, they are no different than so-called centrist Democrats (would the New Republic become dovish in the Middle East if polls showed it was crucial to a 2008 victory?).
Similarly, free-market conservatives and values conservatives seem to speak out when they feel elected Republicans are ignoring them, Reagan’s commandment notwithstanding.
It really seems you are putting forth an argument to marginalize the second group – the bloggers becoming influential in Democratic political circles. Maybe you are right that they should not be managing campaign strategy. However, they are still going to be making their arguments for thousands and thousands to see. So, you are still going to have to roll up your sleeves and engage them.