Collective Conscious

Over and over again, Repub­li­cans attempt to make them­selves out to be the party of deficit reduc­tion while actu­ally screw­ing things up big time. So why don’t Democ­rats do it? Many of the most pro­gres­sive pol­icy ideas that can pos­si­bly be imple­mented are huge revenue-​​raisers. On my short­list is Bush tax cut expi­ra­tion; a car­bon tax; and a pro­gres­sive con­sump­tion tax; these three alone could turn the US fed­eral bud­get to sur­plus in a sin­gle year.

It looks like the admin­is­tra­tion might be get­ting the same idea. Here’s Ygle­sias com­ment­ing on a col­umn by for­mer CEA chair Christina Romer:

But if you drill down into the details of the col­umn, the more it looks very sly to me. Here are her spe­cific points:

— Don’t cut spend­ing in 2011, instead out­line “cuts in spend­ing that would go into effect over the next few decades, and that he wants to sign into law in 2011.”

— Obama should “vow not just to veto a repeal of the [Afford­able Care Act], but to fight to strengthen its cost-​​containment mechanisms.”

— Mil­i­tary spend­ing should “grow much more slowly in the future.”

— “At the same time, he should give a ring­ing endorse­ment of gov­ern­ment invest­ment in infra­struc­ture, research and edu­ca­tion, which increases pro­duc­tiv­ity and thus improves both our stan­dard of liv­ing and the bud­get sit­u­a­tion over time.”

— “[T]he pres­i­dent has to be frank about the need for more tax revenue.”

— “Another rev­enue mea­sure should be a tax on pol­lut­ing energy.”

Over­whelm­ingly, she’s just say­ing that Barack Obama should double-​​down on the pro­gres­sive agenda and define the pro­gres­sive agenda as the key to deficit con­trol. I’m not sure that’s sound polit­i­cal advice, but it’s pretty rea­son­able pol­icy advice. Then note that in the penul­ti­mate graph she returns to the point that “With unem­ploy­ment at 9.4 per­cent and the econ­omy con­strained by lack of demand, it would be heart­less and coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to move to fis­cal aus­ter­ity in 2011.” And indeed it would.

Aus­ter­ity, how­ever, may be the only polit­i­cally fea­si­ble way to advance these pol­icy solu­tions; unfor­tu­nately, the cur­rent Con­gress will never coun­te­nance them with­out some unthink­ably enor­mous con­ces­sion. Cer­tainly the Bush tax cuts will have to be revis­ited in 2012, but a car­bon tax and a con­sump­tion tax don’t have much of a hope at this point.