Let good sense trump ideology By Mario M. Cuomo

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Thu, 30 Jun 2005 19:41:57 +1000 (EST)

Let good sense trump ideology By Mario M. Cuomo

 

 

 

 

 

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Let good sense trump ideology By Mario M. Cuomo

Wed Jun 29, 6:47 AM ET

 

 

 

Looking back to the beginning of the Ronald Reagan

years in 1981, when huge tax cuts for

already-prosperous Americans and a shrinking of

programs benefiting the rest of the population were

launched, it's clear that the forces of great wealth

have been conducting a class war that they are winning

decisively.

 

 

The battle continues today as Republican " wealth

warriors " press for the privatization of Social

Security, revision of bankruptcy laws to benefit

corporate financiers at the expense of debt-ridden

middle-class credit card users, the repeal of

workplace safety regulations, and in other ways are

forcing struggling Americans to shoulder

responsibilities that have been government

responsibilities for most of our modern history.

 

 

For example, the Bush administration is seeking to

alter Medicaid by dropping much of the protection

against catastrophic illness and substituting more

access to primary care. That's an attractive notion

unless you are seriously ill. Similar cuts are surely

in store for Medicare once the president is finished

with his Social Security misadventure.

 

 

This reduction in necessary programs is accompanied by

more tax cuts, largely for the wealthy, including the

elimination of billions of dollars in inheritance

taxes benefiting only a small proportion of Americans.

The champions of the already secure say their purpose

in making these cuts is to " starve the beast. " That's

a cute way of saying they will use fiscal starvation

to end or severely limit existing discretionary

programs that help provide education, health care and

other social assistance.

 

 

Assistance is one of our strengths

 

 

Hundreds of millions of Americans have benefited from

government assistance that has helped house them, feed

them, care for them in illness and educate them in

public, as well as private, schools without being

" spoiled " by an excess of government generosity or a

lack of accountability. Without those investments, our

nation would not be as great as it now is.

 

 

Rather than starving the beast, the result of the past

two decades of conservative economic warfare has been

to help create an imbalance of wealth and democracy so

great as to be unsustainable. More billionaires and

millionaires and annual earners of $300,000 or more

now live in the " shining city on a hill, " what

President Reagan envisioned for America. But they are

still less than 2% of Americans. Despite conservative

economists' arcane econometrics providing technical

assurance of a " good economy, " the rock-hard and

obvious reality is that most American workers are

slipping backward toward the millions of working poor

as the costs of everything they need most - health

care, education, transportation, housing, retirement,

security - are growing faster than their income.

 

 

Either we invest resources to help provide the

education, health care and retirement security our

middle class and poor workers need and deserve - and

produce jobs here in America instead of overseas - or

we risk a weakened democracy and an emerging

plutocracy, a nation in which the wealthy rule and the

rest stagnate. We're uncomfortably close to that

already.

 

 

In analyzing our policies, we need to remember there

is a place for ideology, but it is not first place.

First place goes to good sense, no matter what

political badge it happens to be wearing. We need to

get beyond the beguiling simplistics about " big

government. " We should instead apply the simple but

powerful prescription Abraham Lincoln gave us: " We

should do for ourselves collectively through our

government the things the market system does not do at

all or as well. "

 

 

Test every proposal against that principle. If the

market system would provide elementary and high school

education at a cost affordable to all our youth, we

wouldn't need public schools. So, too, with health

care, end-of-life security, highways, pensions, space

travel, the disabled and all the other programs

Congress and the presidents - Republicans and

Democrats - have enacted that have helped make this

nation the greatest in world history.

 

 

Conservatives respond by saying we don't have the

resources needed even to just beef up the most

important of these programs, such as education or

health care. The compellingly clear answer to that

assertion was demonstrated for us by conservative

Republicans themselves in the late '80s and '90s.

 

 

President Reagan started his administration in 1981

with the biggest tax cut in history, cutting rates

principally on the highest earners. At the same time

he added massive new expenditures, particularly in the

military budget.

 

 

Even Reagan raised taxes

 

 

The cuts helped produce the serious recession of 1982

and what was then the largest deficit and debt in U.S.

history. How did President Reagan seek to solve the

deficit problem caused by his excessive tax cuts and

spending? By doing what he said he would never do:

raising taxes mostly on the wealthy in several

different increases that replaced much of his earlier

tax cuts.

 

 

President George H.W. Bush followed suit with his own

nearly $100 billion in tax increases, as did

President Clinton.

 

 

What followed? Eight years of economic growth, the

four best stock market years in our history, 22

million new jobs, a $5 trillion projected budget

surplus, an upwardly mobile middle class, fewer poor

and even more billionaires and millionaires as well.

 

 

The conclusion is irresistible. President Bush and

the Republican Congress have provided nearly a

trillion dollars in tax cuts to the wealthiest

Americans over an 11-year period. Some or all of that

wealth can be redirected as tax cuts to the middle

class and to the programs both sides agree need help,

while reducing the deficit as well.

 

 

It's time for the Republican wealth warriors to end

their attacks and start a period of peaceful

reconstruction that works for all Americans - not just

the fortunate few.

 

Mario M. Cuomo, former three-term governor of New

York, practices law with the international firm of

Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP.