No magic formula can tell us how to vote. This
year, however, we should vote against any candidate who promises never to raise
taxes. Whatever the other merits of
Mitt Romney and most Republican House candidates, we should not vote for any of them since they
have accepted the pledge popularized by Grover Norquist that they will never increase
taxes.
The Norquist Pledge makes it harder to reduce taxes when
circumstances permit. No rational
legislator would vote for tax decreases if he or she knew that it would be
impossible to raise them again if circumstances made increases advisable? (Perhaps that is why Congress agreed to the
Bush tax cuts only if they would “sunset” after a few years.)
The Norquist Pledge also precludes taking advantage of good
opportunities. Barack Obama never took
the pledge, but perhaps his biggest
mistake in 2008 was to promise never to raise
taxes on the middle class.
Obama was unable to support a single-payer medical insurance
system, since it would require raising
taxes on everybody (there not being enough rich people to pay for it just by
“soaking” them). The result was Obamacare, an administrative mess which leaves millions
of Americans uninsured. Obamacare will cost Americans a lot more than a simple
Medicare-for-all system would have cost.
The Norquist Pledge also makes our system more rigid and
therefore more likely to break when stressed.
Most people would rather pay higher taxes than to crash the economic
system within which we live, which would
impoverish everybody.
Perhaps we should never vote for candidates who make any
kind of iron-clad promises. As Edmund Burke, speaking to the electors of Bristol England
Better by far to emulate Burke: “Their [his constituents’] wishes ought to have great
weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted
attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions,
to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to
his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened
conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men
living.”
President Obama, in his recent acceptance speech, didn’t renew his promise not to raise taxes
on the middle class. He did accuse Mitt
Romney of planning to do so. Casual
listeners might think this was a promise not raise taxes himself, but he didn’t actually say this. This is progress compared with his unwise
promise in 2008!
Until most Republican politicians reject the Norquist
Pledge, voters should reject them out
of hand, at least at the national level.
Who knows, with any luck the 2012 elections may produce another
“Goldwater landslide” like took place in 1964, when voter rejection of a
perceived extremist produced such a heavily Democratic Congress that it was
able to pass Medicare and the Voting Rights Act.
What could a re-elected Obama and strong Democratic
majorities in both houses of Congress do?
Well, how about they repeal
Obamacare (with enthusiastic Republican support) and then enact
Medicare-for-all. They could name the new insurance program in
honor of Grover Norquist, who helped make it possible.
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This article has run in the Portland Oregonian and in the Adrian (Michigan) Daily Telegram.
